[5] Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the LORD of hosts: [6] Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the LORD. [7] And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” [8] Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my days.”
— Isaiah 39:6-8
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”
— Elton Trueblood
Hezekiah was told judgment was coming for Israel but was then relieved to find out it would not come in his day. Instead of preparing for future generations, he was just happy to take it easy and enjoy peace and security while living out his days. He was not grieved over what would happen to his sons; he was just glad to have prosperity in his own day, even if it meant more pain for future generations.
Contrast that with the Trueblood quote, which is a far wiser and more faithful. Instead of sacrificing the future for the present, the Christian will sacrifice the present for the future. Why? Because he cares about future generations. He cares about the kind of world his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will live in. Hezekiah was glad to enjoy the shade of the tree even if was going to be cut down in the next generation, so his sons would not be able to sit under it.
Christians are people who build for the future. We are a future oriented people. We invest in the rising generation. We leave a legacy and an inheritance. We make sacrifices for those who will come after us. We fight battles now in the hope that our children will not have to fight them in the future. We do not want future generations to pay for our sins; we want future generations to continue building on the foundation we have laid for them. We work hard to plant trees so those who come after us can enjoy their shade even if we don’t get to.
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“Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ’s sheep. The preacher’s job is to proclaim the faith, not to provide entertainment for unbelievers—in other words, to feed the sheep rather than to amuse the goats.”
— J.I. Packer
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“Self-pity is the gateway to Satan ruling your life.”
— Charlie Kirk
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“As a candle spends itself to give light to others: so must God’s people spend those gifts which God has given them for the benefit of their brethren.”
— William Perkins
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The left is always full of contradictions.
For example, in the METOO movement, we were told men pose a constant danger to women. But the transgender movement insists on putting men in locker rooms with females. Make it make sense…
Another example: women have agency and are equal to men in every way, but are also vulnerable and need special protections. Women need special rights but we can’t define what a woman is. Women say, “Men are disgusting because they objectify us. Oh, and look at this Instagram picture of me in a bikini.” Etc.
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The Baptist/paedobaptist debate might seem tangential to the culture war. Who has time to debate baptism when we have a country to save?
Actually, I think this issue is right at the heart of the culture war because the culture war is largely about children. Who has custody of our children? Who do our children belong to? Who gets to educate/disciple them? The culture war is largely about the future of our civilization, and children (as we all know) are the future. The culture war is largely a fight over children.
One reason we are in the mess we are in is because Christians have failed to keep their children in the faith and in the church. We have failed to disciple our children in the faith, on the basis of God’s covenant promise (and many paedobaptist parents are part of the problem here because what they give in the waters of baptism they quickly take back by refusing to treat their children as believers and then discipline, disciple, and educate them accordingly — in other words, they have been too Baptistic).
Christians would never have lost so much ground in the culture if we had insisted on raising our children covenantallly, including Christian education. Christians could score massive victories in the culture war tomorrow if every Christian parent took their children out of public schools. The public schools are the front lines in the culture war; most of the cultural sicknesses we are trying to cure infected our children in public education. How do kids from Christian homes get radicalized into socialism, transgenderism, and other forms of progressivism, eventually abandoning the faith altogether? Even if they do stay in the church, what neutralizes their influences by stunting their spiritual maturation? Sure, social media plays a role. Hollywood plays a role. But the public schools are at the heart of it. No baptized child should ever be handed over to the state to be educated.
A Baptist view of baptism cannot really serve as the platform upon which Christendom can be constructed. It’s too individualistic. The only way to build a Christian nation is with Christian families, and Christian families are covenantal/paedobaptistic of necessity. There has never been a Baptist Christendom and never can be, in the nature of the case. Only by a return to covenant thinking and practice can we rebuild a Christian civilization that will stretch into future generations.
I’m grateful for the faithfulness of Baptist brothers. They do good work on many fronts, often putting Reformed paedobaptists to shame. But in general, a Baptist church is simply not equipped to win the culture war.
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Ted Cruz got his foreign policy towards Israel not from the a Bible but from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who said, “The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.”
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Baptists and paedobaptists both tend to be pretty inconsistent with what their positions should actually entail. Baptists should treat their children as pagans, but usually end up treating them largely as Christians, even before baptism. Paedobaptists should treat their children as Christians from infancy, but often fail to do so and treat them as pagans until they have a conversion experience.
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John the Baptist’s experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb is not unusual or extraordinary. There certainly were many extraordinary features of John’s life — he’s one of a handful of Nazirites-from-the-womb in the Bible. He had a unique mission as the one who would prepare the way for Messiah, and thus became a bridge between old covenant and new covenant.
But there is plenty of Scriptural evidence that God ordinarily works in covenant children from infancy. David says God was his God from the womb. He says he trusted in God even as a nursing infant. Jesus blessed children who were brought to him, even infants, and declared them kingdom members. Isaiah promised the Spirit would be upon our children, and Peter’s Pentecost sermon declared “the promise is [still] to you and your children.” Covenant children are “natural branches” on the olive tree of the covenant; yes, they can be broken out if they do not persevere in the faith, but their starting place is clear. Paul told fathers to raise their children up in the Lord — in his nurture and discipline. And he told children (who are regarded as church members, and thus addressed in the letter to the Ephesians) to obey their parents in the Lord. For Christians, the parent/child relationship is in the Lord. Malachi 2:15 teaches us that Christian marriages are created by God for the purpose of raising up godly offspring. There are no Scriptural commands to evangelize covenant children or convert them. There are plenty of calls for parents to nurture their children in a relationship they already have with God. In Psalm 8, we find God uses the children of his people to silence the foe and avenger — they are involved in Spiritual warfare against Satan from their earliest days, even if we cannot understand exactly how that works. Timothy was brought up knowing the Scriptures from childhood. God’s promise to Abraham, “I will be a God to you and to your children” has never been rescinded. If the heart of the gospel’s effect is “grace restoring nature,” this has to include the restoration of the family. In normal circumstances, the children of Christians should be treated and raised as Christians.
So while John had a unique mission and an extraordinary calling, the Spirit’s work in him in the womb was normal.
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On anti-whiteness:
The war on white people is mainly a proxy war against Christian civilization. Whites are the most thoroughly Christianized group in history. This explains why so many white people are anti-white; it’s not really about skin color, but faith, heritage, and history. Anti-white whites hate God, and in the same act of hating God they hate themselves.
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In Acts 2:38, Peter says to his largely Jewish audience, “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” In Peter’s day, the controversial part of this line was not the inclusion of children in the covenant promise. That had always been the pattern. Given that Peter mentions the inclusion of children in the context of commanding baptism (2:38), it is self-evident that children were baptized (along with their parents) at Pentecost. The promise is still for covenant children. “I will be a God to you and your offspring after you” in Genesis 17:7 still stands. Had the apostles suddenly excluded children, it would have left a mark on the NT — the Jews would have noticed and attacked the Christian church for departing from the age old pattern.
In Peter’s day, the controversial part of 2:39 was the inclusion of the Gentiles — “those who are far off.” The inclusion of Gentiles as Gentiles in the church became a matter of such great debate, the first Christian general council was called to settle the matter in Acts 15. In Acts 2, Peter is saying Gentiles can be baptized too. Gentiles can be brought into the covenant. Gentiles were once far off, strangers to the covenants of promise, but are now welcomed in (cf. Ephesians 2:11ff).
In our day, we have no problem with Gentiles inclusion; the controversial part of the text is the inclusion of children. Peter and his fellow Jewish Christians in the first century struggled with the concept of Gentiles being included; despite Peter’s strong affirmation in Acts 2, we know he later wrestled with accepting exactly what this means (Acts 9-10, Galatians 2). Today, thanks to Baptistic individualism and revivalism, many American evangelicals have a hard time taking seriously the inclusion of children.
We need to be Christians who embrace the whole of Acts 2:39. The gospel is for our children and includes them in the church. And the gospel gives birth to global missions and evangelism to outsiders. The healthy church nurtures her own children on the inside and takes the gospel to those on the outside. The healthy church is both inward facing, nurturing covenant children in their faith from the earliest age, and outward facing, reaching out to those who are “far off” and inviting them into the kingdom. And when those outsiders come into the church, they should bring their kids with them!
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The current controversies over anti-Semitism and the modern nation-state of Israel have some oddities, even inconsistencies.
For example: On the one hand, we are told that the church has replaced Israel. Modern day Israelis (including Jews) have no deep biological or genetic connection to Abraham; tribal markers have been lost and most people who identify as Jews have a mix of DNA from other people groups. We are told Judaism as practiced today by the observant has no connection to old covenant religion. Bottom line: Israel is not Israel AT ALL.
On the other hand, NT passages about the Jews of the first century (like 1 Thessalonians 2:15) are applied to Jews living today, and serve as justification for treating them a certain way.
These moves are incompatible. If today’s Jews are not really Jews, spiritually, religiously, covenantally, or biologically, then whatever the NT says about Jews is irrelevant to modern people to claim to be Jews.
Of course, this also raises questions for those who read Romans 11 as predicting a future conversion of Israel. Who is the “Israel” Paul is talking abut? Some have suggested that the 10 lost tribes got assimilated into the Gentiles, and so when Gentiles convert, Israel comes in as well. But that is hard to square with how Paul contrasts the temporary and partial hardening of Israel with the fullness of the Gentiles coming into the church prior to Israel’s conversion. If Israel is included in the Gentiles, how can there be a contrast? It seems Paul definitely has genetic connection to Israel in view since he traces God’s love for them back to Abraham. Perhaps Israel in Romans 11 means the Jews. Jews got their name from the Southern kingdom of Judah and Jews did maintain their tribal identity more than other tribes. Many members of other tribes became Judahites and would now be known as Jews. But the problem is that Scripture often distinguishes Jew from Israelite — they can overlap, but they are not identical. Paul was a Benjaminite, but also calls himself an Jew; Judean Jews are often distinguished from Galilean Jews, but not always. Then there is the case of the Samaritan half breeds. If Israel can mean Jew in Romans 11, that’s a potential solution, but not one without further questions. Yet another way of getting at the issue is to say the Israel in view in Romans 11 is covenantal not biological. In that case, it would not matter if Ashkenazi Jews are genetically Jewish; they claim to be, they identify as such, and that would be sufficient. Whatever the case, it’s a thorny problem has not been completely solved. [One proposal that sidesteps all of these issues is a preterist reading of Romans 11. Romans 11 was fulfilled in the first century and now Jewish identity is gone. The only categories are Christian and non-Christian. But the problem with this reading is that it is hard to square Paul’s language, e.g., “life from the dead,” with first century history.]
