If you really care for the poor and marginalized — let me rephrase that — if you really empathize with the poor and marginalized — in America, you will be in favor of closed borders and deportations because unlimited immigration hurts poor Americans the most.
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Sometimes war is the answer to some of the world’s problems. Sometimes war makes things even worse. Wisdom knows the difference.
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How can there a religious basis for giving unconditional support to a secular nation?
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Confession of sin is to your marriage what spring cleaning is to your house.
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On the war with Iran as a joint operation with Israel:
If you think Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth are “America first,” then you’re obligated to give a fair hearing to their case for the war with Iran. They have not articulated Christian Zionist reasons for the war. They have articulated a national security case for the war. I don’t know what the state of Iran’s nuclear program was, but I’m sure Iran was going to keep trying to get a nuke. Obviously, Israel did want us to engage in this military operation with them, and it’s not our job to fight their war. But it’s also possible our interests align with theirs enough to engage in it under an “America first” banner, not an “Israel first” banner. I’m still not fully convinced, but willing to be persuaded. Time will tell.
Trump is not Bush, Hegseth is not Runsfield, and no one is talking about regime change this time around. There is a legitimate on the ground presence in Iran that wanted to cast off the tyranny and this was indeed their chance. I hope and pray it works out that way.
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Love rejoices in the truth, empathy rejoices in raw emotion.
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When Paul says that in Christ, there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28), he is not negating natural, created distinctions between men and women. He is saying women can be saved and have the same righteous status in Christ that men have. The egalitarian appeal to this verse is completely misguided.
Men and women were ontologically equal before Christ came. They were equal under the law in most ways, eg, men could get no nearer to God then women, except for the priests. Ontological equality was not new and did not change in the new covenant. What changed was a new righteous status open to all men and all women in Christ.
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An irony in a time full of ironies: We now have “race realists” who do not believe Jews are real, whether ethically or genetically.
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A wife’s submission does not make her a doormat to be walked over by her husband. It’s more like being an assistant coach or a first mate. She is her husband’s confidant and chief advisor. She is his counselor and Lady Wisdom.
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It’s funny but also sad to see leftwing progressives shriek that Christian nationalism would be tyrannical when progressive regimes are guilty of creatingthe worst tyrannies is history.
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How can America wage a just war against Iran? Iran may have a speck in its eye but don’t we have a log in our eye? Is it possible America is morally worse, since we promote abortion and LGBTQ?
I won’t pretend to know God’s moral calculus for such things, and America’s sin really are great. But that does not mean our cause in Iran is itself unjust. Iran is plenty evil – including oppression and sexual perversion and worship of the demon Allah. The justness of the war has to be weighed on its own terms.
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How do we save our country?
It starts with recognizing who the Savior is, Jesus, and turning to him.
To put to another way, “we” can’t save our country at all. Christ alone saves.
We need political and cultural transformation, but those are going to be downstream from our religious transformation. That doesn’t mean waiting on revival. It does mean recognizing the gravity of our current situation, as a largely apostate nation with problems that are too big to be solved with politics alone.
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A lot of what gets called empathy today is really not empathy at all, but virtue signaling. It’s not about being good; it’s about wanting to look good by signaling agreement with positions held by our progressive cultural overlords. The leftwing empathizer is engaging in a self-justification project. “Look at how virtuous I am! I hold all the politically correct, socially accepted positions! I’m righteous!”
To put this another way, many people, especially on the left, boasting about their empathy are really engaging in stolen valor – or stolen virtue, to be more accurate. Their empathy does not actually produce any change in the real world. Most of it is what has been called “slacktivism” – social media activism.
But even if it were real empathy, it still comes up short. Empathy is a highly overrated virtue in our day.
Empathy can be good or bad, depending on what it is connected to and grounded in. But in our modern feelings-centric, hyper-therapeutic context, empathy is easily led astray. Such empathy doesn’t actually produce righteous action.
For example, most people who want open borders and no deportations of illegals would never actually take an illegal immigrant into their homes. They would never put their money where their mouth is. They’re not actually compassionate or generous. They don’t actually make sacrifices for the people they supposedly care so much about. They substitute feeling good for doing good. They substitute virtue signaling for virtue. They substitute culturally approved opinion for righteous action.
Empathy tends to give tunnel vision to the empathizer. You chose the one you will empathize with and everyone else gets screened out. The empathizer is wearing blinders to the totality of the situation. This is why there is so often collateral damage in the wake of empathy.
Consider abortion: Pro-abortionists chose to empathize with the pregnant woman; they ignore the well-being of the baby in the womb. Or, again, immigration: Anti-border advocates empathize with the illegal immigrant and ignore all the ways illegal immigration hurts their fellow citizens. Or consider transgenderism: Putting pronouns in your bio does nothing to deal with the damage to the gender confused, who often later regret the chemical castrations and genitalia mutilation.
This is why empathy so easily becomes suicidal – it’s like taking feel good pills while ignoring their deadly side effects. What makes it so terrible is that it leads the empathizer to feel virtuous when he is actually supporting vice. It’s the justification of wickedness. The empathizer is calling evil good and good evil. The empathizer feels good even though he is promoting evil.
All of this explains why empathy is inferior to love. The second greatest commandment is not “empathize with your neighbor” but “love your neighbor.” Love is guided by the law; empathy is guided by emotion. Love takes into account the big picture; empathy puts on blinders. Love can be tough and confrontational; empathy cannot inspire the empathizer to do anything difficult because the object of empathy must be coddled at all costs. Love rejoices in truth; empathy all too often sacrifices truth. Love produces righteous action; empathy easily gets stuck in feelings and never produces action at all.
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A few thoughts on the war (or should I say “military operation”?) with Iran:
- The prowess of the American military in Iran (and Venezuela) is impressive. Driving DEI out of the military was obviously the right thing to do, and I do not question our military might. Hegseth has proven his worth as Secretary of War; under his leadership the military is fully capable of doing what a military should do: blow things up and kill people. We have no peer when it comes to military capacity, especially from the air. Our military has unrivaled skill, expertise, and resources. That doesn’t mean we should undertake a land war in Asia, and it certainly doesn’t mean we should put our trust in princes, but it does mean we are far ahead of everyone else at the moment. The biggest problem we would have with any protracted war, in Iran or anywhere else, is that the American people would likely lack the united resolve it takes to support a victory. Winning a war takes more than resources – it takes the will to win. When it comes to brute military force, we do not live in a multipolar world; the world is still unipolar. The US doesn’t even need the aid of its allies to act when and where it wants. When it comes to the resolve of the American citizenry, however….I’m not so certain. Americans today put up with war because it does not interrupt daily life much. The moment it does, resolve will be tested, and in a nation as polarized as we are, that resolve will be hard to come by. To put it another way, militarily the world is unipolar; but that unipolar power is deeply polarized within. That doesn’t matter much at the moment, but it could later on.
