The Predictable “Lightyear”

The new Pixar movie “Lightyear” is coming out this weekend, and the general plot seems fairly obvious. The white male Buzz Lightyear will be an idiot, time will have passed him by as a relic of a former era, and the really competent leader, the real hero, will be the black female. Because pagans do meta social commentary and propaganda constantly. Most people, even Christians, are oblivious to it. So many college lit classes passed, so little ability to apply what we were supposed to have learned.

And then somebody I know will see it, and come back to me and say, “no, it wasn’t quite like that.” And then I’ll go see it and realize they just didn’t get it. Because this happens every time.

The recent Chip and Dale movie? Same plot. Heavy metaphor in that one. The Obi Wan show? Same thing. Reva is the real hero. The marginalized, opppressed, innocent hero. And incredibly, inexplicably, omnicompetent.

I’ve lost count of how many people have told me they loved “Thor Ragnarok” and couldn’t pick up on the fact that it was a deconstruction of Asgard as portrayed in the MCU up to that point, and more broadly a deconstruction of/a critical historical myth making about American/Western imperialism and colonialism. The white heterosexual male is always the villain. Why do you think they made Thor and Bruce Banner into such idiots, and killed off Odin? Why do you think they destroyed Asgard, and said “Asgard is a people, not a place”? All globalist Leftist propaganda. Asgard was a metaphor for how they believe America should be conceived, all ideology and no physical borders. Why do you think they shaved Thor’s head? He was put in the place of a slave. He was put into the arena, made to dance in the minstrel show to entertain his owner. It was his penance, his purgatory, as the representative of the world’s collective oppressor. They might as well have shipped him to Sakaar on the Amistad. That would teach him, for sure. Why do you think they picked a black homosexual woman to play Valkyrie, who has mostly been white in the comics? And why did she behave crassly like a man? All agenda. Then there was the character’s implied relationship with another woman. And now she’s “King Valkyrie”.

And we the crowds eat it up, cluelessly, because we’re suckered by humor.

And then on the other side, reacting to all this, is a rising white nationalism, those blaming Jewish people for the world’s ills and thinking they’re going to recover 1955 demographics.

Clowns to the Left of me, jokers to the Right, and here I am in the middle. Feel free to join me.

Living with the Reality of Sin

Most people deal with the things that haunt them - such as hurts caused by others, failures in life, addictions, a lack of peace, and a deep sense of dissatisfaction - through ways that ultimately are of no real help. Not knowing what else to do, and yet still having to cope with reality as it faces us every day, we try ignoring these things, or we add on more addictions, or we use self-deception about the facts that linger in our hearts and minds. We tell ourselves we’re good enough, but we really know that isn’t true. Or we tell ourselves that nobody’s perfect, as if that makes it okay, but we can’t get away from the sense that it doesn’t. In dealing with others, we either plaster on a shallow smile to imitate real joy, we adopt a Stoic position of coldness, or we isolate ourselves from others altogether. Deep in our hearts we all know that we are not and cannot in ourselves be enough , and we can’t get away from it. Not only do we fail to satisfy others, we fail to satisfy ourselves. And though we can’t always put our finger on it, we know that there is an ultimate standard out there to which we are accountable, something we should be striving for, and we don’t have the ability in ourselves to meet it. Instead, we try to create a false standard, a lower standard, and try to deceive ourselves into believing it’s good enough. And yet we continue to suffer the pain caused by others  in our lives, and then turn around and do the same to them as well, almost as if we can’t help it.

The Omniscient Judge

Nothing escapes the eyes of God. The temptation, especially for unbelievers, is to move through life as if God doesn’t notice sin, and as if judgment will never come. 

But it eventually will. The fact that a person thinks he can get away with evil is itself God’s judgment.

We can fool one another. But God can never be deceived.

Proposed Future Ms. Marvel Episodes

Ms. Marvel, episode #2: Word of Kamala Khan’s magical bracelet has reached the point of its origin, a small town on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. What will her parents do when they find her missing, and only a threatening message from the Muslim Brotherhood left behind?

Ms. Marvel, episode #3: Kamala Khan and the bracelet she found in her parent’s attic have been secreted away by the Muslim Brotherhood. Will Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, be able to reach her before the Brotherhood is able to sell Kamala into a life of perpetual servitude? And how was he able to resurrect so many eleventh century Crusaders to help him in his task?

Ms. Marvel, episode #4: Kamala has been safely returned to her home in America by the Black Knight, much to her parents’ delight. But what will they do when they find Kamala replacing her Captain Marvel posters with Dane Whitman posters? And how did she get her hands on that Gideon Bible she keeps carrying to school with her anyways?!?