ADDENDUM:
Interesting wrinkle I noticed in my reading this morning:
In Acts 2, Jews from Judea, Jews from further away places, and proselytes are gathered in Jerusalem (2:5ff). When Peter preaches to them, he initially speaks to the men of Judea (2:14), then later addresses them as “men of Israel” (2:22) and the “house of Israel” (2:36). It seems to me “Israel” includes Jews (presumably all tribes) and also Gentile proselytes. Either that, or the entire sermon is just to men of Judah (Jews/Judahites) and he addresses them as “Israel” as well, meaning “Jews” and “Israel” are interchangeable here.
All that could have some bearing on what Paul means by “Israel” in Romans 11 – perhaps it’s more of a both/and. The Israel that will be converted after the mass of Gentiles come in are those who are identify as such, whether they have Abrahamic blood in them or not. But that poses a problem: if the Israel that will be saved in the future is not genetically linked to Abraham, how does that fit with Paul’s statement that they are loved for the sake of their fathers? The connection modern Jews have with Abraham seems very tenuous.
If there’s going to a future conversion of Israel (as Romans 11 seems to indicate), the people in question have to be identifiable and distinct from Gentiles in some way. The genealogies were lost in 70AD (and in many cases, long before that), so how can Israel be defined genetically? It’s almost enough to push me back towards James Jordan’s preterist reading of the passage. The meaning of Israel (in contrast with the Gentiles) in Romans 11 reamins an open-ended question for me, though as a postmillennialist, I believe that ultimately all people groups will be blessed and brought into Abraham’s family.
I see why the preterist reading of Romans 11 is so attractive, but I think Tim Gallant makes some really good arguments against it….
ADDENDUM: A very interesting article on Churchill’s view of the Jews. Along the way, he takes a shot at identity politics and makes a case for Zionism that has nothing to do with a misreading of Genesis 12 or other biblical prophecies:
In a 1920 article, “Zionism versus Bolshevism,” Churchill said the Jews gave us Christ (and therefore Christianity) and also Anti-Christ (in the form of the Bolsheviks). Churchill claimed that the Jews were responsible for Bolshevism, “as if the Gospel of Christ and the Gospel of AntiChrist were destined to originate among the same people.”
The entire article is worth reading. Churchill notes that Jews have made many positive contributions to society as well as disproportionately negative contributions (eg, Boshevism). Churchill viewed Zionism as a way of curbing Jewish/Marxist influence in the world by providing an alternative. A few excerpts:
“SOME people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.
Disraeli, the Jew Prime Minister of England, and Leader of the Conservative Party, who was always true to his race and proud of his origin, said on a well-known occasion: “The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.” Certainly when we look at the miserable state of Russia, where of all countries in the world the Jews were the most cruelly treated, and contrast it with the fortunes of our own country, which seems to have been so providentially preserved amid the awful perils of these times, we must admit that nothing that has since happened in the history of the world has falsified the truth of Disraeli’s confident assertion….
The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such an intensity as in the Jewish race. The dual nature of mankind is nowhere more strongly or more terribly exemplified. We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilisation.
And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical…
There can be no greater mistake than to attribute to each individual a recognisable share in the qualities which make up the national character. There are all sorts of men – good, bad and, for the most part, indifferent – in every country, and in every race. Nothing is more wrong than to deny to an individual, on account of race or origin, his right to be judged on his personal merits and conduct. In a people of peculiar genius like the Jews, contrasts are more vivid, the extremes are more widely separated, the resulting consequences are more decisive…
First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life, and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, “I am an Englishman practising the Jewish faith.” This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree….
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world….this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire….
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders…In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing….
Zionism offers the third sphere to the political conceptions of the Jewish race. In violent contrast to international communism, it presents to the Jew a national idea of a commanding character. It has fallen to the British Government, as the result of the conquest of Palestine, to have the opportunity and the responsibility of securing for the Jewish race all over the world a home and a centre of national life. The statesmanship and historic sense of Mr. Balfour were prompt to seize this opportunity….Of course, Palestine is far too small to accommodate more than a fraction of the Jewish race, nor do the majority of national Jews wish to go there. But if, as may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown, which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event would have occurred in the history of the world which would, from every point of view, be beneficial, and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire…
Zionism has already become a factor in the political convulsions of Russia, as a powerful competing influence in Bolshevik circles with the international communistic system. Nothing could be more significant than the fury with which Trotsky has attacked the Zionists generally, and Dr. Weissmann in particular. The cruel penetration of his mind leaves him in no doubt that his schemes of a world-wide communistic State under Jewish domination are directly thwarted and hindered by this new ideal, which directs the energies and the hopes of Jews in every land towards a simpler, a truer, and a far more attainable goal. The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people…
It is particularly important in these circumstances that the national Jews in every country who are loyal to the land of their adoption should come forward on every occasion, as many of them in England have already done, and take a prominent part in every measure for combating the Bolshevik conspiracy. In this way they will be able to vindicate the honour of the Jewish name and make it clear to all the world that the Bolshevik movement is not a Jewish movement, but is repudiated vehemently by the great mass of the Jewish race.
But a negative resistance to Bolshevism in any field is not enough. Positive and practicable alternatives are needed in the moral as well as in the social sphere; and in building up with the utmost possible rapidity a Jewish national centre in Palestine which may become not only a refuge to the oppressed from the unhappy lands of Central Europe, but which will also be a symbol of Jewish unity and the temple of Jewish glory, a task is presented on which many blessings rest.”
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King Alfred’s cultural reforms, including promoting Christian education, according to F. N. Lee:
“Seeking to promote a national educational system after the Vikings had wreaked havoc by burning down so many libraries, Alfred established a Court School. With such a dearth of English scholars still alive at that time, Alfred even imported certain internationally-famous scholars to teach there. Such included Asser from Wales and John Scotus Eriugena from Ireland – as well as some from the Continent. For King Alfred regarded access to public education, on a Christian foundation, as the birthright of every Englishman.
Though suffering from the great physical infirmity of epilepsy, Alfred left an enduring fame for unselfish devotion to the best interests of his people. He made collections of choice sentences from the Holy Bible and certain Church Fathers. He sent a copy of Gregory’s Pastoral Theology to every diocese, for the benefit of the clergy.
Furthermore, Alfred translated fifty of the psalms into Anglo-Saxon. It is due chiefly to his influence, that the Holy Scriptures and Service Books of this period were illustrated by so many vernacular glosses in England.
Above all, Alfred put himself to school – making a series of translations for the instruction of his clergy and people. Apart from his now-lost Handbook (a common-place anthology), his earliest work was his very own Preface to the translation of the Dialogues of Gregory. That Preface, in Alfred’s own Angle-Saxon, starts as follows:
“I Alfred, endowed with royal dignity by the grace of Christ, have truly understood and often heard through the reading of holy books that the one God has given to us so much greatness of earthly things. There is the greatest need that we for a time should soften and bend our mind to divine and spiritual services, amid this earthly care …. Being confirmed in my mind through this admonition and love, I for a time study these heavenly things amid these earthly troubles.”
This was soon followed by Alfred’s translation of the great African St. Augustine’s A.D. 386 meditative Soliloquies. At that time, the king was but thirty-three.
This was then followed by Alfred’s close translation from Latin into Anglo-Saxon of the A.D. 731 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England. For Alfred wanted the English to understand in their own tongue how Christ’s Church had grown in Britain since very early times, and how England had became a Christian Nation.
Alfred was for England what Charlemagne was for France. He was a Christian ruler, legislator, and educator of his people. He is esteemed the wisest, best and greatest king that ever reigned in England….
Alfred himself superintended a school which he had established for the young Nobles of his Court. He resolved to throw open to his people in their own tongue the knowledge which had till then been limited to the Clergy. He took his books as he found them. They were the popular manuals of his age: the compilation of Orosius (which was then the one accessible book of Universal History); the English History of his own people, by Bede; the Consolations of Boethius; the Pastorals of Gregory.
Alfred translated these works into English. But he was far more than a translator. He was an editor for the people. Here he omitted; there he expanded. Simple as was his aim, Alfred created English literature…
After Alfred’s defeat of the Danes who lived in Eastern England, and his Peace Treaty with them – the cessation of the Danish raids now secured, enabled Alfred to unify his kingdom as never before. The Saxon jurisprudence with its graded judicatures was now also subjected to the equity of Alfred, who willingly heard the complaints of even the very humblest of his subjects.
The judges’ knowledge of the law improved; crimes were speedily punished; and theft and murder almost disappeared. Poetry was stimulated; and social welfare work was done by Englishmen in the Name of Christ to help the poor not only in Britain but also in France and even as far away as India. (27)
Now at last, Alfred was able to concentrate on the expansion of English culture. Inviting to his court the most distinguished scholars from Britain and from abroad, he himself then mastered literature and opened schools throughout his kingdom. He wished the children of every free man to acquire the three R’s – ‘Reading’, ‘Riting’ and ‘Rithmetic’. Also the English clergy were to be trained thoroughly.
That is why, to help promote all of this, Alfred, himself translated the Psalms of the Holy Bible and Bede’s Church History and Boethius’s Consolations of Philosophy and Orosius’s Universal History and Gregory’s Pastorals and Dialogues and Augustine’s Soliloquies– into his mother tongue, Anglo-Saxon. He himself also began the inscripturation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. To get all of this done, he rose early and worked at a variety of different tasks, long and hard, and all to the glory of God…
Alfred died in 901 A.D. Precisely a millennium later in 1901 A.D., Lord Rosebery said of him at Winchester during the celebration of the Alfred Millennary that with his name England now associates her metropolis, her fleet, her literature, her laws, her first foreign relations, and her first efforts at education. Alfred is, in one sentence, the embodiment of her civilization.“
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Disney says, “Follow your heart.” The Bible says, “Follow God’s law. Follow Jesus.”
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We should call the LGBTQ+ movement “LGBTQP” because we all know it’s pedophilia hiding under the + sign.
Or may “FLGBTQP” since I’ve argued the entire modern LGBTQ movement springs from the sexual confusion feminism introduced.