- The justification for what we are doing is still not entirely clear to me, whether on “just war” grounds or “America first” grounds. Further, the justification needs to include a clear set of criteria for “mission accomplished,” and that is also lacking. I’m not doubting Trump will declare victory at some point – but I’d like to know right now what victory looks like. There are certainly differences between this engagement and others we have undertaken in the Middle East over the last 30+ years, and I am certainly in favor of a liberated Iran, all things being equal. I’m especially happy for Iranian Christians who have longed for it and are celebrating it. The on-the-ground presence of a force in Iran that wants regime change, and would seem to be relatively capable of it given some help, is distinct from other Middle Eastern wars in the recent past. This is not being undertaken as a foolish “nation building” exercise. But it also feels like this is a movie we’ve already seen and the ending was not that great. How do we know this will be different? How do we know this will reshape the Middle East for the better? How do we know this will be the war to end all wars in the Middle East rather than one more war in an unending stream of wars?
- That doesn’t mean what we are doing is automatically wrong. I realize our leaders cannot always make everything they are privy to public. But we have been lied into wars so many times that much of the American public is understandably skeptical (and I don’t just mean Democrats who are going to criticize Trump even if he comes up with a cure for cancer). The public rationales for what we are doing have not been impressive to this point. Yes, I know Trump has had Iran on his mind since the 1979 hostage crisis. I know they have been a bad actor and a state sponsor of terrorism. I know Christians in the region are rejoicing in this. But we still need a clearly stated rationale, better than what I’ve heard so far.
- As with other wars in the Middle East, it’ll probably be a while, maybe years, before we as the public know whether or not this action was wise. The proof will be in the results. Wisdom is justified by her children. Was this a good idea? I’ll let you know what I think in a couple years. I can say that because I am a citizen – but our leaders need to know FOR CERTAIN that this is a righteous and wise course of action RIGHT NOW. Do they? Or to put it another way: Do we trust our leaders to make wise and righteous decisions in these matters? Time will tell whether or not that trust is warranted in this case.
- While the US Constitutional system allows presidents to engage in limited military operations for the sake of national security without a Congressional declaration of war, we need to better define what this means. If the purpose of the operation is regime change, it seems that is an act of war and requires a Congressional declaration. It would be beneficial for Americans to hear Congressmen hash it out in debate. I have an implicit trust in men like Hegseth and Rubio, but the constitutional order needs to be maintained.
- Our biggest problems are not in the Middle East but right here at home. Iran is not an existential threat to the American way of life the way our domestic problems are. Our military gives us a hard external shell, but if our country is crumbling from within, projecting that global strength is of little value. We have so many problems at home, so much debt, so much division, so much dysfunction, it’s hard to understand how we have the bandwidth for these overseas operations. Things like “remaking the global world order” (eg, overtaking Iran in order to cut oil supplies to China and Russia) are unhelpful abstractions unless it can be explained how and why this kind of military engagement will serve the average American and be a good use of his tax dollars that could be spent elsewhere (or not collected at all). (Many of the same questions could reframed and asked of our ongoing and very expensive support towards Ukraine.)
- It makes no sense to fight Muslims over there while welcoming them in over here. If Islam is a problem there, it’s certainly a problem here. The influx of Muslims into Western nations since 9/11 is a deliberate act of civilizational suicide. Islam is not and never can be compatible with Western civilization. This just further exposes the incoherency of our ruling class (of which Trump must now be considered a part). If America has become ungovernable in many places because of mass immigration, a failing education system, welfare fraud, widespread drug and porn addiction, a struggling economy/job market, rejection of the rule of law and political violence on the left, and so on, what makes us think we can govern elsewhere? Global strength will never compensate for domestic weakness. Global victories ring hollow when domestic life is self-destructing. Is it just me, or is Trump getting more focused on global issues as he finds domestic problems harder to solve? If you can’t win home games, I guess you try to win road games? I don’t fault Trump for all of this; he can accomplish regime change in Iran easier than in LA or Minneapolis. I think Trump has accomplished many good things, and many of his good faith efforts at home have been frustrated by political rebellion. This is more just a lament over the situation we are in.
- Some like it, some don’t, but for now, Israel is our closest ally in the region. So it’s not surprising we’ve gotten entangled in a war they want us to fight. Perhaps our interests really do align with theirs and the military operation makes sense. But this is not the kind of thing most Trump voters wanted in ’16, ’20, or ’24. Trump was going to avoid spending American treasure and blood on this kind of thing so he could focus on making America great again. Our special relationship with Israel already threatened to divide the right; this military operation just makes the Israel issue even more controversial. I fully expect our stance towards Israel to change significantly within a generation – especially once most of the Boomer generation dies off, and with it most of dispensational Christian Zionism (an issue I have addressed elsewhere). Standing with Israel unconditionally has no biblical rationale. With pseudo-biblical props removed, can American support for Israel stand on prudential or pragmatic grounds? That’s the question that must be answered.
- No matter what justification is given for this, it comes down to two key questions: Is it justified, in the sense of being just? And is it worth the risks? The risk question is especially interesting. It seems to me we are risking our economy, especially as it is tied to oil flow, at a time when our economy is already fragile. That means Trump is risking the mid-terms and perhaps even the next presidential election. Is it worth the risk to American lives? What are the odds we are pressured to take in another round of middle eastern refugees after this is over? Etc. Of course, Trump might think what we are doing is low risk. But if Iran can be so easily defeated, can we really say they were a huge threat? And are the American people really expected to believe they were thisclose to having a nuclear weapon when we supposedly took out their nuclear program just a few months ago? In a nuclear age, the ethics of pre-emptive action certainly have to be re-thought, but to this point, there is very little evidence to back up the claims.
- I am not an isolationist, but I do wish we were more isolated. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans kept America out of a lot of global conflagrations for much of our history. Then we decided to adopt a policy of military adventurism, fighting wars in far flung places most Americans could not find on a map. If we put all of that effort into true energy independence and reshoring manufacturing capability, we could largely ignore much of the rest of the world. We could undertake the occasional justified humanitarian mission such as liberating persecuted Christians, but we would not have to get involved in constant regime change wars because regimes on the other side of the world would not impact us.
- Like it or not, peace through strength is a reality and wise people will recognize this. Whatever you think of the Ukraine/Russia conflict (which is really a proxy war between the US and Russia), Putin does not have to worry about the US trying to regime change Russia because he has nuclear weapons. Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and so is vulnerable. Honestly, the same is true of North Korea: They have nuclear weapons, so as horrific as their regime is, there will be no attempted regime change.
- I’m a pastor, not a foreign policy expert. I’m a generalist, not a specialist. But I do get asked my thoughts on matters like this, so I give my current thoughts here. Take it for what it’s worth.
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If egalitarianism were true, the Bible would have no distinct, sex-specific commands to men and women. Every command would be the same for both sexes and would apply the same way for both sexes. The very fact that Bible addresses husbands and wives with different commands utterly obliterates egalitarianism. The whole premise of egalitarianism is that men and women are the same. Sex-specific commands proves they are not the same. Egalitarians can engage in exegetical gymnastics all they want, but it’s a massive waste of time. The moment Paul (or any other inspired author) addresses husbands one way and wives another, egalitarianism is disproven.