Ms. Marvel, episode #5: Kamala has been led to Christ by her former enemy Zoe. What will she do when her parents disown her and kick her out of the house? And why is she waking up every morning with a craving for bacon?

Ms. Marvel, episode #6: Kamala, having been kicked out of her parents’ home, is now living with Zoe’s family, as she studies her catechism and prepares for baptism at the local Catholic Church. Everything seems to be going well, until she learns that her brother Aamir, having just returned from hajj, has become radicalized on his pilgrimage. Will she be able to reach him with the Gospel before things come to their logical end? Or will she need her friend Dane Whitman to come to her aid to prevent her brother’s murderous rampage?

Hegelian Disney

  With the Reva character on the Obi-Wan show, it has to be understood that Disney knew what they were doing when they created that character. And they knew what kind of response they would get. It was all deliberate. For the Left, both in media and business, it’s Alinsky tactics all the way. Never let a crisis go to waste. Any kind of attention can be turned into profitable attention, and/or attention for the sake of promoting an ideology or political/social goal. You know you’re going to get a response, because that was the point in the first place. And so you highlight the most extreme responses in the media and broadcast it loudly for the world to hear. All that matters is power and money. 

But in such a situation love and truth cannot exist, which is why the developed world is disintegrating both morally and socially the way that it is. To approach life pragmatically, only for personal gain, only for your own goals of power and money, is hate. It fragments healthy social bonds, healthy relationships. Fear, distrust, a constant state of war, a perpetual position of fight or flight, can be the only outcome.  The inevitable result is death, both individually, and socially.

Why is it that Hollywood marriages rarely last? It’s because of the commodification of the self, and of everything. When your brand is yourself, and that is what is most important to you, in a world that knows no Sabbath, humanity is inevitably lost. Man as made in the image of the Triune God fades away. All that’s left is a black hole, a vacuum that everything else is sucked into and destroyed.

When you act according to the Hegelian dialectic, you can never have anything else than the Hegelian dialectic. Peace and rest will never be the result.

Embracing Change

 There is much beauty to be found in the history of America and even further in Western civilization. But it was not perfect or idyllic. True Biblicalism and in fact true conservatism recognize this. They do not live in a world of fantasy, but courageously embrace reality as they face it. A Biblical approach and conservative approach to reality recognizes the inevitability of change, while seeking to maintain those permanent, transcendent things, those things which are essential. These are God’s Moral Law and the foundational realities of Creation before the Fall. These things transcend race and nation and are applicable to all mankind alike.

A real loss has occurred in the West and in America, and there is certainly a place to mourn over it. But God regularly shakes the foundations, and He regularly does new things. It is His practice to take the ashes of what was and to build a house more glorious than ever existed before. 

There is no regaining a fantasy that never existed and never could. And to live and obsess as if such a thing were possible is to live in romantic unbelief.

Red Wave

 I’m all in favor of a ”Red Wave”, if it actually does anything. But will we still be justifying and paying for the murder of unborn children? Will we still be flying rainbow flags at our embassies overseas? Will our borders still be running drugs and human traffickers through like turning on the outside spigot full blast? If we aren’t going to repent, then the judgment of God is just going to swing back around again in another way before too long. Let’s start hearing some honest public repentance out of some elected officials, and then I’ll start thinking some positive thoughts.

The Flood and Babel as Creation and Fall

 The Flood was a new creation, a re-creation, a new Genesis 1-2. Just as God separated the waters and the land in the original creation, so God separated the waters from the land as the Flood subsided. God preserved Noah and his family, along with representatives of all the animals on earth, so that He might through them start again with a New Creation.

Likewise, the Tower of Babel was a new Fall, a new Genesis 3. Whereas Adam and Eve sought to be like God, without restrictions, so the people at Babel would have been without restraint, had God not confused their language (11:6-7). As God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden, so also He scattered the people of Babel across the earth. In the latter case as in the first, God’s command and intention were the same - that mankind might fill the earth and take dominion over it (1:28, 9:1). But due to Adam’s sin, this could only be fully accomplished by Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:21, 1 Timothy 6:16, 1 Peter 4:11, 1 Peter 5:11, Jude 1:25), and by those after Him who trust in Him and obey the call to fill the earth and subdue it to His Kingdom.

Sacrificing All

 In Deuteronomy 20:5-9, Yahweh gives reasons for a man to be sent home rather than joining Israel in battle:

1.) He has built a new house and has not dedicated it

2.) He has planted a vineyard and has not eaten of it

3.) He has betrothed a wife and has not married her.

And then a fourth reason, set apart from the rest:

4.) He is fearful and fainthearted.