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Unrighteous anger says, “My kingdom come. My will be done.”
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We should call the LGBTQ+ movement “FLGBTQ+” because all of this sexual confusion and perversion is downstream from feminism.
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“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”
— Groucho Marx
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Any pro-life organization that does not support the full criminalization of abortion, including chemical abortions, is not really pro-life.
The problem with so many so-called pro-life organizations is that they were never pro-law of God (pro-theonomic). Their commitment to life was based on sentiment, not the sanctity of God’s Word.
These pro-life organizations have typically said the abortionist can be prosecuted but the woman is a “second victim.” That was never a coherent position, but now that most women are their own abortionists (using mail order chemicals to induce abortion), its incoherence should be obvious to everyone. Upwards of 70% of abortions are self-administered now. Yet even most conservative pro-life states have no meaningful laws against these baby killing drugs.
Even in my state of Alabama, where we have some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, it is possible to get abortion pills, and the criminalization of abortion is very inconsistent.
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“I don’t want to ‘March for Life’ for the rest of my life. I want to end abortion now.”
— Abby Johnson
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A note on the Baptist/paedobaptist debate:
Baptists cannot (or should not) pray with their children. Their children are not Christians, and all prayers by unbelievers are offered to idols.
If Baptists say, “But I do pray with my children in order to teach them,” this is an inconsistency – perhaps a blessed inconsistency, but still an inconsistency. The child has no basis for saying “Our Father…” because, as a non-Christian, he has Satan as his spiritual father.
To be consistent, Baptists have to treat their children as non-Christians. They cannot pray with them. There is no basis for including them in Christian celebrations like Christmas and Easter – you cannot tell your children “we are celebrating the birth of OUR Savior,” because he is not their Savior. If a child dies in infancy, before he has a conversion experience, the only consistent thing to do is to say he went to hell. They cannot sing “Jesus Love Me” with their children because there is no reason to think it’s true. And so on.
Now, I have known many Baptist parents and many of them have done a wonderful job raising their children. But they did it in spite of their theology and by being inconsistent with their theology. Many Baptists raise their children quite covenantally minus the paedobaptism; in reality, paedobaptism would have a put a foundation under their practices. All Christian parents are instinctively covenantal. Baptist parents have Baptist theology in their heads but in their hearts and in their practices, they know better – they know God loves their children, that their children are different from the world’s children, that their children are special.
Everyone is either a Christian or a non-Christian. There is no third category for Baptists to put their children in. If they are Christians, baptize them and raise them accordingly. If they are not Christians, be consistent with your conviction – but I think most Baptist parents will find that very hard to do.
ADDENDUM: The missing piece in this argument for Baptists is the nature, meaning, and efficacy of baptism itself. Baptists view baptism as a way of professing Christ. It is how someone makes a “decision” to follow Jesus. But Scripture NEVER says this is the meaning of baptism, it is entirely made up. Scripture repeatedly describes baptism as God’s work, God’s claim, God’s gift. Baptism is how manifests his decision to claim us. Baptism is an adoption ceremony; it is a wedding; it is an ordination. It is an “effectual means of salvation,” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it. So the debate between Baptists and paedobaptists is not merely over who should be baptized, but the meaning of baptism – is it our work or God’s gift, our way of professing faith or God’s way of expressing his covenant faithfulness across generations?
ADDENDUM: Most conservative Presbyterians, especially in the South, are Baptiterians. The Westminster Directory of Public Worship, which also produced the Confession of Faith, says covenant children “are Christians, and federally holy before baptism, and therefore are to be baptized…” But hardly any Presbyterians today actually believe that.
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“As Alexander Schmemann notes, we moderns feel no need to renounce Satan because we ‘do not see the presence and action of Satan in the world.’ The world looks so shiny and civilized that we don’t grasp how ‘such seemingly positive and even Christian notions as freedom and liberation, love, happiness, success, achievement, growth, self fulfillment…can in fact be deviated from their real significance and become vehicles of the demonic.’ Baptism renounces ‘an entire worldview made up of pride and self-affirmation’ that twists life ‘into darkness, death and hell.’ What appears to be a gentle, middle-class neighborhood can be a nest of vipers. Baptism enlists us to resist domesticated dragons as much as a the feral ones.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death
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“Baptism’s power doesn’t stop when the water dries. God preaches in your baptism every day. When the bullies and demons return, remind Jesus and yourself you are his. When you want to slink into the shadows, God says, ‘You are robed in Christ.’ When you feel shackled by your past, God calls you to the future he opened at the font. Whenever you’re insulted or falsely accused, hear God’s declaration: ‘Whoever has died [in baptism] is justified from sin’ (Rom 6:7). When you’re fearful, call on the Spirit, and he will give you words to speak. When a murderous mob surrounds you, remember your baptism is fulfilled in martyrdom. You are what God says you are, not what you feel. Consider yourself to be who baptism says you are.
Whatever happens, you are in your Father’s love. Trust him. Stay loyal. Don’t ‘melt like water’ (Josh 7:5). Plunged in God’s water, you become God’s water. Imitate the fish. Live in the water, and be God’s rain on dry ground, God’s flood again the wicked. Be God’s water, for nothing is more powerful than water.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death
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It’s actually impossible for capitalism to fail.
Businesses can certainly fail in capitalism, but failure is necessary information that feeds the capitalist system.
People can fail by making bad choices, but capitalism itself cannot be blamed for a lack of virtue.
Industries can fail, but in capitalism, this becomes “creative destruction” that makes way for a better allocation of scarce resources.
Capitalism has the advantage of fitting with human nature. It fits with created nature in that encourages the fulfillment of the creation mandate. It leaves men free to innovate, explore, invent. It also fits with fallen human nature, in that it requires people to serve one another whether they want to or not, whether they have good motives or not. The only way to turn a profit in a capitalist system is to provide a good or service at a price people are willing to pay. The element of competition brigs out the best in everyone.
In capitalism, losses are just as important as profits. Losses tell us what doesn’t work, isn’t needed, or isn’t wanted. Profits are a sign that you are serving your neighbor by providing what he wants or needs at a price he willing to pay.
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A note on paedobaptism:
I wish Christian parents in the South were as covenantal about baptism as they are about their college football loyalties.
My point: Christian parents in the South have no problem imposing a college football allegiance in their children from infancy. They dress their baby up in clothes with their school logo. As the kids grow up, they teach them the fight song and other traditions. They teach them history of their team. They make pilgrimages to the stadium. They watch games religiously on Saturdays. But “impose” a religious identity and loyalty on the child? That’s crazy, right?
To take it further, parents impose a name on their children. They impose the English language. The child is an American citizen without getting to choose. They impose piano lessons and phonics and algebra. If parents can impose all these things on their children from an early age, why not a Christian identity given in the waters of baptism?
God says, ‘I will be a God to you and your children after you.” God claims out children — not by nature but by grace. Our children should know they belong to from the earliest of ages. They should be taught that God has brought them into his family, and they owe him full allegience.
The church is called a “holy nation” in 1 Peter 2. Nations always include children as citizens. Our children are citizens of the holy nation of the church, and they should know this about themselves. They should be raised accordingly.
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“We’re all Naaman, lepers reborn. We’re all iron sinking toward Sheol until the wood and water save us. We’re all Elijah, led to brooks in the wilderness. We’re all Elisha, baptized into Jesus’ Jordan baptism to share his Spirit. By the Spirit of Jesus, the baptized become a prophetic community, given the words of God to speak and sing to one another, qualified by the Spirit to stand in the Lord’s council. Preachers aren’t the only prophets in the church. Preachers lead and train a community of prophets. Wherever the Lord calls us to labor–whether we’re at work, hoe, out in the neighborhood, or at the kids’ baseball game–he fills our mouths with words of fire to kill and make alive (1 Sam 2:6; Jer 1:9-10).
Prophets must keep up a steady diet of God’s word so that our words give life rather than spread death. When we drink the Spirit, our words drop like rain and drip like dew (Deut 32:2). Clothed with the Spirit of prophecy, we intercede for the world. Faithful prophets must be and remain filled with the Spirit. You’re baptized: walk in step with the Spirit. You’ve been soaked in the Spirit: don’t quench or grieve him, and you will prophesy, you will see visions, you will dream dreams.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death
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Is Don Lemon in jail yet? Or is he still on the loose?
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Don Lemon says he is a Christian. I wonder where he goes to church?
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I believe there was nothing unusual about John the Baptist being filled with the Holy Spirit while in the womb. This is normal for covenant children.
Leaping for joy when his mom got close to Mary/Jesus was a neat trick. But a covenant child having the Holy Spirit in utero is normative and expected (Psalm 22:9-10, Isaiah 59:21, Matthew 19:14-15, etc.).
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Preaching and the sacraments take place in the physical realm but they produce far more than a physical effect; they take effect in the spiritual realm.
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“To simplify before you understand the details is ignorance.
To simplify after you understand the details is genius.”
— James Clear
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Luther and Calvin were quite closely aligned on this paedobaptism. Calvin made arguments for paedobaptism that Luther did not, but they are very similar in how they view the baptized child.
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All God’s covenants include the children of his people. Grace restores nature. “I will be a God to you and your children after you.”
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I call LGBTQ “FLGBTQ” because all of this sexual confusion and perversion is downstream from feminism.
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The English Common Law tradition traces back to King Alfred, and through Alfred to Moses. The basic principles Alfred put into common law came from his study of Torah.
Basically, common law is general equity theonomy. The Westminster Confession picked up this tradition and continued it onward.
Historian Edward Gibbon claimed, “The wise Alfred adopted as an indispensible duty the extreme rigour of the Mosaic institutions.” Gibbon was a skeptic, so I would not agree with his prejudiced language of “extreme rigor,” but in terms of how Alfred sourced his law code, Gibbon gets the history right.
F. N. Lee describes Alfred’s law code in greater detail:
“Alfred is perhaps best of all remembered for his famous Law Code. According to the celebrated former British Statesman and Historian Sir Winston Churchill, the roots of King Alfred’s Book of Laws or Dooms (alias his ” Deemings”) came forth from the (as then already long-established) laws of Kent, Mercia and Wessex. All these attempted to blend the Mosaic Code with the Christian principles of Celto-Brythonic Law…
Alfred then also established the Shire system in those parts of the English Midlands which he acquired. In that sense, Alfred there implemented the Shires, Hundreds and Tithings. Naturally, he inherited this idea from the earlier Christian Monarchs of Southwest England (such as King Ina). Yet Alfred re-inforced it especially from his own reading and massive study of Holy Scripture (Exodus 18:12-21 & Deuteronomy 1:13-16 etc.).