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A husband doing kind things for his wife does not make him a simp. It’s means he loves her, as he should and as he is commanded to.
A wife doing kind things for her husband does not mean she is brainwashed into accepting patriarchal oppression. It just means she is a good wife, respecting and helping him, as she should and as she is commanded to.
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An old article in the natural and social patriarchy:
Patriarchalism is just the traditional view of men, women, and family life, grounded in Scripture and creation/nature. It is reflected with varying degrees of faithfulness across Western civilization. Patriarchy can refer to either the basic creational design God built into the world in the beginning, in which men are generally ordered towards leadership. Or it can refer to the system of cultural and legal principles and customs that arose out of that creational order. The patriarchy in the former sense cannot be smashed because it is just the way things are; male and female natures do not change as if they were only a social construct. Patriarchy in the latter sense can be perverted and twisted by sin into a kind of tyranny. Or it can be smashed as it largely has been in our day by our adoption of anti-biblical, anti-creational ideologies – but we do this to our own hurt as it means we end up living contrary to the way we were designed.
Complementarianism was an attempt on the part of conservative/traditionalist Christians to adapt the patriarchal order to the changes brought on to the modern world by the Industrial and Technological Revolutions, the democratization of society, the feminist movement, etc. Complementarianism has not proven to be all that useful as a term because some who use the label want to maintain more of the old patriarchal order, while others want to go as far as they can in accommodating the modern order, while still not contradicting explicit commands of Scripture (eg, no women pastors, per 1 Timothy 2). Thus, we now have to talk about thick and thin complementarians – thick comps believe the different roles of men and women are rooted in their different natures (much like patriarchalism), while thin comps would say men and women have different roles (to some degree) in family and church but are really quite androgynous/interchangeable in society at large. The female soldier or female police officer is a good test case for thick vs thin.
Because patriarchalists believe men and women have distinct natures, they can actually end up being significantly more rigid about roles than comps – certainly than thin comps. Patrarchalists believe the roles we are assigned are not arbitrary but fitting, given our natures. Patrarchalists would argue that nature and role go together in all of life; that is, our natures give rise to imperatives. For example, because men have a certain nature, they therefore ought to act, speak, dress, etc. in distinctively masculine ways and carry out masculine roles in all of life. Thin comps have a hard time explaining why men and women have different roles in any area — and this is is why thin comps are likely to slide into some form of egalitarianism or feminism over time. It is not a stable or coherent position because rules without reasons are never kept for long.
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The knock against liberalism is that it dissolves bonds – bonds of nature like family, and bonds of tradition/culture – thus leaving us all as detached, deracinated, supposedly autonomous individuals. In other words, liberalism inevitably leads to wokeness.
This charge certainly applies to all secularized forms of liberalism.
Rousseau said, “man is born free but is everywhere on chains.” For Rousseau, man is born autonomous, but natural and traditional/cultural bonds enslave him. This is the exact opposite of reality. For Rousseau reality itself is oppressive.
Ironically, for Rousseau, the sovereign individual necessitates a sovereign, totalitarian, bureaucratic, managerial state. Freeing humanity from “unchosen obligations (= nature) leads straight to tyranny. If man is fluid bundle of ever increasing, infinitely expanding rights, an omnipotent state is necessary to grant those rights.
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Fight back against liberalism. Call your mom.
(HT: Carl Benjamin)
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The best way to fight back against progressivism is to honor your father and mother.
Progressivism wants to start with the sovereign, detached individual. But starting with the deracinated individual leads to tyranny. It is an acid that disintegrates society. You cannot build a civilization out of detached, atomized individuals.
None of us is actually rootless. We all the product of community and are designed to live in community. Liberalism is thus unnatural.
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The best argument against modern liberalism? Your belly button.
Why? You belly button is a reminder that you began life connected to others. You are not a sovereign, autonomous, detached individual. Your very existence came in and through community. To be is to be related. You are not a free floating atom. You are a molecule with organic attachments to others who came before you, who exist alongside you, and who will come after you. You are not rootless. You are a branch on a tree. You are a seed planted in the soil of social relationships, privileges, and obligations. You cannot escape where and who you are from.
Modern, secularized liberalism wants to make the individual sovereign and autonomous, as Rousseau envisioned. Rousseau saw man as born free, then enslaved by the traditions and obligations imposed on him by society. These “unchosen obligations” are the problem.
But a person only comes into existence through the communion of his mother and father. We are connected to others from the moment of conception. The only kind of freedom that truly suits our nature is a structured freedom grounded in reality and ordered to proper ends.
Modern Rousseuean man is a fluid bundle of ever expanding “rights” – rights which, ironically, must be granted and maintained by a managerial, bureaucratic, supposedly neutral state. But it’s just a house of cards build on a foundation of sand. It’s all lies, all the way down. The irony of liberalism is that its radical individualism can only be maintained by radical totalitarianism.
Every egalitarian “rights” movement actually chips away at true liberty because it requires an ever-increasing state to make it work. This is true from feminism to socialism to LGBTQism. They are all unnatural and intrinsically statist. They create a rolling revolution that flattens civil society and ultimately destroys civilization itself.
Your belly button is proof you did not autonously consent to a social contract. Rather you were born into a covenant. You were born into a network of relationships. You are not autonomous but dependent, not self-made or self-defining, but made and defined by the wider community of which you are a part. The whole liberal project aims at dissolving these bonds so we can recreate our identity. This is why those who stand in Rousseau’s tradition can never be happy – they view really itself as oppressive.
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Children are constantly sacrificed, literally and figuratively, on the altar of feminism.
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It is hard for us to deny what God has written into our nature, what he has imprinted in our hearts and inscribed in our bodies, as men and women. Unnatural philosophies of life, like feminism and progressivism, always require massive amounts of propaganda and statist incentivizing to work.
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“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mark 6:3)
It make sense Jesus was a carpenter (or construction worker or craftsman) before beginning his public ministry.
As the eternal Word, Jesus is the one through whom the world was made as a house for God.
As the incarnate Word, he made houses for people. As God-man, he does at a micro level what he did as God at a macro level. What he did at the cosmic level as God he did in miniature as the God-man. The eternal Son of God was a homebuilder; the incarnate Son of God worked for several years as a homebuilder.
But we can go further with this. It’s as if the Son of God made the universe as a toy house to play with. But then in the incarnation, he made himself miniature so he could enter into that house and join his creatures within it. And now as God-man he rules over that house and invites us into the “family business” of ruling over it with him. God made the universe for us, as creatures made in his image, to dwell in. Then he joined us inside the house as one of us.
We burned the house to the ground, so to speak, by sinning. We vandalized and marred his beautiful house. In the incarnation, he entered into the house to repair it and rebuild it. At the last day, the whole creation will be a splendid palace for God and man to dwell in together for all eternity – and all because the God-man undertook the work of restoration and recreation. Yes, Jesus is a carpenter indeed.
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What is my politics? The politics that recover and preserve the best of Western civilization.