Compare then in Jesus’ parable of the great banquet in Luke 14:18-20 the excuses given by some for not coming to the feast:

1.) He has bought a piece of land and has to go see it

2.) He has bought five yoke of oxen, and has to go test them

3.) He has married a wife.

The parallel seems obvious. Compare also Luke 9:57-62, where Jesus rejects some from following Him:

1.) “nowhere to lay His head”

2.) “Let me go and bury my father”

3.) “Let me…bid them farewell who are at my house”.

In this latter case, Jesus had “set His face to go to Jerusalem” (vs. 51). He was going to war, to conquer by His own death. But in Luke 14, it is a wedding feast. The land has been conquered, and the groom is taking his bride to the home he has set up for them. It is the feast of the Kingdom of God (vs. 15), and only those who are willing to sacrifice all will partake of it (vss. 25-33).

The Postmillennial Christian Summer Camp

 This summer, thousands of school children will descend upon Christian summer camps, where they will fellowship, worship, and hear Scripture taught, many for the first time. Many will be saved, and many will receive the encouragement they need to persevere in faith the rest of their lives.

And yet, because of the twentieth century context in which the Christian camp movement arose, many if not most of those camps will be teaching the view that the world has been gradually growing more and more corrupt, more and more ungodly, since the first century. The world is finally reaching the height of its wickedness, and Jesus will be returning to Rapture His Church soon, after which the world will enter into the Great Tribulation.

Now think about this. The Church, which began when Jesus called twelve men to follow Him, has so grown over the past two thousand years as to spread to almost every country and corner on the face of the earth. Her faithfulness has been blessed by God’s grace with the financial means to buy acres upon acres of land, on which believers have planted camps to bring even more people into fellowship with Christ and His people. And that’s just one small sliver of all that God has done for His people since our Lord walked the earth and gave up his life, the one Who in His life “had nowhere to lay His head”.

Praise God for all the good He will do in these camps. But there is hardly anything more self-contradicting than a summer camp that teaches Dispensationalism. The summer camp movement arose, and continues to exist, because Postmillennialism is true. And in spite of the erroneous end times doctrine these camps teach, the Gospel will continue to triumph, because the complete, sufficient work of Christ makes the contrary impossible.

Return to God

 All societal issues stem from that society’s failure to rightly worship and serve the one, true, Triune God. Faith, public and private devotion to Him in Scripture, song, and prayer, right doctrine, a holiness of life that fights against sin, and serving your neighbor - these are the things that matter.

All the problems that we’re currently dealing with - economic woes, drug addiction, sexual immorality, gender confusion, gang activity, an increase in violence, and so on - have arisen from our failures in those spiritual matters. And the only solution to our problems is by returning to those basic things God requires of us.

We aren’t experiencing some mystical results of something called “karma”, or something having to do with the stars, or even merely the natural results of our own decisions. The testimony of Scripture throughout is that when people abandon Him, He acts in judgment, in time and space and matter. And when they return to Him, He returns to them with love, forgiveness, and healing.

He created us, and even gave all that He could to free the world from sin. He is owed and demands our devotion to Him. There is no other way.

Why No Federal Abortion Law?

 It could just be reversed later on. And what are the chances of Congress passing that right now? Fairly slim, I’d say. We are just blessed to have the right justices currently to maybe overturn Roe. The concern of the Anti-federalists was that laws are better made on a more local level, because so many of them vary according to their application with regard to the specifics of a particular locale. One of their chief concerns also after having just come out from underneath the king was that of reverting to a monarchical type of situation, where tyranny reigned, and the rights and needs of the people were trampled on. They recognized the need to keep leaders in check, and they knew that was easier done at a local level. And that’s simply because of distance and numbers. Given the way our rights are trampled on today, a return to states’s rights would be fantastic. Then we could at least have pockets of lawful protection of the unborn. We could have states in the union that are more Christian, more Biblical, more godly, and the wicked would either have to submit or flee somewhere else. And in those states that refuse to submit to God, they could suffer for their wickedness, while the rest of us could benefit from the blessings of walking in obedience. It would also be easier pull off a secession from the Union, if we decided we no longer wanted to be associated with some of these other evil states (looking at you, California).

The righteousness of the laws of a country hinge on the personal righteousness of its citizens. Until godliness reigns in our private lives, godliness will not manifest in the government and its laws.

Our Poor, Sad, Illegitimate Supreme Court

So according to a Fox News guest, the supposed Supreme Court leaker has delegitimized the court. Listen, once you’ve advocated baby murder, you have no justification for being shocked if fifty years down the line somebody you’ve hired to help you out doesn’t take you all that seriously. You’ve already delegitimized yourself. A law court that is lawless before God has already signed its own death warrant.