Like a second Moses, Alfred was personally involved in the administration of justice (Exodus 18:12-26). He was particularly concerned about the poor (James 1:27). He co-operated with his Witenagemot or Parliament; respected its rights; and even strengthened its power…
Seeking to promote a national educational system after the Vikings had wreaked havoc by burning down so many libraries, Alfred established a Court School. With such a dearth of English scholars still alive at that time, Alfred even imported certain internationally-famous scholars to teach there. Such included Asser from Wales and John Scotus Eriugena from Ireland – as well as some from the Continent. For King Alfred regarded access to public education, on a Christian foundation, as the birthright of every Englishman…
Alfred’s most important work was certainly his Law Code. It is preceded by a long introduction. This contains translations not only of the Ten Commandments, but also of many other passages from the book af Exodus…
Alfred first sets out the Ten Commandments – verbatim. Exodus 20:1-17. Next, from the passage Exodus 21:2 to 23:9, he recites many of the Old Testament case laws. Then, he moves on to the New Testament – citing from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and also from the Acts of His Apostles. Finally, Alfred records his own case laws for medieval England.
Alfred declares that when Christ came to the Mediterranean World (or ‘Middle Earth’), He Himself did “approve” the “judgements”alias the judicial laws. Very far from ever having abrogated or destroyed them – He Himself therefore still requires that at least their ‘general equity’ be observed.
This was clearly also Alfred’s own understanding and legislative endeavour. He does, of course, certainly distinguish between the Old-Israelitic format of the judicial laws of Moses on the one hand – and the general equity thereof, on the other. This can be seen by King Alfred’s own adaptation of those Old-Israelitic case laws to meet the different conditions of early-mediaeval Anglo-Saxon Britain…Yet, in so adapting, King Alfred clearly preserves and enforces within English Common Law the general equity of those Old-Israelitic judicial laws….
Alfred copiously cites many of the case laws of Ancient Israel – such as Exodus 21:16 & 22:16; Numbers 25:12-25 & 35:25; and Deuteronomy 1:13 & 19:12 & 22:23 & 24:6-13. In so doing, King Alfred carefully extracts the “general equity” of those ancient laws – constantly updating especially their penalties specifically for English conditions in the ninth century A.D. See on this all of his laws concerning oaths and weds, church associations, bail-breaking, treachery against a lord, church freedom (including the need for double compensation for thefts perpetrated on Sundays), church stealing, fighting in the King’s Hall, fornication, slaying a pregnant woman, seizing hold of a woman, the Elder’s Roll, wood-burning, compensation for injuries sustained while working, cattle-rustling, child-care, kidnapping, aiding and abetting assaults, debt, rape, homicide, pledges, fettering, negligence regarding dangerous weapons, house-breaking, immovable property, and wounds etc…
There is, further, additional legislation which King Alfred together with King Guthrum, and afterwards also Alfred’s son and successor King Edward together with King Guthrum, enacted and agreed upon. This was done, once the West-Saxons and the Anglo-Danes unreservedly entered into relationships of peace and friendship. That legislation was strongly Biblical and Christian. It covered the worship of the one true Triune God, tithes, sanctuary, clerical transgressions, incest, suicide, Sunday trade, capital punishment, sorcery and prostitution…
Alfred died in 901 A.D. Precisely a millennium later in 1901 A.D., Lord Rosebery said of him at Winchester during the celebration of the Alfred Millennary that with his name England now associates her metropolis, her fleet, her literature, her laws, her first foreign relations, and her first efforts at education. Alfred is, in one sentence, the embodiment of her civilization.“
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On King Alfred as theonomist, see:
Edward Gibbon on Alfred:
“The wise Alfred adopted as an indispensible duty the extreme rigour of the Mosaic institutions.”
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Alfred was undoubtedly the builder of British Christendom. We who have benefitted from living in Anglo-American Christian civilization owe him a massive debt. He laid the groundwork for everything good that came after him.
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If you want to understand the left, you have to read Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals — which, by the way, he dedicated to Lucifer (because Lucifer was the first leftist, of course).
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A note on headship:
For a man to lead his wife, he has to have stronger convictions than her. Otherwise, he will default to her and she will become the de facto leader.
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“Happy wife, happy life” is role reversal. It kills sexual polarity. It makes the wife the head, the husband her helper. It makes the wife’s emotions the ruler of the home. It makes the husband a simp.
A husband should want to please his wife and make her happy. But there is a difference between loving to please your wife and living to please your wife.
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On headship:
The husband is head of his wife. Jesus is the head of the husband. The husband is head; Christ is the head of the head.
Man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man. The woman is the glory of the glory.
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Covenant children are natural branches on the covenant tree.
If the church is the new Israel, paedobaptism necessarily follows.
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2 Chronicles 36:22-23:
“[22] Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: [23] “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with him. Let him go up.’”
Matthew 28:16-20:
“[16] Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. [17] And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. [18] And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. [19] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, [20] teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Jesus patterns the Great Commission in Matthew 28 after Cyrus’s temple building decree in 2 Chronicles.
Jesus is the world emperor who possesses the kingdoms of earth; he sends his disciples out to build his house, drawn from all nations, and he is with them as they go.
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Probably every single person alive on the planet today has ancestors who were in slavery at some point.
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“Now that all the Western empires are gone, Western Man, relieved of his duty to civilize and Christianize mankind, reveling in luxury in our age of self-indulgence, seems to have lost his will to live and reconciled himself to his impending death.”
–Pat Buchanan
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On the fake benevolence of socialism:
A socialist will give you the shirt off your neighbor’s back.
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Cars used to have cool names like “Chevelle,” “Bonneville,” “Cutlass,” “Thunderbird,” and “Eldorado.” Now we just get a mix of letters and numbers. I think the car marketers have gotten lazy.
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When the Bible commands wives to submit to their husbands, what it is thr meaning of submission? Some men say it means she should shut up and do as she’s told.
There is a grain of truth in that, I suppose. There is no submission without actually submitting. Submission means obedience. It means doing what you are told.
But a man who thinks that way is not actually ruling his wife the way Jesus rules the church. Jesus rules with wisdom and compassion. Jesus exerts real authority over the church – and always for the ultimate good of the church.
Further, Jesus never tells his bride to shut up. Jesus does command us to not grumble or complain. Jesus demands reverence. But Jesus invites his bride to talk to him – that’s what prayer is all about. A husband should want to hear from his wife. He should consult with her because he loves her and trusts her and knows she has wisdom he lacks. He should seek to understand her, as Peter says in 1 Peter 3.
Yes, a husband has to make the final decision in his marriage. And when he does, she must submit and seek to make his decision a success. But a husband who ignores, belittles, or neglects his wife will not make good decisions, and certainly won’t be leading her well.
A husband’s headship rests on 4 pillars: authority, responsibility, wisdom, and compassion. God grants a man authority over his household and responsibility for the state of his household. A man should exercise his authority in wisdom and compassion.
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“Nations are made up of people, and it is people who are baptized and taught, yet Jesus says that the goal of all this baptizing and teaching is that the nations should be discipled. This has always been the view of the Church….
Today, however, we hear from many evangelical writers that there is no such thing as a Christian nation. The United States and the nations of Europe, we are told, were never Christian nations…
Yet this is far from historic, orthodox Christianity. No Christian tradition has ever held such notions, not the Eastern Orthodox, not the Roman Catholic, and not the Protestant. Only a tiny handful of drop-out sects, like the Mennonites, have ever denied that the nations can and should be discipled – or that at least Jesus should find us trying to disciple them when He comes back.”
— James B. Jordan
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If God can make sons of Abraham out of stones, he can certainly make sons of Abraham out of Gentiles.
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Israel was the bud, the church is the flower. Israel was the caterpillar, the church is the butterfly.
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Paul warns against anti-Semitism at the very time Jews are trying to kill him. See Acts 23:12ff, Romans 11:17ff.
AADENDUM: If you are using the term “Jew” ethnically, Jews are all over the map. There are Jews who are Christians, progressives, atheists, Jews who practice Judaism, etc.
Judaism is like all false religions – a form of idolatry. And, yes, Paul compares turning back to old covenant religion to turning back to paganism in Galatians 4. Modern Judaism as a religion has very little if anything to do with the old covenant religion of the pre-Christian era.
ADDENDUM: Whatever label you want to use, whatever name you want to call it, there was such a sin in the first century as Gentile Christians being arrogant towards broken off, unbelieving Jewish branches. Otherwise Paul would not have written “do not boast against the [broken out] branches” as a warning.
Paul had no malice towards Jews. He was willing to be accursed for them if it would bring about their salvation (Romans 9). He had natural affection towards his own people.
Unbelieving Jews are called “dogs” because they are outside of Christ and therefore unclean. Likewise, in Romans 11, he calls unbelieving Jew “enemies of the gospel.” Where Paul stood on the Jews who persisted in rejecting Jesus is clear. They have been cut off.
I don’t see what point you are trying to make against my original post. My point is an historical one, which we can learn from: At the same time unbelieving Jews are trying to kill Paul and are persecuting the church (see the book of Acts), he tells Gentile Christians to not “boast against the [unbelieving, broken out, Jewish] branches.” I find that pretty remarkable.
ADDENDUMS: Romans 11:17ff has to do with Gentile arrogance towards Jews — particularly unbelieving. The record of Jews trying to kill him is in Acts, 2 Cor. 11, etc.
“Anti-Semitism” is the common terminology. I don’t like the term and it is definitely imprecise.
If you are using the term “Jew” ethnically, Jews are all over the map. There are Jews who are Christians, progressives, atheists, Jews who practice Judaism, etc.
Judaism is like all false religions – a form of idolatry. And, yes, Paul compares turning back to old covenant religion to turning back to paganism in Galatians 4. Modern Judaism as a religion has very little if anything to do with the old covenant religion of the pre-Christian era.
Paul told first century believing Gentiles to not be arrogant towards the Jewish branches that were broken out because of their unbelief. That arrogance would presumably manifest itself in singling them for malicious treatment or assuming it is impossible for those broken our branches to ever be grafted in again. Romans 11:17ff.