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It’s popular to criticize the nation-state of Israel today, but they do one thing very well: They are the only developed nation in the world with a fertility rate above replacement. Western nations should look into why because any nation with a long term below-replacement fertility rate is a nation that is going to be replaced. Low fertility rates is THE existential crisis in the West.
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One of the things that I believe attracts modern Dispensationalists/evangelicals to the nation-state of Israel is not just their (flawed) exegesis and eschatology, but the fact that Israel functions as a kind of substitute for Christendom. Dispensationalists do not believe in building Christendom because they have a pessimistic and short term view of the church’s future.* The church is a heavenly/spiritual people.
But man inescapably wants to build a civilization on earth because it’s what we were created to do (Genesis 1:26ff). It’s built into the creation mandate that defined human existence from the beginning. Their theology blocks them from investing in a Christian civil order so they invest in an Israeli one instead. They cannot support an American form of Christian nationalism so they turn to an Israeli nationalism instead. They do not believe in Christian civilization, so they support a Jewish civilization in its place. They default to an “Israel first” position, because they see in Israel a fulfillment of their deepest human aspirations, to have a people and a place, a civilization and a culture. Dispensationalists reduce the Great Commission from an evangelism+civilization building mission to mere evangelism. The civilization building piece gets relocated to the Jews. In the dispensational scheme, Jews get to have a fully Jewish civilization, but Christian’s never get to have a Christian civilization.
The Reformationsl answer to this, as indicated above, is Christendom. Our priority is building a Christian civilization where we are. We not only evangelize the nations, we disciple them, teaching them everything Jesus commanded (= the whole Bible).
*In saying this, I fully recognize that dispensationalists have often been faithful culture warriors. But they have done so in spite of their theology, not because of it.
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Emotions are real but they should not be your ruler.
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“History must be seen clearly and fairly: obstructive traditions arose not from men’s hatred or enslavement of women but from the natural division of labor that had developed over thousands of years during the agrarian period and that once immensely benefited and protected women, permitting them to remain at the hearth to care for helpless infants and children. Over the past century, it was laborsaving appliances, invented by men and spread by capitalism, that liberated women from daily drudgery.”
— Camille Paglia
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“If a woman wants a steak, she drives to the store in her car that men have invented and built, goes into the store (that men have built) with the money she has earned, and buys a steak. The steak was from a cow on a farm that most likely a man had run. Then a man slaughtered that cow and cut it up to ready it to be sold. Then a man drove the semi-truck to the store. Then she goes home and flips on a
switch to turn the lights and air conditioning on: all things that were invented and built by men. This is the same for almost everything else that she will use.
Our homes were built by men. The factories where our clothing is made was built by men and so were the machines that made the clothing. Men have made it so good for women that women think they don’t need them any longer. They can leave their homes all day, work for a boss, and get
a paycheck. They are strong, independent, and freed from needing a man in their lives. Most mothers are teaching their daughters that they don’t need men…
Yes, women have invented a few things but they are minuscule in comparison to what men have invented and built. Feminists don’t want to admit this. Many of them truly seem to despise men. They made the term “patriarch” to be a horrible word as if men as leaders of families and nations was a horrible thing. They think they can do better than men.
Well, I can tell you I am thankful I have a man, very, very thankful…I am thankful to have a man
who fixes things I can’t, carries things that are too heavy for me, and takes care of me in numerous ways. I can’t imagine ever thinking that I didn’t need a man…
Young women, feminism has sold you a load of lies…The best things in life are from the Lord. He created marriage and He calls children a blessing and gift from Him. He created MALE and female. He made us the weaker vessel so we would need and want a man. In past generations, women and children wouldn’t have been able to survive without men and if something were to happen to all of the men today, we wouldn’t survive for long either. They still do all of the heavy lifting that keeps cultures running smoothly.”
— Lori Alexander
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An X post from 8/9/25 on drugs and the demonic:
The word for “witchcraft” or “sorcery” in the NT is “pharmakeia” (eg, Galatians 5:20), from which we get words like “pharmacy.” Witchcraft is closely associated not just with spells, incantations, and curses, but with potions, brews, and drugs. The biblical category for the corner drug dealer is “witch” or “sorcerer.” You may not think of him as a witch or warlock but he is.
This does not mean everything we call a drug today is a form of witchcraft – but many drugs are. There are certain drugs that have always been associated with witchcraft – particularly psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs. These kinds of drugs are not just chemicals; they are gateways to the demonic realm. Their use is a form of witchcraft. These drugs do more than create biochemical changes in a person; they tap into the realm of spiritual darkness. The experience of “getting high” is actually “getting low” – it is a demonic experience. Drug users refer to their experiences as a “trip” – and drug use is a trip, straight into the underworld. If witchcraft didn’t work, if it didn’t actually beckon the demons, the Bible would not speak so harshly against it. An individual who dabbles with these kinds of drugs is messing with forces he does not and cannot understand; he is playing with demonic powers and opening himself up to their influence. These drugs are deeply deceptive – they often bring great experiences of euphoria and pleasure at first, but then things turn dark. A society that opens itself up to these kinds of drugs is opening hell’s gate.
The problem with the American “war on drugs” is that it was not theonomic enough. (It’s weird that some theonomists have taken a rather libertarian view of these drugs; I can only conclude they do not understand the full breadth of what witchcraft entails.) The law of Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” should have been applied to drug dealers long ago. Instead, we’ve played around with the problem and let it grow out of control. This is why the demonic has such a grip on American culture.
Interestingly, in Deuteronomy 18, witchcraft is prohibited in the same breath as child sacrifice. These are pagan practices that should be rejected by Christians and outlawed in Christian nations. And note that in American history, the rise of drug culture, the sexual revolution, and the legalization of abortion (Molech worship) all arise within a very short timeframe in the 1960s and 1970s. These things are always a package deal, and always a part of paganization. We must suppress and criminalize these forms of paganism as part of re-Christianizing our society.
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“Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the objects that are abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we prohibit and abolish women? The sun, moon, and stars have been worshipped. Shall we pluck them out of the sky?”
— Martin Luther
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A story about Martin Luther:
In a dream, Martin Luther found himself being attacked by Satan. The devil unrolled a long scroll containing a list of Luther’s sins, and held it before him. On reaching the end of the scroll Luther asked the devil, “Is that all?” “No,” came the reply, and a second scroll was thrust in front of him. Then, after a second came a third. But now the devil had no more. “You’ve forgotten something,” Luther exclaimed triumphantly. “Quickly write on each of them, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ God’s son cleanses us from all sins.’”
Taken from Occult, Bondage, and Deliverance, K. Koch, p. 10.
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Drunkenness is temporary insanity. You don’t have dominion over drink; drink has dominion over you. Drunkenness keeps us from fulfilling the dominion mandate.
The abuse of alcohol is sin and it is the gateway to all kinds of other sins.
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The Bible speaks of drunkards, not alcoholics. Alcoholism is treated as a disease today, but in the Bible drunkenness is a sin for which the person is responsible.
Therapeutic culture redefines and re-categorizes sins as a way of excusing them.
