Trans Obfuscation and the Sovereign King

  There were two different terms used prior to the term “transgender”. “Transvestite”, which is a cross-dresser. And then there was “transsexual”, used for somebody who had been going through chemical and surgical procedures to try to change their biological sex. The term “transgender” simply obfuscates, which seems to be its intention. It’s an attempt by the unbeliever to defy God and His Law, and to create one’s own reality.

“Hath God said…?” the serpent asked. “Is this the reality He spoke into being? Or can you be gods, rebel against His rule, and create your own universe? Can you have ‘your truth’?”

There is one God, and one world made in accord with His being. All that stands contrary to Him is in vain and will fail.

Death By Christian Liberty

 Yes, we Reformed defend smoking and drinking as extensions of Christian liberty. Spurgeon told a Methodist minister once that he would know he was smoking too much if he was smoking two cigars at the same time. Hooray for freedom. Down with legalism.

Of course, John MacArthur died at 86. Chuck Swindoll just retired at 91. David Jeremiah is still going at 85. All Fundies and non-smokers.

It’s hard to preach with emphysema. It’s worth questioning whether your family and congregation wouldn’t rather have you depositing a life of learned wisdom into them for as long as you can, and whether it’s worth sacrificing those blessed golden years for cigars.

Expository vs. Topical Preaching

 If you grow up in a church without verse by verse exposition in sermons, then expository preaching, when encountered for the first time, can be like a cup of cold water in a desert. But expository preaching only, and the complete absence of topical sermons, can result in gaps in the knowledge of a congregation. Sometimes you need, not only sermons on theological topics like justification and predestination, but sermons that are detailed as well on basics like love, joy, and gratitude. 

Foreknowledge

 If, as the Arminian thinks, “foreknowledge” and “election” are God looking down through the corridors of time, seeing who will choose Him, and then choosing them based on their choice of Him, then this is still to say that the choice is predetermined. God in that scenario is seeing a choice that will not alter and is therefore in some sense and by somebody predetermined. Therefore there is no free will in the Arminian sense. If then the choice is unalterable and inevitable, then it must be made by an unalterable or unchangeable being, whether God or some other. If it is by some other, then one winds up in some variation of pantheism. If by God, then one simply ends up back at Calvinistic and Biblical predestination.

To then suggest, as some will, that the variation comes with God standing outside of created time, is still a false lead. God is still seeing a choice that will be made only one way, and is therefore predetermined.

Pietism’s Eternal Failing

 Again, I’m still not leaving the Reformation to become Roman Catholic - which you always seem to have to clarify up front.  But when it comes to the universal Christian Church impacting the world, nobody in the world notices when the PCA, or any other conservative Reformed denomination, elects a new moderator. But everybody notices when Rome chooses a new Pope. And it isn’t per se due to compromise, or because the Pope is the Antichrist. It’s two thousand years of consistent existence, within physical space, and whatever good has come out of it in spite of all the bad, both doctrinally and morally.

The fact that the CREC has grown and is making the impact it is is due to years of consistent, faithful plodding, and a refusal to confine salvation to the church building, the interior working of God in men’s hearts, and the family.

Pietism will always want to linger because of what it gets right. It will never fully flourish because of what it gets wrong.

The Trump Statue

 Honestly, the golden Trump statue reminds me more than anything else of the Ronald McDonald statues at the franchises when I was young. And I think it would have been surprising to have made it through the Trump era, given his ego, without a statue or two. To his credit, at least it wasn’t something he commissioned. I suppose having a Trump arch and a Trump ballroom has been enough to keep him occupied architecturally. That isn’t to say I don’t find it troublesome. The golden calf comparisons are being made, which are somehow not being brought into consideration when addressing the matter of Obama’s “presidential library”. How often people are thrown off by mere aesthetics. Perhaps it’s because we have the Tower of Babel to compare Obama’s monstrosity to. Either way, Biblical typology tells us they’re all the same thing - edifices and images to the glory of man, all of which will one day crumble and return to dust. The glory of God against whom they compete will prevail, no matter how hard man may strive.

Israel’s Harlotry and Idolatry

 Explain Ezekiel 23:20, a friend asks - 

It’s a metaphor for Israel’s repeated harlotry with the foreign nations and their false gods, turning away from Yahweh their true husband toward other lovers in idolatry. And what is true on a national or corporate level metaphorically - adultery - is true on an individual level, as shown from the golden calf incident at Sinai on forward throughout Old Covenant Israel’s history.

Social Media Madness

 If I could set straight some of my stranger social media friends (people I don’t know personally):

1.) The sho@ting this past weekend wasn’t staged. It was real and not planned by the administration. What is up with this loopy extreme conspiracy thinking? You still don’t get Trump if you think he would put a room full of innocent folks at risk like that.