Romans: Israel and Church, Election and Apostasy

 “I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.” 

When Paul asks this question in Romans 11:1-2, he has the Book of Lamentations specifically in mind:

“For the Lord will not cast off forever.

Though He causes grief,

Yet He will show compassion

According to the multitude of His mercies” (Lam. 3:31-32).

In Lamentations, the author is mourning over the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, which he recognizes as deserved due to Judah and Israel’s repeated apostasy from Yahweh throughout the period of the Old Covenant, which continued up until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. And yet even in the midst of this, he has hope in the nation’s forgiveness and restoration, in whatever form that may take.

It’s this question of form that Paul is addressing in Romans 9-11. Paul makes it clear that not every last Israelite will be saved, indicated by his repeated reference to “a remnant“ (9:27, 11:5). Both the discussion of election in Romans 9 and 11 (some are chosen, others are not), as well as Paul’s illustration of olive branches cut out and some grafted back in, demonstrate that he recognizes that only certain Israelite individuals will be saved. “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). And this election, as he shows us, is of grace, not of works (Rom. 11:5-6). If it is of grace for the Israelites, how much more is it of grace to the Gentiles, who were not the beneficiaries of God’s grace to begin with (Rom. 11:11-24; Eph. 2)? 

The result, then, of Israel’s apostasy and return to Yahweh, is not a nation of Israel restored to its Old Covenant position in the end times, but an Israel, an ekklesia, of which Gentiles are as much a part as the physical sons of Abraham, from the first century into eternity (Isaiah 60).

Paul does not see the fact of election by grace to be in contradiction with the notion of apostasy, but rather a complementary truth. The discussion of election in Romans 9 itself contains within it the idea that some who, in one sense, are of the people of God, may not in another sense actually be of the people of God. The difference between the two groups according to the action of God depends upon His mercy and grace, Paul tells us. But here in Romans, as elsewhere in Scripture, Paul makes it clear that from the perspective of the individual man, continuance in salvation depends on his perseverance in both faith and obedience. Good works are essential to final salvation. Not only does he make this clear in Rom. 11:16-24, but it is emphasized throughout the book (2:5-29; 8:1-17). The mercy and grace that makes a man justified by faith puts him in such a state that while he may occasionally sin, sin does not dominate him. He becomes a man who reckons himself dead to sin through the finished work of Christ, and being in union with Christ through His death and resurrection, does not yield himself up to sin as its slave (Rom. 6).

The key question to it all is this - who does the saving? And Paul makes it clear that it is God, through election, through predestination, through calling, through justification, through perseverance, and through glorification (8:28-30). The warnings must be heeded. But the man who God has determined to save will heed those warnings and persevere until the end of his life.

And so perseverance in faith, a perseverance that Old Covenant Israel failed in, is required for final salvation. But the faith that is required is not a faith in one’s own works or obedience, but rather faith in the the One who promises to keep ahold of the man who trusts in Him, the kind of trust that perseveres in obedience.

Faith, Obedience, and Answered Prayer

If one is not a Calvinist and a Postmillennialist, then we should expect weak and ineffectual prayer to be the result. The condition for answered prayer that Scripture puts before us is that we must ask, and in asking we must believe that God will give us what we’re asking for. If we do not believe that He is willing or able, then our prayers will accomplish nothing, Scripture tells us. Unbelief receives what it expects.

But Scripture also tells us that a life of holiness is also required, and if there’s a place where the American Church fails, it’s there. But unbelief and a lack of holiness go hand in hand. We sin, because we do not trust God. We do not believe He is Who He says He is, that His way and character are right and good, or that there are consequences for our sins. Belief, faith, is the root of obedience, and where there is no obedience, there is no faith. And where there is no faith, prayers are not answered.

Boycotts of Madness

 Did you know that the upcoming Disney Marvel movie “Doctor Strange in the Multitude of Madness” will be available for viewing in India in Malayalam and Tamil? Did you know that there are languages called Malayalam and Tamil, or that they are spoken by over a hundred million people combined?

What are the chances of taking down a company as large as Disney simply with boycotts? It won’t happen.

Boycotts aren’t entirely fruitless. But I’ve been watching Evangelicals try this my whole life. All by themselves they have accomplished little, and the past few decades have proven that. If you are a believer seeking to live a holy life before God, then you have a duty to be careful about what you put before your own eyes, before the eyes of your children, and in what you recommend to others. But if you really want to change Disney, mere boycotts aren’t enough. There are three things that would do more. First, pray for change at Disney, believing that your prayer is good, and on that basis that God will answer it. Secondly, buy Disney stock, and attend shareholder meetings to make your voice heard where it counts. And beyond that, live a holy life before those around you, that the testimony of your life might demonstrate the truth of Scripture and influence others for good.