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Psalm 78 teaches everyone inherits a legacy and everyone leaves a legacy. The legacy you leave can be very different from the legacy you inherit.
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“Wherever there is animal worship, there will be human sacrifice.”
— Chesterton
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“In line with the French Revolution, we need to destroy fatherhood in order to prevent man from seeing God in the father.”
— Marie-George Buffet, former Secretary of the Communist Party in France
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Pluralism is the deadly flaw in modern liberalism. Pluralism requires society to give Christianity and Satanism equal time in the public square.
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The whole point of parenting is to work yourself out of a job.
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Covenant-based parenting provides an alternative to the revivalist, conversionist model. Thus, covenant nurture in the home should help parents guard against both anxiety (“Will my child ever become a believer?”) and presumption (“My child is already a covenant member, so my work is done”). Or, translated into more practical terms, a proper notion of the covenant helps parents steer clear between the shoals of both legalism and permissiveness.
The covenant contextualizes rules that parents make by situating those standards in an environment of grace. The covenant also provides a secure basis for mutual forgiveness and fellowship in day-to-day life within the home. Apart from this understanding of the covenant (including faith’s origins in infancy), children would have to be regarded as alien (pagan) invaders into a Christian home. Parents would have no reasonable basis for expecting their children to be able to measure up to Christian norms of conduct. If they are non-Christians, how can we impose a Christian morality on them? If our children do not possess the grace of God, what can we do to motivate them or enforce a Christian pattern of life upon them? All we have are rules, rules, and more rules – usually focused only on externals and applied with an ever shortening fuse. This is a recipe for disaster.
The covenant means that parents should be controlled by faith rather than fear as they undertake one of the greatest tasks on earth. Parents should trust in God’s covenant promises, not their own ability to build hedges around the home that will keep the world from reaching into their kids’ lives. Parents should trust in God’s covenant rather than their ability to manipulate their kids into obedience through setting a near-perfect example, or disciplining in just the right way every time it’s needed, or whatnot. Parents should trust God, not their own efforts. But having put their faith in God, they should make every effort. Faith works, after all. The works of faith may often be outwardly indistinguishable from the works of the flesh, but the difference is absolute. Faithful, promise-driven parenting is calm, confident, and consistent. Fleshly parenting is full of anxiety and fear. Because of the comfort found in the promises, parents should be diligent, but they should not put undue pressure on themselves. Any assurance they have that their children will walk with the Lord should spring from the gracious promises and work of God, not their masterful parenting skills. When they fail (as all parents do every day), they should call on God’s grace to overcome their weaknesses and fill in their gaps. They should ask forgiveness from their children if they have sinned against them and look to the cross for consolation.
Parents do not need to worry about the status of their covenant children. God has made a promise about their children that can be trusted. They may be assured that God is at work in their children’s lives and will continue that good work. They should begin with the end already in view. Their aim is to produce mature disciples of Christ. Like farmers, they are called upon to cultivate the seed of faith that has already been planted. They tend it and fertilize it through faithful application of the means of grace, by administering loving and prayerful discipline, and by creating an ethos of humility, charity, and hilarity in the home. God will take care of the growth.
When parents raise their children accordingly, they are going with the grain of God’s prior and ongoing work in the lives of their children. They are strengthening and reinforcing their children’s faith so they can live their whole lives according to the good beginning made in infancy, aligned with the covenant promises and the work of the Spirit even in the womb….
In all these ways, the covenant structures our approach to parenting from beginning to end. Of course, this directly impacts the way our children come to understand themselves as well. This doctrine keeps our children from the twin dangers of anxiety (“Does God love me?”) and antinomianism (“I have Christian parents, so I’m saved no matter how I live”). The child learns of God’s favor and care from his earliest days. Just as he can never remember being introduced to his earthly father, so it is with his Heavenly Father. He is given a foundation on which to build a life of faith and gratitude. However, at the same time, he learns that all the blessings bestowed upon him are a matter of sheer grace, and can be taken away if he refuses to abide by the terms of the covenant (faith and repentance). He learns to value his Christian background, rather than take it for granted. He learns he is a branch on the vine of Christ, but he must bear fruit. He learns both grace and obligation in terms of the covenant.
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Friedman on parenting:
The children who work through natural problems of maturing with the least amount of emotional or physical residue are those whose parents have made them least important to their own salvation.
Children rarely succeed in rising above the maturity level of their parents, and this principle applies to all mentoring, healing, or administrative relationships.
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Erika Komisar on parenting/parental authority:
While much is said about the stress of parenting, the reality is that it has always been challenging. It has always required sacrifice, sleepless nights, and the delicate balance of a parent’s needs with those of their children. The difference today is that many parents feel unequipped to handle these demands. Of course, some parents struggle with their mental health—many are fragile, anxious, or have endured traumas that have left them emotionally unprepared to lead. In my practice, I see multi-generational fragility—parents who were raised by caregivers who themselves struggled with the responsibilities of parenting. These parents, now raising children of their own, are more emotionally vulnerable, less resilient, and more easily overwhelmed by the trials of parenthood. When parents lose their way, they abdicate their leadership role, allowing children to take the reins. Some parents try to be their children’s peers—drinking and smoking with them, or by giving in to demands for smartphones at an early age out of fear of conflict. But this continues a cycle of children who have lost their way because parents have lost theirs.
Reversing the mental health crisis among children must begin with restoring parental authority. Parents must reclaim their authority, not by becoming authoritarian, but by providing the firm, loving structure children require for healthy development, and society must stop undermining their influence. Instead, we must support parents in their fundamental role as the primary caretakers and moral guides of their children. This means ending the outsourcing of parenting to schools, therapists, and social media influencers. It means recognizing that, while parenting is challenging, it is also one of the most meaningful and necessary roles in society. Only then can we raise a generation that is mentally strong, emotionally stable, and prepared to face the world with confidence.
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A lot of kids today get medicated to make them compliant. But what most kids need is not a better pill, but better parenting.
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From 9/18/24:
We live in an age of therapeutic parenting and therapeutic preaching, an age in which both parents and elders have rejected their own responsibility and authority to discipline those under their care.
Obviously the parental failures are related to the preaching failures. Neither preaching nor parenting is for the faint of heart.
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From 3/6/25:
Parental anxiety undermines the peace and joy of the home. Moms and dads with unresolved anxiety (especially anxiety about their children) will inevitably make the home a less enjoyable place to be. Anxiety is the enemy of good parenting. Thankfully, God gives Christian parents promises they can use as swords to slay parental anxiety.
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From 8/15/25:
Notes from an empty-nester:
I heard someone once say that you will figure out parenting right about the time your kids are grown. No doubt there is some truth in that, but I don’t think it’s quite right. With grown children, you do not cease being a parent; rather, parenting enters a new phase, with a new learning curve for both parents and children. Kids grow up; that is a fact of life and overly sentimental parents who wish they could “turn back the clock” or “freeze time” in the their children’s lives risk hurting their relationship with their kids and stunting their maturation. Parenting moves through phases (which roughly correspond to the priestly, kingly, and prophetic phases of Israel’s history in the Scriptures), and each phase brings new challenges for both mom and dad on the one hand and the kids on the other hand. Obviously, love is the core of each phase. But how love gets shown certainly shifts over time.