The term “anti-Semitic” is terribly imprecise because the Shemites include far more than Jewish descendants of Abraham. I just use it because it is the commonly accepted term and I don’t have power to change the language.
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In Hebrews 12, Paul says in new covenant worship we come the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels….”
If we worship in the new Jerusalem, we must be Israelites.
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“The church of Christ is now the true seed of Abraham, the people and the Israel of God.”
— Herman Bavinck
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In Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah prophesied the new covenant will be made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
In the upper room, Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper with the cup of the new covenant.
If you drink the cup of the new covenant, you are professing to be part of the reunited house of Israel/Judah. In other words, the church us the new Israel. Christians are true Jews.
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Obviously whether or not a state can secede from the Union has been hotly debated through American history. But do other states have the power to kick a state out of the Union if they’re no longer, shall we say, a good fit? If a state happens to go insane, is there an asylum it can be committed to?
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Socialism is usually pushed in the name of virtue, but it actually destroys virtue. It is the politics of envy. It obviously destroyed the black family in America, in the form of LBJ’s welfare programs. It destroys a Protestant work ethic. It destroys responsibility. It destroys sexual chastity – free stuff and free sex always go together. It destroys healthy competition, which in turn destroys innovation and invention. It destroys private charity, including the church’s diaconal ministries of mercy. It destroys the creation mandate. It destroys the proper role of the state, including civil justice. It destroys the free market and the economic productivity that comes with it. It destroys freedom. It destroys whole nations — and that includes America, if we go down the socialist path.
Socialism can never work because it does not respect the way the world works. It is at war with human nature, whether considered as creational nature or fallen nature. It does not respect the creational purpose and design of the family, and seeks to replace the family with the state.
Socialism is a counterfeit gospel. It is statist idolatry. It replaces biblical justice with the heresy of social justice. Socialism demonizes success. Socialism preys upon the rich out of envy. Socialism cedes far too much of life to the state. Socialism is always rife with fraud and corruption. Socialism bribes voters. Socialism never fulfills its promises. Socialism appeals to the economically illiterate but it is always bad economic policy. Socialism can produce equality by making all people equally impoverished – excepting the overlords of the system, of course; they never pay any price or suffer any consequence for the disastrous ideas they foist on others. Socialism is built on the lie of egalitarianism – that we are all the same and thus interchangeable cogs in the machine.
Socialism has a horrific track record. We have empirical proof it does that work. The record of history condemns it. Immigration patterns show people flee from it to freer nations when given a chance. Compared to the successes of free market enterprise, it can only be a mix of staggering ignorance and Satanic blindness that makes people think socialism is a good idea.
Christians should resist socialism and fight against it. Many Christians need to repent of their socialism. Socialism is folly.
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Love will always be the superior virtue to empathy because love is universal and empathy is selective. Love can be broad; empathy, of necessity, is selective — it requires tunnel vision on the perceived victim. Love can, and indeed must, provide correction, discipline, etc. Empathy never does; it simply validates the object of empathy no matter what, even if the object of empathy is evil. Empathy can be a cruel mercy.
Another way to get at this: love fulfills the towards another person. Empathy is lawless; it is simply being governed by feelings.
This sums up the whole problem with toxic empathy in scientific terms – and shows toxic empathy is mainly a problem for women:
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“The church is the true Israel, not by replacing it, but by being the organic continuation of God‘s covenant people.”
— Herman Bavinck
It’s impossible for the church to “replace” old covenant Israel because that would imply two distinct peoples of God. The church does not replace old covenant Israel; the church fulfills and enlarges old covenant Israel in a new form. The story of Israel continues on in the church. The church is Israel dead and resurrected. The patriarchs of Israel are the fathers of all believers. There is one family of God, one family of Abraham.
Unbelieving Jews have been cut out of the covenant tree. Believing Gentiles have been grafted in. But there is only one tree. The new covenant is not God cutting down the old tree and planting a new one; it is a pruning and grafting process. Jesus took the kingdom from those who did not believe and gave it to a people who would bear fruit (Matthew 21:43). But it was the same kingdom.
The modern, secular nation-state of Israel has no relationship to biblical prophecies and promises (not even most non-Christian Jews thought the formation of the nation in 1948 was the fulfillment of anything at the time). All the promises of God are Yes and Amen in Jesus. There are biblical reasons to hope for a future conversion of Jews en masse, but until then, unbelieving Jews are branches severed from the covenant tree, and “enemies of the gospel,” as Romans 11:28 puts it.
The Israel of God is Jesus. He is the seed of Abraham. Those who are in Jesus, united to him by faith, are the Israel of God.
Not all who claim to be Israel are Israel (Romans 9:6). Not all who the Jews are really Jews (Revelation 3:9).
Romans 4 shows us the children of Abraham are those who have the faith of Abraham, whether circumcised or not. Paul shows Abraham was justified while he still a Gentile, before he was circumcised – so he the father of all who believe whether circumcised or uncircumcised.
Galatians 3 shows the family of Abraham is made up of those who belong to Christ by faith. If you Christ’s by faith, then you are Abraham’s seed and heir of his promises.
All of this is rooted in Genesis 12:3. The plan from the beginning was to use Abraham’s family to bring blessing to all the world by bringing the promised Seed (Jesus) into the world.
Again, Jesus is the True Israel. The most fundamental claim the New Testament makes about Israel is this: Jesus is both Israel and Israel’s God. The eternal Son of God becomes an Israelite to fulfill Israel’s mission, to restore Israel, and to open Israel up the nations.
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Trust has collapsed in our society. Institutions people once trusted have broken that trust.
Pastors are no longer trusted – and as I pastor myself, I understand why. Journalists are definitely not trusted. The government is certainly not trusted. Medical professionals and academia have lost trust.
Independent podcasters, especially on the right, are about the only trustworthy class left, and even then it’s a mixed bag.
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90% of Christians killed in the world each year are killed by Muslims. Islam is biggest threat to global Christians in the world today.
ADDENDUM: I’ve seen it cited several places. I just asked ChatGPT and got this:
“While exact percentages can vary, it is noted that a large portion of Christian deaths globally is attributed to violence from Muslim extremists. For instance, Nigeria accounts for 89% of Christians martyred worldwide, highlighting the severe risks faced by Christians in certain regions.”
ADDENDUM: “What about Tucker Carlson softness towards Islam?”
I have not listened to everything Tucker has to say on Islam, but as I understand him, I think he’s making a different point than the one I’m making here. In this post, I’m pointing to the fact of Muslim persecution in various places around the globe. As a Christian I am concerned about my brothers and sisters in the faith who suffer in other parts of the world because of their loyalty to Christ. Reputable source like “Open Doors” and “Voice of the Martyrs” rank the places that are most dangerous for Christians today, and the top of the list is mostly Muslim nations — though communist North Korea tops the list, and other communist nations rank highly as well. Given the teachings of the Koran, that’s not a surprise. As I understand him, Tucker has pointed out that in America, Islam is not the *primary* threat, at least not now or not yet. I might think Islam is a bigger threat in the long run than Tucker does. As I see it, many Muslims do not assimilate and Islam has never been compatible with Western Christendom. Sharia does not belong in America. We don’t need any more Dearborns. And look at what’s happening with widespread Muslim immigration in Europe and the destabilization it has brought — that could come here too. Vance has expressed concern over what happens if European nations fall into Muslim hands, and I share that concern. But, again, we face A LOT of threats, and Islam is not the only, or even the most pressing issue at the moment. I take this to be Tucker’s argument. We face the existential crisis of men and women not marrying and reproducing in sufficient numbers. We have an epidemic of porn, drugs, abortion, etc., stacked on top of economic problems like de-industrialization, mass immigration, etc., stacked on top of foreign entanglements that have no easy solution. Progressivism is the biggest threat to America in this moment. That’s what I’ve taken to be Tucker’s point. I could be wrong — but that’s how I see it. The only thing I would add is that whether Islam or progressivism represents the biggest threat to America, they are in alliance together in various ways. In Minneapolis, it’s white liberals trying to protect Somali Muslims from ICE. Muslims in America traditionally vote Democrat at about a 75% clip (though that shifted some in 2024). Etc. I think the Red-Green alliance is real. So that might be a difference.
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It’s common to hear days to point out that Paul said some harsh things towards unbelieving Jews in his day, calling them dogs, wishing they’d emasculate themselves, calling them enemies of the gospel and mankind, etc.
But to be fair Paul said some pretty harsh things about Gentiles too, and not just the Cretans. See, e.g., Ephesians 4:17ff, where he makes generalizations about the Gentile way of life and contrasts that with the Christian way of life. See also Romans 1:17ff, which I take to be a description of Gentile nations in Adam.
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Baptism, be definition, includes the sign (water) and the thing signified (the Holy Spirit). There is one baptism with physical and spiritual aspects – not two baptisms, one spiritual and one physical.
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Bold men make history. Careful men come along after them to write about it.
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Well behaved women rarely make history. But they do make good wives and mothers.
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One of my favorite lines from G, K, Chesterton describes the glory of the ordinary family: “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”
One problem we face today is that many ordinary women will not consider dating or marrying an ordinary man. Many women are overrating their own value and underestimating their actual opportunities. The result is fewer marriages, later marriages, and far fewer children.
Given that collapsing birth and marriage rates are the existential crisis of our age, this is a huge deal. We have no future without family formation.
Josh Konstantinos explains:
“In 2012, Tinder launched with a simple innovation: the swipe. Left for no, right for yes. The interface was deliberately game-like — the same variable reward mechanism that makes slot machines addictive. Within two years, the app was processing a billion swipes per day.
The designers had built something more consequential than they knew. Before Tinder, you met partners primarily through work, church and friends. You screened maybe fifty or a hundred realistic candidates over the course of your twenties. And there were still social costs attached to promiscuity.
Tinder changed things. Suddenly women had access to every male user within a fifty-mile radius — thousands of candidates, sorted by attractiveness, available for private evaluation, with zero social cost. And here’s the thing about this kind of rating system: the same people rise to the top.
The data is stark. Analysis of dating app behavior shows that women like about 14% of male profiles, whereas men like 46% of female profiles. The result is that a small percentage of men receive the vast majority of female attention. The top 10% of men get over half of all likes. The bottom 50% of men get about 5%.”
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Western Christendom is the civilizational high point in history thus far.