Apostate America

 Lgbtq ex-vangelicalism is what you get when you try to disciple people in a hazy, mystical, feelings-oriented, anti-intellectual and anti-dogmatic version of Christianity. When you focus on the self rather than on Christ and the facts of Holy Scripture, you are setting people up for apostasy, hardened atheism, and a ruined culture.

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

The Parable of the Sower in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John 15, Romans 9-11, Hebrews 6, Hebrews 10, and many other passages, testify to the fact that it is possible for a person to in some sense be joined to Christ, but later fall away, to his eternal perdition. Genuine salvation manifests in spiritual fruit, growth in grace, and holiness of life. Where such things in no way continue, we have no reason to believe that salvation exists. Any approach to the faith that excuses these things or ignores these passages in the name of eternal security fails to do justice to Scripture and does not teach the whole counsel of God. The possibility of apostasy is assumed throughout the Old and New Testaments. And one cannot rightly guide people in Biblical Christianity if he does not acknowledge this.

Moon Knight Episode Two

Marc Spector: “Where are we going?”

Khonshu: “Where the hell do you think?”

Moon Knight episode two is the Book of Genesis; Moon Knight episode three will be the Book of Exodus.

In Moon Knight episode two, our Adam, Steven Grant, meets his Eve, Layla. After they spend time becoming acquainted with each other, we then meet an elaborately constructed Garden of Eden scene in the form of Arthur Harrow’s commune. Plants are overflowing their planters in abundance; the followers of Ammit are watching nature documentaries. Everything appears to be untainted peace and harmony. As in the Garden of Eden, where no animal had yet to be slaughtered, the only food available is the fruit of the ground. In their conversation, Harrow notes that he knows Steven Grant is vegan, as he is. Harrow is the serpent, speaking lies and making accusations against Khonshu, having formerly been in service to him, as Lucifer was to Yahweh. “Hath Khonshu said?” Harrow gaslights Steven to weaken him and make him pliable, like all sociopathic leaders do, seeking to lead Steven to rebel against and disobey his master. Questions of judgment and death and innocence arise, as in Eden, along with the seed of women, children. But a Garden of Eden scene is incomplete without Eve showing up as well, which Layla does. As with Eve, she holds what the serpent really wants. But unlike in Eden, the man and the woman are both wise, and reject the lies of the serpent. Consequentially they’re driven out of the garden. A battle takes place, and just as Yahweh slew an animal to clothe Adam and Eve in Eden, blood must be shed, but in this case it’s that of a jackal. Where Adam and Eve fell in battle, Steven and Layla have victory, though one that is incomplete. The serpent still temporarily takes what the woman had.

The scene of Harrow and Steven eating lentil soup is key in and of itself, in that the soup itself refers to Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for what the King James Bible calls a “mess of pottage”, which is simply lentil stew. In that Biblical story is an undoing of Adam’s betrayal of Yahweh. Whereas the serpent used food with deception to take Adam’s birthright, Jacob merely uses food, refusing to use the enemy’s tactic of lying. Jacob, who God will later rename Israel, begins the path towards Christ, the path of undoing the Fall, and redeeming not only his own people, but saving the whole world.

In the end, we catch a brief glimpse of the seed of Israel, Steven Grant, in his slavery in Egypt, overlooking the pyramids that his ancestors built. His star of David is prominent around his neck.

Moon Knight Episode One

 So if you trace out the events of Moon Knight episode one chronologically, it begins on Thursday (Thor’s Day), and ends on Monday (Moon Day) night. And it is at the end, on Monday night, when we first see Marc Spector transform into Moon Knight.

This is significant, given that the show has at its center the relationship of Marc Spector and the god Khonshu, but further, the relationship among the ancient Egyptian gods. There is a leaving behind of the West and its gods, which formerly occupied the MCU, and moving East, which is taking place with Moon Knight, The Eternals, and Shang-Chi. And this is symbolized in the flow of days in this first episode. Marc himself is Ad Orientam; he moves from West to East.

Marc Spector’s alternate personality Steven Grant is a lowly museum gift shop employee, and neither he nor the Egyptian history represented in the museum (and by him) are taken seriously by his (largely white) co-workers. Western, post-Enlightenment peoples regard the gods as merely fiction and relics of an ignorant past - an odd thing to have in the show, given the context of the MCU. The results of skepticism of the transcendent are cynicism, hatred, and the abuse of others, all of which Steven suffers under. But the Transcendent always refuses ultimately to be ignored for long; the denial of its existence can’t last. It always finds a way to break through into the modern world. It may be represented in Moon Knight by false gods, but the principle is the same - the Enlightenment was and is a lie, and to adopt it is to deny the ultimate truth of Creation, the existence of a spiritual reality beyond Creation where the one all-controlling Creator God dwells.