When the children are little, parenting is largely about control. Just as the law of Moses tightly regulated the lives of Israelites during the nation’s infancy (Gal. 3-4), so it is with our little ones. They need their parents to oversee and regulate every part of their lives. A foundation is being laid by establishing parental authority and discipline in the life of the child. As the kids get a little older, parenting becomes more about coaching. You are giving them more freedom — and more responsibility. You don’t just give rules — you give rationales. You are still guiding them as an authority figure, but the leash is considerably longer. You discipline them, but the focus is on teaching, discussing, explaining. Slowly, you lift your parental rules so the kids can make more and more of their own decisions. The balance between the parents’ authority and the child’s freedom increasingly tilts towards the child’s freedom until parental rules are largely relinquished. Of course, the hope and expectation is that the older child will have internalized the rules and learned self-control so he can govern himself. Finally, when the kids leave the nest, parenting becomes a matter of counseling. This is much more hands off than the coaching phase. As a parent, you must learn to treat your grown children as adults, even as peers. Because you are older and (presumably) wiser, you can still provide advice, direction, and guidance. But it is good to remember that unsolicited advice is rarely taken. In this final phase, you should be available to help your grown children in all kinds of ways (especially when grandkids come along), but you also have to give them space to live their own lives. You remain connected to them but you also realize that the time to try to control them or even coach them is past. It is now a relationship of trust and love, not rule and authority.
Children leaving home has impacted me in three ways.
First, you do not realize how fast it all goes until it is gone. Your kids are born and grown in the blink of an eye. Make the most of every moment you have while you have them at home. The old saying, “The days are long but the years are short” is experientially true. Every parent will have regrets, wishing they could have spent more time doing this or that with their kids while they were young. That is inevitable. But do all you can to minimize those regrets so long as the kids are under your roof.
Second, while the relationship between parenting and the results we see in the lives of our children is somewhat complex, there is no doubt that as our kids get older, we begin to see the fruit of our parental labors (good and bad) come to realization. In parenting, as in most every other area of life, we will reap what we have sown. For most parents of grown children, there is going to be a mix of regret as you see things you could have done better, and joy as you effects of the love, truth, and grace you have poured into your children come to fruition.
Third, children leaving home makes you realize just how fragile everything in life is. Everything hangs by a thread and nothing should be taken for granted. Happy homes, healthy kids, thriving marriages, safe travels, financial stability, persevering faithfulness — all these and so much more ultimately depend on the grace and mercy of our sovereign God. So trust him and cry out to him in prayer continually. The best parenting you will do, no matter the age of your kids, will be done on your knees before the throne of grace.
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From 12/9/24:
“I will be a God to you and to your children after you” – Genesis 17:7
All faithful Christian parenting begins with believing this promise.
From 3/7/25:
For many years, I have argued that Christian parenting is rooted in faith. The work we are called to do as parents is the work of faith. Christian parents will seek to build their household on the solid rock of God’s covenant promise, “I will be a God to you and to your household.” That promises contains everything parents need to raise godly children. It tells us the identity of our children and it tells us how we are to nurture them. Our children belong to God and raising them accordingly means discipling them.
My argument is basically twofold:
(1) by virtue of God’s covenant promise, our children are members of the people of God and should be treated accordingly, until and unless they prove otherwise, and
(2) parental works of discipline, discipleship, nurturing, instruction, etc. flow out of parental faith in the covenant promises.
This is what it means to parent by faith.
Someone might ask, “Are you saying we can know our children elect?” The truth is we can never know infallibly who is elect – even your spouse. But we go by what is available to us, namely, the covenant and other observable realities. And in that sense, yes, we should treat our children the same way we treat other members of the visible covenant community. We regard them as eternally elect until and unless they prove otherwise — and our expectation is that if we nurture them faithfully in the gospel, their faith will grow, mature, and persevere. Edward Gross wrote a great book on this entitled, “Will My Children Go to Heaven?”
When Jesus took infants into his arms and said “of such is the kingdom of God,” was that a guarantee of salvation for those children no matter what? No, the covenant can be taken from those who do not bear its fruit. Jesus was making a declaration of their covenant status. Our children, like all covenant members, have a responsibility to persevere in the faith. We should warn our children about the dangers of presumption as they get older. But parents who rest in the covenant promises will do the works of parental faith, and as they do so, they should have every expectation that God’s covenant will be fulfilled in the lives of their children. Covenant succession is God’s design.
From 11/21/24:
A lot of Presbyterian parents baptize their children on the basis of the covenant promise, “I will be a God to you and to your children” (Genesis 17:7). But the promise plays no functional role in their parenting after the baptism. That’s a mistake. The covenant promise is the framework and foundation of true Christian parenting.
From 1/9/26:
Raising covenant children well is a work of faith. Faith is the missing element in a lot of teaching on Christian parenting. All Christian parenting should build on the promises — starting with “I will be a God to you and to you children.”
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From 5/13/25:
It cannot be emphasized too much that faithful parenting is a matter of faith. God never says, “I’m going to claim you as my own and work with you, but I’m leaving your children out of it.” No!! God’s covenants always include the children of his people. Thus, faithful parenting begins with faith in the promises God has made concerning our children.
Parents cannot absolutely determine the way their children turn out; there are other factors and influences at work. Children will grow up to make their own life-shaping decisions and they must take responsibility for themselves. But throughout Scripture, we see a pattern that connects faithful/unfaithful parenting to faithfulness/unfaithfulness in the lives of their children. In a very real sense, parents should take responsibility for the children God has entrusted to them. But if they are parenting in faith, they will not try to pressure, manipulate, or control children; rather, they will seek to lovingly and joyfully win their children’s loyalty. In the long run, this heart loyalty is the most effective way to rear children who do what is right.
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From 1/22/25:
Technically, we should not talk about “parenting,” a word that only became common since the 1960s. Instead, we should talk about “mothering” and “fathering.” “Parenting” is too vague and androgynous – it makes it sound as if mothers and fathers are interchangeable. In reality, the contributions of mothers and fathers to the raising of children are very different – and children need both if they are to reach well-rounded maturity.
Now, if someone wants to use the word “parenting” to describe the combined sum total of what mothers and fathers distinctively do together, that’s fine, but it should be made clear.
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From 11/11/24:
Proper Christian parenting is rooted in paedobaptism. Thus, Christian parenting is not a matter of getting your child to become something he is not, but to live out what he’s already been given. You are not seeking to convert your child but disciple your child. You are not trying to get your child to find a new identity but become who they already are. You are not seeking to bring your child into the faith for the first time, but cultivate the faith they already possess.
The structure of the Christian life applies to covenant children as much as any other covenant member: Be who you are; live out what you’ve been given; remember who you are; become who you already are. The indicative grounds the imperative.