Multiculturalism, the view that all cultures are equal, is an egalitarian lie.
ADDENDUM: Read Deuteronomy 27-28, Amos, Romans 1:18ff, etc., to see how God evaluates cultures.
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The word “indomitable” needs to be brought back into mainstream usage.
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Conservatives today are just progressives driving the speed limit. Or as Dabney put it, “conservatism is the shadow that follows liberalism to perdition.” Conservatives have settled for being beautiful losers. They have conserved almost nothing. Conservative console themselves: “At least we loss with class. At least we were winsome.” But they still lose ground.
Conservatives don’t lose because they “play by the rules.” They lose because they lack courage. They lose because they do more posturing than fighting. They lose because the put all kinds of effort into gaining power, but do nothing useful when they have it. They are not indomitable. They have been conquered.
The need of the hour is indomitable Christian conservatives, who can gain power and actually wield it to accomplish Christian cultural ends.
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Paul was a man of great natural affection for his own people, the Jews. He was willing to die for them in order to save them if it were possible, at the very same time they were trying to kill him (Romans 9:1-4).
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We often speak of America’s Christian founding, but we should really speak of her Calvinist founding.
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Calvinists were once the junkyard dogs of Christendom. If you put Calvinists in chains, they’d break the chains. Put them in a cage and they’d gnaw through the bars. Give them a lost cause, and they’d fight for it til death. Calvinists were once tyranny’s worst nightmare.
It’s time to make Calvinism great again. It’s time to make Calvinism a thorn in the side of tyrants again.
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“It is not the barbarians at the gates that worry me; it is the traitors within. Those who forget their Faith, who scoff at their history, and who welcome the enemies of Christ with open arms. These are the ones who will bring down Christendom, brick by brick.”
— Hilaire Belloc
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The left hates patriarchy, so be a patriarch.
The left hates masculine men, so be a masculine man.
The left hates children, so have a lot of kids.
The left hates free markets, so be a free marketer.
The left hates America, so be patriotic.
The left hates the church, so be in worship every Sunday.
The left hates Christendom, so build Christendom.
Etc.
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If you don’t fight for the Shire, there won’t be a Shire.
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Only in America….
I would consider this righteous deception.
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Parents who believed Jesus was the Messiah brought their little ones to Jesus to be blessed by him (Matthew 19, Luke 18).
The disciples objected (this is the closest anyone in the NT gets to being Baptist.)
Jesus override their objections: “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus declared the children of those who believed he was the promised king to be kingdom members themselves. Covenant children are Christian children. The kingdom is theirs. The covenant is theirs. The blessing of Jesus is theirs. They belong to Jesus and Jesus belong to them. We must treat them accordingly.
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“We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.”
— Ronald Reagan
Reagan on statism and bureaucracy:
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1 Timothy 2 commands us to prayer for our civil rulers. The Book of Common Prayer has some excellent examples of what such prayers should look like:
Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world: We commend this nation to thymerciful care, that, being guided by thyProvidence, we may dwell secure in thy peace. Grant to the President of the United States, the Governor of this State (orCommonwealth), and to all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do thy will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness, and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in thy fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
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Oddly enough, many Americans complain Israel controls America, while many Israelis complain America controls Israel.
The only certainty at this point is that the American/Israel relationship will look different in the future.
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“Anti-Semitism” has become about as useless as the term “racism.” Some clarifications:
It is not anti-Semitic to teach that Jews can only be saved by becoming Christians – by repenting of their sin and trusting in Jesus.
It is not anti-Semitic to say the church is the true Israel and Christians are the true Jews.
It is not anti-Semitic to notice various ways in which unbelieving Jews have contributed to the degradation of American society.
It is not anti-Semitic to criticize policies of the modern nation-state of Israel — indeed, there is long tradition of Jesus and the prophets criticizing Israel. No nation is immune to prophetic critique.
It is not anti-Semitic to deny that the creation of the modern nation-state of Israel fulfills biblical prophecies/promises; all the promises of God are Yes and Amen in Christ, so as long as modern Israelis reject Christ en masse, their presence in the land has no connection to any biblical prophecy.
It is not anti-Semitic to teach that unbelieving Jews are branches broken out of the covenant tree.
It is not anti-Semitic to question the wisdom of America’s foreign policy towards Israel, including our “special” relationship with them.
It is not anti-Semitic to deny that the blessing of Genesis 12:3 comes from a how a people treats the church, rather than the modern nation-state of Israel. It is not anti-Semitic to deny that Genesis 12:3 has anything to do with the modern nation-state of Israel as it currently exists.
It is not anti-Semitic to notice how much money the Israeli lobby pushes towards American politicians to influence them in various ways.
It is not anti-Semitic to say that Judaism is a false religion.
On the other hand, it is anti-Semitic to refuse to acknowledge various positive contributions Jewish people have made in various fields. Jews have been a high achieving group – sometimes for ill, but sometimes for good. The good should be recognized.
It is anti-Semitic to blame the Jews for problems for which we should take responsibility; even if Jewish influence on America has been uniquely malevolent, it is our fault for allowing it to happen and pointing to Jewish influence is no excuse for personal or cultural apostasy. Saying, “The Jews made us do it” is just as dumb as saying, “The devil made me do it.” Scapegoating is an effeminate attempt to evade responsibility.
It is anti-Semitic to refuse to acknowledge the place the nation of Israel has played in redemptive history under the old covenant. Salvation is of the Jews because Jesus, the Savior, is a Jew. Paul warns Gentiles against an anti-Semitic posture when he warns “do not be arrogant toward the [natural, Jewish] branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you…” (Romans 11:18ff). And note Paul warned Gentiles Christians against anti-Semitism at the very time Jews were seeking to kill Paul and were persecuting Christians.
It is anti-Semitic to refuse to allow the nation-state of Israel the right to defend itself and seek its own interests, like any other nation.
It is anti-Semitic to deny that Jews can be grafted back into God’s covenant tree by turning to Jesus in faith and repentance; indeed, Paul expects that to happen at some point in the future.
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There is a definite order and logic to events laid out by Paul in Romans 11.
Israel’s unbelief brought salvation to the Gentiles through Christ’s crucifixion (Romans 11:11, 12, 15, 30).
When the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, it will provoke Jews to jealousy, resulting in the conversion.
The conversion of the Jews results in life from the dead – the return of Jesus and the resurrection. The Jews were first in the old covenant; they will last in the new covenant.
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How a woman dresses shows what team she plays for. Christian women should not dress like they are playing for Team Satan. They should not wear the jeresy of our rival. Their clothes should reveal who they are as daughters of God, dignified and chaste. Don’t advertise if you’re not selling.
Christian women must thread a needle. They need not dress in a frumpy or prairie muffin way. Neither should they dress like a harlot. To dress beautifully and modestly is a skill not a science – it’s not determined with a tape measure. It’s an art that takes wisdom. Women should see themselves as stewards of the beauty God has entrusted to them. They should dress in a way that is feminine and attractive, but within appropriate parameters that preserve mystery.
Since immodest dress is so common in our society, men must be on their guard. Women are responsible to be modest. But men are responsible for their own thought lives, and cannot blame women for struggles with lust. God has assigned each of the sexes a set of responsibilities, and neither sex can blame the other or use the other sex’s failings as an excuse for their own.
The problem is our sin patterns as men and women are complementary. Women want to be lusted after; men want to lust. Women want to provoke male attention; men want to give them that attention. It’s a downward spiral.
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“Sire, it belongs to the church of God, in the name of which I address you, to suffer blows, not to strike them. At the same time, let it be your pleasure to remember that the church is an anvil that has worn out many a hammer.”
— Theodore Beza
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“When the ancient classical world, which seemed so brilliant and all conquering, ran out of spiritual fuel and turned to the church as the one society that could hold a disintegrating world together, should the church have refused the appeal and washed its hands of responsibility for the political order? It could not do so if it was to be faithful to its origins in Israel and in the ministry of Jesus. It is easy to see with hindsight how quickly the church fell into the temptations of worldly power. It is easy to point as monks and hermits, prophets and reformers in all ensuing centuries have continued to point to the glaring contradiction between the Jesus of the Gospels and his followers occupying the seats of power and wealth. And yet we have to ask, would God’s purpose as it has been revealed in scripture have been better served if the church had refused all political responsibility, if there had never been a Christian Europe, if all the churches for the past 2,000 years had lived as tolerated or persecuted minorities like Arminian, Assyrian and Coptic Christians? I find it hard to think so.
From the 18th century onward, Europe turned away from the Christian vision of man and his world, accepted a radically different vision for its public life, and relegated the Christian vision to the status of a permitted option for the private sector. You can have Christian beliefs in your head, but don’t try to live them out publicly. He says that for the modern church to accept this status is to do exactly what the early church refused to do and what the Bible forbids us to do. It is in effect to deny the lordship of Christ or the kingship of Christ over all of life, public and private. It is to deny that Christ is simply and finally the truth by which all other claims to truth are to be tested. It is to abandon its calling.”
— Leslie Newbigin
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“I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.”
— G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World?
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An old X post:
Tocqueville once said America had the best women in the world. No doubt, he was right:
“As for me, I shall not hesitate to say it: although in the United States the woman scarcely leaves the domestic circle and is in certain respects very dependent within it, nowhere does her position seem higher to me; and now that I approach the end of this book where I have shown so many considerable things done by Americans, if one asked me to what do I think one must principally attribute the singular prosperity and growing force of this people, I would answer that it is to the superiority of its women.”
The decline of our nation can be told in the story of the decline of our women. The current state of the young American woman is sad indeed (though thankfully there are many virtuous exceptions to what Rachel Wilson reports below):
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America needs to repent of sin and believe the gospel.
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“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace; and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.”
— Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine was a scoundrel and the wrong kind of revolutionary, but he got this right. Fathers should not burden their children with battles they should have fought themselves.
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Jesus’ message, “Repent or perish,” applies to nations as much as individuals.
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I believe America was founded as a Christian nation and we can only solve our problems by returning to Christian faith.
But even if you think America was not founded as a Christian nation, it remains true we can only solve our problems by turning to Christ.
However we got into this mess, Christ is the only way out. Turn to Christ. Repent and believe.
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So much Reformed preaching today has a to say about Jesus’ active obedience, but says very little about how Christians can and must live actively obedient lives.