Concerning Caitlyn Jenner at Fox News

 If anybody had any doubts about whether or not conservatism had lost its way, this should convince them. Too often, conservatism has proven to just be slow progressivism. Without Christianity at its heart, that’s always what it ends up being. And what I’ve seen online from people in the past couple of years has shown me that it has fueled the rise of nationalism on the right. I’m seeing, even among scholars, a lot of right wing rejection of the label and concept of conservatism, in favor of nationalism. And it is bringing with it elements of white supremacism and antisemitism. It all comes down to the question: what is the foundation of your beliefs about right and wrong? More specifically, what is the truth, and where does it come from? Conservatism, even as framed by Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk, is insufficient. Even Russell Kirk was such a naturalist that he left room for the idea that conservatism can function in an anti-Christian society, where another religion such as Hinduism lay at the heart. But Hinduism, like all false religions, merely leads to death, no matter whether or not you put a veneer of conservatism over top of it. Merely natural revelation, without the Bible, is insufficient to govern a people and form a culture rightly. All that is true, good, and beautiful, is rooted in the character of God, and is expressed in his Creation derived from Him. Post-Fall, it impossible to sufficiently attain the true, good, and beautiful apart from His written Word. And so any society and culture that rejects the Bible, attempting to govern itself some other way, is always destined to eventually fail.

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Our Chosen Slavery

 It is fine to tell Americans and Canadians that they need to become ungovernable, particularly in relation to the tyrannical powers that always seek to overstep their God-given bounds in their control over us. This is a problem that has needed correcting for a long time in the West. The problem, though, is that Americans and Canadians in general live in rebellion against God. Tyranny always arises and gains strength first and foremost because a person or a group of people refuse to live in obedience to God. Lawlessness with regard to God always leads to slavery under the hands of men. We are currently slaves, because we refused to “worship and serve…the Creator, Who is blessed forevermore” (Rom. 1).

Do you want to be free from tyranny? Then kiss the Son (Psalm 2). Submit to and live in obedience to King Jesus. Take responsibility for your own life, do what he tells you to do, love and worship him in faithfulness, and live to promote his kingdom. There is no such thing as autonomous free will. There is no such thing as absolute freedom. You will either serve God, or you will serve a multitude of false gods. There is no other way.

Doctor Strange and the Will to Power

 Potential spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. 

I suspect that the scene on the streets of New York that involves Doctor Strange and America Chavez fighting Gargantos appears early on in the film. America and Gargantos, while fighting in another universe, pass through one of America’s portals into the current MCU universe, and Doctor Strange joins the fight. This is the first time that Doctor Strange and America Chavez meet. We see later in the trailer that Wong engages the battle, trying to lasso Gargantos. It is more than likely that he is the one who ends up bringing its rampage to a halt. It is after that scene from the trailer that he lectures Doctor Strange for having opened up the paths between universes and creating that situation.

The MCU has been quite open in its intention to go a more “Woke”, that is, a Cultural Marxist, direction. It was first embarrassed by the fact that in the comics Wong was actually Doctor Strange‘s servant. The solution to that was to make him a sorcerer himself, and to ignore his history as a servant. Making him Sorcerer Supreme was a step even further in a Woke direction. It was a deliberate, anti-western and anti-American imperialism and colonialism move, in the same vein as what was done in Thor: Ragnarok. The same philosophy also ran as a thread throughout the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Ego was cold, ruthless, and narcissistic in his colonizing of other planets, just as Odin was in his warring against others. 

Doctor Strange himself, in both the recent Spider-Man movie and the upcoming Doctor Strange movie, represents the Western, American white male, acting as he sees fit, with no respect for how his actions may affect others. He acts according to the principle of the Will to Power - whatever he desires to achieve he should be allowed to achieve, simply because he desires it. There is no transcendent standard of right and wrong by which he must be tethered.

In the scene where America Chavez is suspended in the air and a star portal opens behind her, she is actually being tortured by Wanda and the monster in front of her is something manifested by Wanda. Wanda is doing this in order to get her children from another universe.

America Chavez is a character who, in the comics, has two mothers rather than a father. Even though she comes from another planet, she resembles a Hispanic woman and is regarded as being Hispanic. And she herself is a homosexual. A close look at the trailer shows that she is wearing a rainbow flag on her jean jacket, as an intentional mark of LGBTQ representation. That this has some importance with regard to her being tortured should be very obvious.