Romans 6 applies to covenant children. They have been united to Christ in their baptisms, so they are dead to sin and alive to righteousness. Thus, our high moral expectations for them arise out of the gospel. “You can’t talk to your mom like that – you’re baptized.” “You are united to Christ so I know you can be kinder to your sister.” We remind them they cannot go on living in sin because they belong to Jesus.
Further, when they do sin, we can look them in the eye and tell they are forgiven. We can tell them the Heavenly Father loves them, Jesus died for them, and the Spirit empowers them. We can remind of all that they have already been given as Christians. The gospel belongs to them. The Scriptures belong to them. The church is their family and the church’s history is their history. The Christian feast days like Christmas and Easter are are their celebrations. The Lord’s Prayer and the Lord’s Table are theirs. The psalter is their hymnbook. Everything is theirs in Christ.
The covenant promises are incredibly freeing for parents and children alike.
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From March 6, 2025:
Most of what gets called “gentle parenting” these days is really just negotiating with terrorists. It doesn’t work with radical Muslims, and it won’t work with 2 year olds either.
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Christian nationalism is about means and ends. The end is a nation that is culturally and politically Christian, informed by the Bible and submissive to King Jesus, such that the civil government promotes the true religion in its sphere. Since this is a God-ordained end, we know that God has also supplied the means to this end, which includes prayer and preaching, but also political activism and the lawful pursuit of political power.
One thing I think Wolfe gets right is that many Reformed Christians are fine with the idea of a Christian nation, but oppose the use of the means it would take to get there. They don’t want Christians to look power hungry and they don’t want to offend other groups — liberal women, Jews, Muslims, progressive elites, etc. In other words, you can want Christian nationalism, but you cannot act to create it. It’s fine to be a theoretical Christian nationalist, but not a practical one.
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In 1 Peter 3, Peter tells husbands to live with their wives in understanding. A husband is to study his wife and know her deeply. A lot of men are high school dropouts when it comes to their wives when they should be getting phDs.
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One of the saddest things in the world is to see someone surrounded by wisdom who still chooses folly.
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“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
The reference to “posterity” in the preamble to the Constitution makes abortion unconstitutional. The Constitution extends its benefits to posterity, which obviously includes the unborn.
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MGTOW men who are afraid to get married are really afraid of women.
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Solving the birth rate crisis isn’t that hard. Studies show that when men get raises, it leads to more children. When women get raises it leads to fewer children. This is an obvious natural truth: Men are designed to be providers for the families. When women make a lot of money, they end up prioritizing career over family. Pay the men better, get more kids, and civilization survives.
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In marriage, the husband is often tempted to prioritize his work over his wife. The wife is tempted to prioritize the children over her husband.
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The most important word the Bible uses for marriage is “one.”
The two become one.
One last name.
One bank account.
One faith.
One Lord.
One life.
One bed.
One flesh.
Don’t act like one when you’re still two, and don’t act like two when you have become one.
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If you criticize Islam as a false and dark religion, you’re accused of being an Islamophobic shill for Israel. If you criticize the policies of the nation of Israel or Jewish influence on America, you’re called an anti-Semite.
But what happens if you criticize Islam and Israel?
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Other than motherhood, which is the most important job in the world, most of the jobs women do in the market place are just not that important. Maybe teaching and nursing are exceptions. But outside of that, what? We don’t need HR departments and would be better off without them. We don’t need gender studies professors, and would definitely be better off without them. Many traditionally masculine professions have been made much worse by women entering them. Most jobs filled by women today could easily be done by men if went home to raise their kids. Or they are not essential.
A woman is irreplaceable at home. She is easily replaceable most everywhere else.
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“Feminism has influenced the church so much today that many “conservative” churches do not really affirm the husband’s authority over his wife. They even side with unsubmissive wives who are rebelling against their husbands (and God). Yet as Proverbs 17:15 says, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD.”
What the Bible and Reformed theologians historically understood to be proper and legitimate male rule and leadership, many pastors and elders today would define as “abuse.” Sadly, such men are practical egalitarians…
Contrast the language of Strickland and her followers with older Reformed theologians, such William Perkins, who said the wife is “subject to her husband” and that she “yields obedience unto him.” Her duties “are principally two,” the first being “to submit herself to her husband, and to acknowledge and reverence him as her head in all things.” The wife’s second duty is “to be obedient unto her husband in all things; that is, wholly to depend upon him, both in judgement and will.” Perkins said, “Contrary to these duties, are the sins of wives: to be proud, to be unwilling to bear the authority of their husbands, to chide and brawl with bitterness, to forsake their houses, etc.” Such theologians of old are much better guides for male headship and wifely submission, and they provide better principles for when both husband and wife commit sin regarding their respective duties.”
— Zach Garris
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Abuse is obviously real. It does happen. It’s evil. When it happens, authorities in church and state should be involved.
But as with so many other things, our culture abuses the category of abuse. Just like terms such as racism, sexism, and anti-semitism have become almost useless in many contexts because they’re thrown around so carelessly, so it is with abuse. Abuse is real; abuse inflation is real too.
This is one of the flaws in therapy culture. Abuse inflation is rampant, especially among women, who will often accuse a decent husband who won’t give her her way of being “abusive.”
Wise women know this is a problem, and are willing to admit it’s an issue, especially with modern wives. Foolish women will just say pointing this reality out is proof abuse is being hidden.
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One of the biggest sins a wife can commit is putting her children before her husband. But she is not one flesh with her children – she is one flesh with her husband. The children came from her flesh but it’s not a one flesh relationship. The children will eventually grow up and leave. Then what?
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Through repentance, you can have a brand new marriage with the same old spouse.
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The fifth commandment teaches “honor your father and mother.” Therapy culture teaches “blame your father and mother.”
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“When I was in Washington, very seldom did I have individuals coming to lobby me asking for liberty, but I frequently had them coming asking for things. The worst group of people to lobby me for largesse were business people. The Chamber of Commerce came. Why aren’t you voting for highway funds? Why don’t you vote for port funds?
Why won’t you do this? Why won’t you do that?
The larger the business, usually the closer they were aligned with government. Those who were looking for Export-Import Bank loans and subsidies were always involved.
Today we have a real struggle, and it’s occurring because the pie is getting smaller. Productivity is down; the currency isn’t working; there are international conflicts. There is a struggle now to have a one-world government. But the leeches are very concerned that they’re not going to get a check. The producers are waking up.”
— Ron Paul in 1992
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“During the period between World Wars I and Il, the Socialist Internationale made enormous gains. It was not generally realized that socialism was a single, widespread international movement, because its leaders in various countries used different labels. Changing labels is a socialist skill.
For instance, the Italian editor of a socialist newspaper, Benito Mussolini, called himself a fascist, after the old Italian word for fasces, bundled rods that served as a symbol of authority in ancient Rome. He created a socialist system that maintained the facade of capitalism and its inequality of income, its titular ownership of property, but where all real authority was held by the government.
It’s ironic to reflect that the term fascist today is used by socialists who call themselves liberals or moderates, as a pejorative against conservatives, when fascism, as both a theory and a practice, comes directly from socialism.”