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“The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you’re not careful it’s too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth.”
— Norm Macdonald
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“Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived.”
–Ben Sasse
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The lawlessness and violence we see from the left in places like Minneapolis has many causes, but one of them is that the civil government has failed to do its job of being a terror to evil doers (Romans 13).
The left will continue to do whatever it can get away with. Until they are stopped — until there are arrests, convictions, and punishments — the chaos will continue.
But the problem of civil injustice is much bigger. Our magistrates abandoned God’s justice for the civil realm a long time ago. To give just one example: God makes it very clear that murderers are to be executed (Genesis 9, Numbers 35). In America, we average about 20,000 murders a year and only about 20 executions. And when we do have an execution, it is usually many years after the fact, which is also an injustice (Ecclesiastes 8:11).
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“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”
— Adam Smith
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Taking responsibility means saying “My biggest problem is me.”
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The invasion of Cities Church in Minneapolis has raised questions about the 1A.
Don Lemon said they had a 1A right to enter the church and protest. But actually he has it backwards. The protestors violated the 1A rights of the church. The protestors violated the worshippers free exercise of religion and their right to peaceably assemble. They had no right to do what they did, legally or otherwise.
The 1A does not give you the right to invade and interrupt someone’s wedding, or a play, or an opera, or an athletic event, or a classroom, or a worship service. Free speech is not autonomous, “anything goes” speech. All the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights are part of a system of ordered liberty. Law and liberty are not at odds; they presuppose and reinforce one another. There are rules regarding what constitutes free speech and the protestors violated them. They had no more right to interrupt that worship service than they have the right to go into a crowded movie theater and yell “fire!”
If there is any justice left in this land, the protestors will be arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed. And hopefully leftists will learn a lesson in civics from the whole episode – though it is doubtful they are teachable at this point.
ADDENDUM: Laws like the FACE Act are specifications and applications of 1A, and operate within its framework. Otherwise, they’d be struck down in court.
I’m not saying the FACE Act is a good and faithful application of the 1A – just that it is supposed to function with the framework set up by 1A.
Lemon wasn’t wrong to invoke 1A; he just got the situation reversed.
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The most amazing thing to me about the protestors who invaded Cities Church is that no one got shot. I don’t know what their security policy is, but in many churches in America, the protestors would have been shot dead almost immediately — and understandably so, since it would have been impossible to know if the protestors were armed and church shootings are not unheard of.
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An old X post:
Reality remains undefeated. When you fight the way God made the world, you lose 100% of the time.
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“It is certainly the duty of a Christian man to ascend higher than merely to seek and secure the salvation of his own soul . . . If we wish to belong to Christ, let no man be anything for himself. But let us all be whatever we are for each other.”
— John Calvin
(This combination of Calvin quotations was on the masthead of our website for many years. I still think these two statements from Calvin are a wonderful summation of many important truths.)
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Risk is an inevitable part of every man’s life. You can’t complete a pass you don’t throw. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Cast your bread upon the waters…and see what return the Lord gives you (Ecclesiastes 11, Matthew 25).
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Risk-taking done right is a form of wisdom (cf. Ecclesiastes 11:1), and a distinctively masculine one. (Women may also need to take wise risks, but women are naturally much more risk-averse than men, as they should be.) Men are the risk-takers of the human race. Perhaps you’ve seen those “Why Women Live Longer Than Men” videos which show men doing some crazy stunts that women would never undertake.
God never takes any risks, obviously, because he is sovereign. But as creatures, risk is involved in a great deal of what we are called to do. Men are naturally inclined to take risks – testosterone does that to us – but we need to be governed by wisdom in our risk-taking. Risk is built into manhood but not every risk is manly. Some risk-taking is just dumb. Young men, in particular, often take risks just for the thrill of it, to get the adrenaline rush.
Wise men will avoid the pitfalls of safetyism on the one hand, and the pitfalls of recklessness on the other. But sometimes you have to burn the boats. There are some high risk things men must do because they are necessary. But it’s also good to live another day, so, again, we need to know what risks are worth taking.
A wise man will engage in risks aimed at a worthwhile return. In the parable in Matthew 25:14ff, the servant who buries his talent because he is so afraid of risking it, is condemned. He played it safe and so he lost even what he had. Those who took risks to increase their talents are rewarded. Risk is necessary to actualize potential. Risk-taking is not only related to wisdom; it is also related to courage.
Wisdom is largely about risk management. Most successful men got to where they are because they took calculated risks.
Marriage is risky, especially for men in today’s world, when family courts incentivize women to divorce the moment they get unhappy. But those risks can be mitigated by wisely vetting a potential wife. G. K. Chesterton said, “There is no such thing as a prudent marriage” – that is, a risk-free marriage. But, of course, not getting married is risky too – even riskier in most ways. Many young people do not want to marry today because they have been trained to be too risk-averse. But marriage is definitely worth the risk if entered into with wisdom. In marriage, you’re betting on each other – so find someone worth the gamble.
Further, bringing children into a fallen world is risky on many levels – but a risk worth taking, and a risk that can be minimized by diligently raising children in covenant faithfulness.
All forms of dominion require risk-taking. Sometimes we take risks ourselves; sometimes others take a risk on us. Many successful older men got to where they are because when they were younger, someone took a gamble on them and hired them despite lacking a proven track record. Perhaps they will return the favor and find a young man to bet on — it’s one of the best things the older generation can do to help the younger generation.
I know I only got to where I am because when I was much younger, older men took a gamble on me – multiple times. I’d like to think they’re pleased with the results and that they think their bets paid off.
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It is essential to your own future that you shall learn the history of the past truly.
-– Robert Lewis Dabney
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At the last day, there will only be two categories of people: the saved and the lost, the elect and the reprobate. But in history there are three categories of people: the saved, the non-saved covenant member, and the unsaved. The non-saved covenant member really is in covenant with God; he really does receive a form of mercy and blessing; he may even have faith, albeit a temporary faith. But he does not persevere in what he has received and his apostasy is eventually manifest. The Bible teaches “three category Calvinism,” not “two category Calvinism.”
(Obviously, we could add a fourth category of people — the unsaved who will be saved — but I’m giving a snapshot.)
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The Bible condemns judges who accept bribes. But by analogy voters who accept bribes are condemned as well. If you vote for politicians who have bribed you with the promise of “free stuff,” you need to repent.
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“I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.”
–Robert E. Lee
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“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
–Robert E. Lee
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“Never do a wrong thing to make a friend–or to keep one.”
–Robert E. Lee
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No doubt that there were many racial sins committed in American society during the Jim Crow era. But whatever good things the civil rights movement may accomplished in its day, it’s fundamental purpose was to make America communist. It has not quite succeeded, but it certainly hasn’t failed.
Much of the civil rights legislation needs to be repealed and replaced with free association protections and laws that respect God’s design for human life, especially marriage/family life. Forcing integration by government coercion was never the way to go. It would have been much better to allow it to happen organically by free choice.
The civil right industry has now given us hyper-feminism, wokeness, Obergefell, transgenderism, DEI, and many other perversions. It created a rolling revolution that will ultimately steamroll everything worthwhile in our civilization unless stopped. “Civil rights” is an acid that will eat through everything that matters if we allow it.
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I’ve liked all of Chad O. Jackson’s work on MLK and the civil rights movement (or what he calls the civil rights industry).
In the podcast below, he makes a great point about the rise of fatherlessness and the breakdown of the black family. He points out the liberals blame systemic racism. Conservatives blame LBJ’s Great Society and the welfare state.
Jackson leans towards the conservative explanation (as do I) but adds an important wrinkle. Both sides valorize MLK. But MLK, through his personal example and by advocating socialist policies as the key to black liberation, contributed to the destruction of black family life.
Jackson contrasts MLK’s statist approach with that of Booker T. Washington’s “Cast Down Your Bucket” approach and a black preacher named Joseph H. Jackson who refused to allow blacks to use political/economic conditions as an excuse and called on men to be men. It would be hard work, not picketing, that would elevate the black race.
As Jackson points out on the podcast, the civil rights industry turned blacks from a trying race into a crying race.
This is also a very good discussion on how MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech sparked a rolling revolution for justice that can never end. MLK called for justice, but that justice in MLK’s sense meant a Marxist version of equality. “We have still not arrived” became the mantra after that speech – and we haven’t arrived because we can never arrive at an impossible goal.
While we are on the topic, this interview with Tucker Carlson and Vince Ellison is one of the best I’ve ever heard:
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The Bible has its own perspective on history. It tells the true story of the world.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones was once preaching a sermon on the prophecies of Daniel and pointed out that “the man the world calls Alexander the Great, the Bible calls a he-goat.” The Bible has its cast of characters it regards as great — and Alexander doesn’t make the cut because God does not define greatness the same way our historians do. Daniel recognizes the he-goat had great power, but ultimately the only role he played that really matters is helping to set the stage for the arrival of God’s promised Messiah.
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Charlie Kirk vs. Candace Owens on anti-Semitism:
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I rarely tell this story for obvious reasons, but it does need to be told:
I once knew a man a good bit older than me who had been in a troubled, rocky marriage. He was not leading or loving her well and she was a rebellious, reviling wife. He realized he was responsible for the mess so he began to work on himself. He leveled up in his career. He started doing more at home to lead her. He started trying to take her on dates again — even though she made it unpleasant most of the time. But even after all his efforts to change, she was still hostile, disrespectful, withdrawn, anrgy, and mean. They got into an argument one day — one of their worst. He finally told her, “If you cannot learn to respect me and follow my leadership, I will beat you to within an inch of your life. I won’t kill you, but I will hurt you.” She said, “I’ll call the cops. You’ll go to jail.” He said, “I know. But I’d rather be in jail than live with this. I’ve got a lifetime sentence either way.” She was sweet and submissive after that.
I’m certainly not recommending this. But it’s an interesting story. I never asked if his threat was a bluff…I’m guessing it was.