The automatic assumption with regard to the Illuminati is that they are a good counsel looking to correct the bleed between the universes. But it could be that they are in fact of evil or questionable intent, or that some of the members are corrupt in their intentions while others are good. I suspect that this version of Professor Xavier is not the one from the Fox universe, but maybe an evil version. When in the trailer he says, “We should tell him the truth,” we should question whether or not they actually will. The Illuminati seems in part to be made up also of a version of Baron Mordo from another universe, Reed Richards, Captain Carter, some version of Tony Stark, an alternate version of T’challa, and maybe even the version of Doctor Strange, Defender Strange, as seen in the trailer. The latter sacrifices himself in some fashion, turning into Zombie Strange.

Which is true, free will, or determinism? In Liberal Western culture today, our god above all gods is individualistic free will. What modern Western man desires above all things is a world where no god exists, no one to whom each man must give account. This was at the core of the Loki show, just as it has been for countless movies and TV shows over the past few decades. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will continue to explore that.

But if we are to accept free will, which form is right? Is it the Western, American Will to Power, or is it that of the Marxist? There is no difference. When the existence of God and any transcendent truth have been rejected, all that’s left is power. All that’s left is a vacuum where not even love can exist. All that’s is left is meaninglessness, nihilism, death, and chaos. Such a vacuum always leads back to tyranny.

If there’s one lesson should be learned from the past few years, it’s that the pursuit of individualistic free will, a life fully liberated from the one true Sovereign God, only leads to the worshiping of false gods, of other created things, a life where no freedom exists at all, a life of slavery.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

 Resistance to tyranny is fundamental to the Christian faith. From the Hebrew midwives of Egypt in Exodus, to Daniel and his friends in the Book of Daniel, to the disciples in the New Testament, to Jesus himself, we are given examples in Scripture to follow. Whenever the State begins to violate human freedom, then it is the duty of Christians to resist.

Mad at the Church

 The person who rejects organized religion doesn’t then have no religion. What he has is his own religion that he has organized around himself, where he is the center of it all instead of God.

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God doesn’t in His Word pretend that churches are full of sinless people, and He doesn’t suggest that we should pretend that. He’s very open in His Word with His rebukes toward the churches in the New Testament as well as Israel in the Old Testament when they were sinning wickedly. We see this in the New Testament especially in 1 Corinthians and Galatians, as well as in the letters to the churches in Revelation 2-3. God is as angered when people sin against us as we are, and he doesn’t want us to be naive about how evil people can be.

Whatever anger or disappointment you may have toward ministers, church leaders, or other believers for mistreatment you may have suffered from them, God is in agreement with you. He is shares your anger and disappointment.

Nonetheless, the Church was created by God as the means by which He ministers to individual Christians and demonstrates His grace and power to the watching world. While some local churches may become so wicked that they can no longer be considered a part of the universal body of the Church (Rev. 1-3), that never happens to every local church. Some sin will always exist, there are no perfect churches, and yet God always maintains His presence and witness throughout the world through groups of faithful but flawed believers.

It is the duty of all who profess faith in Jesus Christ to join and attend a local church that teaches the Bible correctly and that seeks through all its ministry to be obedient to Scripture. To be a part of a local church is, very simply, what it means to be a Christian.

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Anger towards God, and distrust towards God, aren’t things you can just ignore until they go away. They don’t just go away. There’s only one option in dealing with them: you have to go to God in worship and prayer and study until you have the thing dealt with for good. If you don’t, they will just hang around and mess up your life until you do.

Dispensationalism and the Gospel

 One of the major teachings of the New Testament is that Christ’s death on the cross was a complete and fully sufficient sacrifice to save men from their sins. What the Old Testament sacrifices could not do, Jesus did in His suffering and death. The New Testament then tells us that if a person now tries to turn back to the Jewish sacrificial system, in doing so they reject the work of Christ, the Gospel, and God Himself. For Dispensationalism then to teach that the Jewish sacrificial system will be reestablished with God’s blessing during the Tribulation is for it to contradict the Gospel. Scripture goes to great lengths in saying the exact opposite of what Dispensationalism teaches.

Alcohol

The Bible encourages drinking alcohol. See Deut. 14:22-26 and the wedding at Cana. It also condemns overdoing it. The distinction is clear in Scripture. And so on that basis, you cannot forbid drinking. Scripture stands against temperance.

Another angle on this is the fact that Scripture condemns the use of things that are in and of themselves evil. Adultery and other sexual sins, theft, murder, etc. It also makes very clear that alcohol is not one of those things. The abuse of a thing does not make the proper use of a thing evil. The fault there lies in the user, not in the thing used.

