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.”

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“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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.