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The elephant in the room is feminism — rebellious women. Feminism has been more destructive than a nuclear bomb. Feminism is a form of civilizational genocide. It leads to collapsing marriage rates and birth rates. While young men have not changed their political dispositions much over the last generation, women have — they have been radicalized in a progressive direction. They don’t want to be wives and mothers — and many of them are not fit to be wives and mothers. Women are disproportionately hurting society. Wokeness is just feminism in public life and the workforce. Feminist women drive so much that’s wrong with our culture — they vote for socialists and Marxists, the are empathetic towards criminals like illegal aliens (a misplaced maternal instinct), women who teach in public schools are the main ones pushing all kinds of anti-American and anti-white and pro-LGBTQ garbage on children, women are usually behind transing kids and promoting Drag Queen story hour and keeping sexually explicit books in the kids’ sections of public libraries, women are far more in favor of abortion than men, women want to defund police (while also complaining they are unsafe), women oppose free speech, women have ruined academic integrity at universities because they prioritize feelings over truth, women judges frequently refuse to abide by the rule of law, etc. Feminists pushed for no-fault divorce and remade family courts to serve their interests. And so on. All of this is well documented.
A huge number of women, especially young white liberal women, are miserable and mentally ill. They have no emotional self-control. They hate men. They see marriage as oppressive. They still crave male attention and will often do anything to get it — including dressing immodestly and posting suggestive pictures on social media. Western women have gone crazy. Women are a huge problem — they are destroying civilization. Obviously, many men promote these same things — but it is disproportionately women.
Women have gone feral. They need to be re-domesticated. The question is: How can this be done?
Andrew Wilson has pointed out that men have the power to break women if they want to. Women can only do things men allow them to do. If men decided to, say, take away women’s voting rights, women could not stop them. All women’s right comes from men. Of course, the reverse is not true — women could never take away men’s rights. That’s just a physical reality. The patriarchy is real. Womenonly got away with making the kinds of changes they have made to politics, culture, academia, medicine, etc. because men tolerated it. If men wanted to stop it, they could. He describes his “force doctrine” here: https://youtube.com/shorts/hGVDgdspP9o?si=OAvarMwIfCoNwGDA.
But that’s not the best way forward, for obvious reasons. So what is?
In a troubled marriage, most of the time, if the man will sort himself out, his wife will fall in line. Men were built to lead, women were built to follow their leadership. So if a man gets his own life in order and starts leading and loving his wife, she will naturally fall into her proper role. But this does not always happen. Sometimes a man can be basically doing everything right and his wife will still rebel.
Apply this at a societal/civilizational level. If a generation of men gets recovers genuine masculinity, can expect that women will fall back in line? If men lead, work hard to protect and provide, will women want to go back home, be wives and mothers, etc.? Maybe. Hopefully. There’s no guarantee. But I think it’s our best shot.
This is our civilizational crisis. Without marriage and children, we have no future. It doesn’t matter what else we do, what other problems we solve, if we do not solve this one, it’s game over.
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What is good and bad other than personal preference?
Without God and his Word, preference is all there is. There must be a transcendent standard revealed by a personal God who has authority over us, who made us, and who loves us — or there is no such thing as morality.
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Birth rates are collapsing — and collapsing birth rates combined with mass immigration is radically changing the demographics of Western nations. We are below replacement levels. In 2025, white Americans had about 1.7 million babies. Over the last 4 years, about 6.8 million white babies have been born. That’s about 49% of all births in America — even though whites are about 62% of the population — so whites are trailing in birth rates. In terms of raw numbers, 20 million illegal immigrants came into America (that’s a conservative number), and the vast majority of whom are non-white. In other words, 20 million non-whites entered the nation during the same time period that whites had less than 7 million children of their own. The Great Replacement is real — given the birth rate data and the immigration data, it cannot be denied.
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On declining birth rates:
The children are our future. Without children, there is no future.
Why don’t people want to have children today? Some say it’s economy — everything is expensive, people cannot afford children. There is an element of truth in that, but it’s not the real issue. The reality is that people in far worse economic conditions have had more children for most of history. In addition, many nations (foreseeing the coming demographic disaster if their people do not start reproducing in higher numbers) have tried to financially incentivize people to have more children but with very little success.
People do not want to have children when they have no hope for the future and when they are selfish. Without hope, people become nihilists — life has no meaning, suffering in unbearable, and maintaining civilization seems pointless. Why bother with kids? Of course, hope is a worldivew issue. Some worldviews give hope, other do not. The loss of hope for the future in Western civilization can be correlated with the decline of Christian faith. As we have turned away from God, we have lost hope, and things that once were and always should be “natural” — like getting married and having children — become less common. In conservative Christian circles, birth rates remain relatively high because the Christian faith gives hope for the future.
Our culture is also full of selfish people. People live for themselves. People live for the moment, the here and now. Many people do not want to make sacrifices. Having children and raising them is hard work. Selfish people do not want to live for someone else — they want to live for themselves. Of course, selfish people are always miserable — and we see that misery all around us.
Mary Eberstadt has argued this it’s not “Religious people have children” but “Having children makes people religious.” Or, to put it another way, it’s not just that secular people refuse to have children, but not having children makes people more secular. I think there’s a lot of truth in what she argues — but it’s a kind of chicken-and-egg problem.
Solving this reproductive problem (and the marriage problem that underlies it) is absolutely necessary for civilization to survive.
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While I’ve been critical racial identity politics, maybe we need a male identity politics — men who would advocate for themselves as group. What if hiring practices favored men so a man could get a job that would support his family on one income, allowing his wife to stay home a nd raise the kids? What of men
Of course, we have a men’s rights movement and there are men’s rights advocates out there. But they are mostly invisible (unlike women’s activist groups, like NOW and Planned Parenthood). Men are not collectivists in the way women are. But if our public policy is going to support God’s creational design for the sexes rather than androgyny/egalitarianism, it might be necessary to have something that looks a lot like a men’s rights program.
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WCF 25.2 + WCF 28.1 = FV
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From an old X discussion of Dabney and racial segregation:
Would Robert L. Dabney repent of his views of blacks if he were alive today?
It’s important to understand that Dabney basically won. The church and society in the South were basically racially segregated. For nearly 100 years, the South did things Dabney’s way.
I would argue that some of the cruelty involved in segregation contributed to the horrific excesses of the civil rights movement. So, yes, he might have been willing to rethink the best way to handle racial relations after the war. Again, Dabney won – he got what he wanted in 1867. But I don’t think he’d be thrilled with the long term results. Pendulums tend to swing.
My question for those who think Dabney was right: How far do you want to go in enforcing strict racial segregation of church and society? Are you going to drive out all non-white pastors and elders in your denomination? Are you going to re-segregate sports teams? Are you going to prohibit people from buying and selling property to people they want to do business with, in order to maintain racial segregation throughout society? Are you going to police who sits at lunch counters? Are you going to put mixed race couples in jail or otherwise nullify their marriages? Are you going to make suffrage a matter of race? What would it take to satisfy the modern defender of Dabney?
ADDENDUM: Dabney did call for segregation in the church. He did not think a black man would ever meet the qualifications for church office in the Presbyterian church, but if it did happen in sufficient numbers, he wanted to send them out into their own presbytery/denomination.
ADDENDUM: People are more complicated than that. They are not either perfect or demons. Dabney can be a great man with a blind spot, even as other great men had their weaknesses mixed in with their greatness. But glossing over the failings of our forefathers does not honor their legacy, any more than magnifying their faults.
As far as the CREC is concerned, read Wilson on Dabney in Black and Tan – it’s a similar assessment to my own. Dabney was a brilliant and insightful Christian man whose flaws should not be allowed to overshadow his significant contributions. So you are allowed to continue loving Dabney even if you disagree with him on something.
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This post produced an interesting discussion back in April, 2025:
“Christian Nationalism and White Christian Nationalism are two different things.”
Some notes:
Whites had their own countries for centuries in Europe.
America and Korea have totally different histories. What they do there provides no guidance for what we should do here. Nations can choose to police their borders as they see fit.
This continent has been multiracial for a long, long time.
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There’s been a debate recently over why there are no evangelical elites. See this by Renn: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/the-problem-with-the-evangelical-elite
and https://firstthings.com/the-problem-with-the-evangelical-elite/
And this by Kruptos: https://americanreformer.org/2025/12/why-are-there-no-evangelical-elites/
I agree with a lot in all these essays. I especially appreciated Renn’s point that many evangelicals have prioritized the Great Commission over the Creation Mandate. Evangelicals thus tend to think of their own elites in terms of ecclesiastical leadership rather than cultural leadership — much less, thinking of the church herself as a cultural leader. Evangelicals lack the kind of structure and ecosystem that Roman Catholics have to provide patronage for rising leaders. We certainly need to be more culturally confident. Kruptos is right thay evangelicalism has a “low brow” reputation and an egalitarian problem. Evangelicals tend to be individualists who distrust institutions — so of course, they don’t build strong, elite institutions.
But let me add a little bit more.
Here’s my theory: Evangelical churches do not produce elites because evangelical pastors are not elite. Most evangelical pastors are lazy and preach to their people like the are children, with the same simple message of “how to get saved” again and again. There is no deep and broad application of the Bible to all of life (and rarely to social and political issues that would stir the souls of cultural elites). We do not produce excellent laymen because we have very mediocre pastors preaching shallow, immature messages.
While evangelicalism has a glorious heritage, stretching back to the Reformation, since the Second Great Awakening, it has been a dumbed down version of the Christian faith. The Reformed branch of evangelicalism is not exempt from this critique. It takes more than the 5 Points of Calvinism and justification by faith alone to build a culture of excellence. While the Reformational elite produced outstanding elites in the centuries after the Reformation (e.g., the London Royal Society for scientists was disproportionately Puritan), revivalism and anti-intellectualism infected American evangelicalism a long time ago.
Futher, evangelical worship is not elite. All too often, it takes its cues from pop culture. A semi-talented, most female praise team is up front leading an overly emotionalized form of worship that generates more heat than light. Chord progressions, rather than truth, are used to stir up “worshipful feelings.” That kind of worship is not ikely to cultivate elites in music and the arts. People who have the potential to be elite – who are smart enough and driven enough to reach the top of their fields – are generally turned off by this and go to church elsewhere (if they go at all).
Finally, obviously, evangelicals have not demanded excellence of their institutions. We lost the once elite institutions we had, and we have generally only created mediocre institutions to take their place. Wheaton was never a Harvard. Evangelicals generally aren’t willing to sacrifice, financially and otherwise, and do what it takes to build up an elite-producing set of institutions. So evangelicalism remains mired in ineffective mediocrity.
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“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
— attributed to Henry Ford
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Obamacare should be repealed. It was fraudulent and dishonest from the start.
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