And what is the proper use of alcohol? To drink it with gratitude before the Lord for this gift that He has given you to enjoy. There’s no support in Scripture for needing to find some merely practical use for a thing in order to justify it. Pragmatism isn’t Biblical either; God gives us lots of things just to make us happy.

The Natural Order

 It was from Adam that God took the substance that He meant to fashion into woman, indicating that as man was formed first and as woman sprang from man, so man is to be her head. He from the dust, she from him. He directly from the Former’s hand, she indirectly and through him. “Adam,” says the apostle, “was first formed, then Eve” (1Ti 2:13). Therefore, says he, she is “not to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” Thus, again, he states the gradation: (1) the head of the woman is the man, (2) the head of the man is Christ, (3) the head of Christ is God (1Co 11:3). Further, he adds that “the woman is the glory (or ornament) of the man”; for, says he, “the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man” (1Co 11:8-9). Such is God’s order of things; such His assignment of place and rank to the creatures that He has made. We may be sure that there is a reason for this gradation, not merely a typical [typological], but a natural one, whether we fully understand it or not. We cannot alter this law and be blameless. We cannot reverse it and not suffer loss. The construction of our world’s fabric is far too delicate and complex for man to attempt the slightest change without dislocating the whole. One star displaced, one planet thrown off its orbit, will confound the harmonies of space and strew the firmament with the wrecks of the universe. [Likewise,] one law lost sight of or set at naught will mar the happy order of God’s living world below.

In one age or nation, man treads down woman as a slave; in another, he idolizes her and sings of her as of a goddess. Both cases inflict a social wrong upon the race, in the latter case as truly as in the former. And who can say how deep an injury—both spiritual and social—has been wrought and how fatal an influence has been sent forth, by that fond sentimentalism that, impregnating our poetry and coursing like fever through the veins of youth, not only “costs the fresh blood dear,” but saps the whole social system, nay, propagates a principle of subtle ungodliness and creature-worship in its praise of woman’s beauty and idolatry of woman’s love.

- Horatius Bonar

The Good Samaritan

 Luke 10. Jesus’s parables often have multiple applications. While it’s clear that the parable of the good Samaritan has in focus what it is to love one’s neighbor, it was of particular application to the Jewish leaders of that time. While the priest and the Levite refused to help the troubled man, keeping the law to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, the Samaritan did keep it. A non-Jewish man keeping the law of Israel’s God, the God with whom they alone were in covenant, would have been shocking and offensive to them.

Jesus’ point in the parable was to highlight Israel’s failure to keep covenant with God through obeying His law, to show the possibility of a Gentile keeping it, and to illustrate God’s turning away from Israel to the Gentiles.

“(F)or when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel” (Rom. 2:14-16).

The point of Romans is God’s salvation of the whole world, not just the Jews, and that their shame in the Gentiles being saved instead of them might draw the Jews back to God.

But the Jews consciously rejected Jesus, as they had His Father repeatedly throughout the Old Covenant. Likewise, they rejected His apostles, who came to them as a last-ditch effort to save them from the coming wrath that they deserved. In the end the apostles turned from the Jews to the Gentiles, fulfilling the prophecy that all the nations would come to worship Israel’s God.

“So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. Now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

On the next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy; and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.  For so the Lord has commanded us:

“I have set you as a light to the Gentiles,

That you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.”’

Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:42-48).

Jesus Himself had turned away from walking among the Jews openly when they had determined in their hearts to kill Him (John 11:54). In doing so, He imitated Yahweh’s repeated turning away from Israel throughout the Old Covenant, whenever they turned back from following Him, choosing their fallen state in Adam, their state before Abram left Ur, their state before Yahweh delivered them from Egypt, and the state of the pagan nations surrounding them. They repeatedly chose to live in wickedness, worshiping the false gods like the nations, as if they were not in covenant with Yahweh. As a result, Yahweh repeatedly turned His back on them, leaving them to the consequences of their sinful desires and actions, and bringing judgment upon them for it. And yet every time they repented and turned back to Him, He returned to them and gave them another chance.

Jesus came as Yahweh’s final prophet to His beloved people Israel. Israel would reject Him and crucify Him, as their ancestors had rejected His Father. And yet the plan all along was that the whole world through Israel might come to Yahweh, and the Jewish people themselves turn to God in Christ. Today God’s people, the Church, are comprised of Jews and Gentiles who have put their faith alone in Jesus Christ for salvation. All are joined together in the one Olive tree (Romans 11), for there is no other means by which any man might be saved than the work of Christ.