2.) Ericka Kirk is a real grieving widow trying to deal with a position she never asked to be in and trying to get on with her life. Nobody close to Charlie planned his de@th. Candace Owens is an obsessed, rejected huckster looking to make Ericka’s life miserable. Do folks not understand how people - here particularly scorned women - work?

3.) The earth isn’t flat. Columbus, like most educated people in his day, knew it wasn’t flat. The Old Testament confirms this, and the ancient Greeks knew it wasn’t flat.

“Touch grass” is another one of those trending phrases that make me feel nauseous every time I hear them. But some folks need to camp out in their backyards in it until they get some common sense again.

Concerning “Hyperpatriarchy”

Adding the word “hyper” to any idea you oppose is always a great bit of propaganda. But I will refer to the movement as “Hyperpatriarchy” anyway, simply for the sake of clarity. When it comes to so-called Hyperpatriarchy, I believe there’s a severe ignoring of recent history in these debates.

First, you have government welfare programs which encourage irresponsibility. The consequence? Boys raised by mothers without fathers.

Then you have no fault divorce. The same consequence.

The Sexual Revolution kicks off in the sixties. The women who live promiscuously then go on to teach boys in public schools, carrying all their bitterness toward men with them. Feminism and the consequences for boys spreads like weeds.

TV goes from Father Knows Best, to single mothers on “Alice” and “Rhoda”, to idiot males like Al Bundy and Homer Simpson. Whereas once strong males like John Wayne were extolled, we eventually found ourselves in beta male millennial territory. Society and the Church praise women as princesses and queens (which they reiterate to each other in everyday life), but men get regularly castigated for failures real and imagined.

Women leave their roles as mothers to work full time jobs. They are easier for companies to manage than men, and they accept lower pay, so they begin to take the leadership positions in companies. As I said recently, society is run by female middle managers.

You have women running male sports leagues now. There are hardly any male-only spaces any more.

American women have been so masculinized by modern culture that they have lost traditional - and I would say natural - feminine characteristics. “Passport bros” exist for a real reason. It isn’t just their imagination. Are tattoos feminine?

Men have been beaten down in their homes, beaten down in their schools, beaten down in their churches, and beaten down in the media. Why is everybody acting so surprised at their response?

The Tyrant’s Tools

 Controlling a populace as a tyrant:

Get neighbors to snitch on each other. Call it “accountability.”

Offer them incentives to do so, and/or enforce punishments if they don’t. If you offer incentives, make them just out of reach.

Turn people against each other in so doing. Destroy families, friendships, and any other healthy relationships, and so prevent them from forming and growing. 

Maintain complete control through fear.

Crush free thought.

Governments, businesses, HOA’s - all sorts of organizations do it, and people don’t realize how it affects them.

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

Israel as the Church

 So there’s the claim often made by Dispensationalists that there is no place in the Old Testament or the New in which “Israel” means “the Church”.

“Ekklesia”, which is the Greek word used in the New Testament for the Church, is used in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, to refer to Israel. So there’s one bit of historical data. Beyond that, the repeated problem I have seen in Dispensationalism, and Evangelicalism more broadly, is missing the forest for the trees. It’s a matter of translating words and interpreting verses while simply not being able to understand the broader passages or follow the flow of argument that, say Paul for instance in this case, is making. It’s basically not being able to read a book or a piece of text and follow what the author is getting at. If you can’t understand context, you can’t understand text. And outside of the Dispensational issue, all of your preaching and teaching is going to suffer, even when teaching the basics of the Christian life from Scripture, if you have this problem.

And then there’s the whole issue of being so dogmatically committed to a position that you could never entertain the possibility that you’ve been wrong. That’s another problem in itself, one that is very common as well.

The New Age Masquerade

 The United States - and really, the West as a whole - is largely run by female (feminist) middle managers, who follow the irresistible sinful urge to emasculate any males under their auspices.

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Saul turned away from Yahweh and toward the witch at Endor when he fell out of favor with God due to his unrepentant sin.

This is an eternal principle. People are spiritual by nature, and if they are persisting in unrepentant sin but long for something spiritual, they will turn to anything but God and Biblical Christianity - which, really, just means false religions behind which stand the demonic. The endless sales of crystals and Eckhart Tolle books are really about young women who don’t want to give up living with their boyfriends.

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I’ve worked with a lot of women through the years. The most common fig leaf I’ve encountered? “We are living together. But it’s because we know we’re meant to be together and we’re going to get married.”

Me: “When’s the wedding?”

Them: “Oh, we haven’t picked a date yet. We’ll know when the time is right.”