— Otto Scott
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“We are, therefore, controlled to a far greater extent than is admitted. We are not free. Our exercise of free speech is drastically limited-more limited today than at any time in our national history. We have more taboos, more subjects and groups that are sacrosanct from criticism than our forbears would have believed possible.
We have fewer rights of property than ever before, because even after we pay off our mortgages, we must pay taxes to keep those houses from being confiscated. We are, in that respect, in the same position as the peasants of a bygone Europe living under feudal overlords.
We are taxed without real representation because not only Congress, but governmental agencies have the power to tax us, in the name of regulations. These agencies comprise a fourth branch of government, not created by our Constitution, but by Congress with the connivance of our politicized federal judiciary.
Four centuries ago, John Locke wrote about what he called “the delegation of powers.” His immediate example was Charles I, who had sent his agents around the realm collecting money from the rich so he could rule without the consent of Commons. Locke argued that no official had the right to delegate the powers of his office to anyone else. One king at a time, he argued, was enough for the realm.”
— Otto Scott, in 1992
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“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any part of the foreign world…. Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”
— George Washington on American foreign policy
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“That grief is shared now to some degree by many Americans. Freedom is waning: Tyranny is increasing. Not only is statist, centralist power in-creasing, but it is becoming more and more immoral, more and more evil. I believe, however, that the temper of the 1990s will be an increasing hunger for a return to moral order. Because man is, in the Biblical perspective, a fallen creature, law is seen as basic to society and freedom. The very first German law book in history, the Saxonspiegel from around 1220, declared that God is Himself law, and therefore law is dear to Him. They were referring, of course, to God’s law. But it’s against this that our U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, barring this year any reference in the courts to the Bible’s requirement of capital punishment because any such reference introduces an outside authority, God, above and beyond the state and its courts.
This sums up the problem tellingly. For humanism the only source of order and law can be man and the state. But man is fallen and immoral. The state reflects man’s nature in its corruption. The United States as a moral force is thus a spent force. And its renewal is an urgent necessity.”
— Rushdoony
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The 1992 US Taxpayers Party platform was prescient. I wrote in their candidate, Howard Phillips, for President in that year’s election. Here’s what the party said about foreign policy:
“The only constitutional purpose and basis of foreign policy is to serve the best interests of the nation. It is not to be the world’s policeman or play the world’s Santa Claus. We pledge our allegiance to the American Republic. We say “No!” to any so-called new world order or one-world government. Not one whit of American autonomy may be given up to any international organization or group of nations.
We oppose entangling foreign alliances. The United States should withdraw from NATO and bring our armed forces home from Europe as well as from Japan and Korea. We should review all existing treaties to determine which if any are beyond Constitutional limits; those which are should be rescinded.
The United states must not enter into agreements which would have an adverse impact on the security and safety of this nation. We should immediately halt all economic sanctions and embargoes against the Republic of South Africa.
The U.S. Taxpayers Party calls on the United States to withdraw from the United Nations and to encourage the UN to move out of the United States.
We believe that the United States should withdraw from all international monetary and financial institutions and agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, etc.”
Here’s the party platform on foreign aid:
“Ever since World War II, the United States has provided military and non-military aid to more than 100 nations. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured down that bottomless pit-with little evident benefit to the safety and security of the American people. Not only have we given aid to our “friends,” but to “neutrals” by means of which aid we hoped to buy their “friendship.” Finally, we are now committing ourselves to send the taxpayers’ dollars to those who have been our enemies for years. This must stop!
The Congress and the President have a duty to provide for the defense of this country, but the American people have no similar duty to provide tax dollars for the defense of any foreign nation.
Further, the U.S. government has no right, let alone a duty, to tax the American people to provide aid of any kind to foreign governments.
Therefore the U.S. Taxpayers Party will:
- Terminate all programs of foreign aid, whether military or non-military, to any other government.
- Dismantle the Agency for International Development within the Department of State.
- Prevent any dollar of the U.S. taxpayers’ money from being spent on aid to the former Soviet Union.”
Here’s the party platform on immigration:
“Each year some 400,000 legal immigrants and another 300,000 illegals enter the United States. These immigrants, including illegal aliens, have been made eligible for various kinds of public assistance, including housing, education, and social Security, and legal services, while paying few if any taxes. This unconstitutional raid in the Federal Treasury is having a severe and adverse impact on our economy, increasing the cost of government at Federal and local levels, adding to the tax burden and stressing the fabric of society.
The U.S. Taxpayers Party demands that the Federal government restore immigration policies based on the practice that potential immigrants will be disqualified from admission to the U.S. if, on grounds of health,
criminality, morals, or financial dependency, they would impose an improper burden on persons already resident in the United States.
We oppose bilingual ballots. We insist that those who wish to take part in the electoral process and governance of this nation should be required to read and comprehend basic English.
We insist that each immigrant who is admitted must have a sponsor who is legally, morally, and financially obliged to bear full responsibility for the economic independence of the immigrant lest the burden be unfairly shifted to other taxpayers.
We also insist that those groups and private agencies which request the admission of immigrants to the U.S. as political prisoners or economic hardship cases be required to legally commit themselves to providing
housing and sustenance for such immigrants and to post appropriate bonds to seal such covenants.
We support the strengthening of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for the proper screening of immigrants, the apprehending and deportation of illegal aliens, and the protection of our borders.
We oppose the provision of welfare and other taxpayer supported benefits to illegal aliens and reject the practice of bestowing U.S. citizenship on children born to illegal alien parents while in this country.”
Here is the party platform on drugs:
“The U.S. Taxpayers Party will uphold the right of states and localities to restrict access to drugs and to enforce such restrictions in appropriate cases with application of the death penalty. We support legislation to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States from foreign sources. As a matter of self-defense, retaliatory policies, including embargoes, sanctions, and tariffs, should be considered.
At the same time, we will take care to prevent violations of the constitutional and civil rights of American citizens. Arbitrary searches and seizures must be prohibited and the presumption of innocence must be preserved.”
Here is the party platform on Education:
“All education is inherently religious, in the sense that all teaching is related to basic assumptions about the nature of God and man. God has invested parents with the responsibility for the nurture and training of the children He has entrusted to them.
Education should be parentally accountable.
Education should be free from any federal government subsidy and all government interference.
The federal government has no legitimate role in either subsidizing or regulating education, except insofar as it relates to members of the Armed Forces and employees of the Executive Branch. Under no circumstances should the federal government involve itself in matters of education curriculum or textbooks.”
One more — here’s the party platform on tariffs and trade (remember, the men behind this platform were known as hardcore free marketers:
“Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution says the Congress shall have power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” Congress may not abdicate or transfer to others its constitutional functions. We, therefore, oppose the unconstitutional transfer of authority over U.S. trade policy from the Congress to agencies, domestic and foreign, which improperly exercise policy setting functions with respect to U.S. trade policy.
We also favor the abolition of the Office of Special Trade Representative and insist on the withdrawal of the United States from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and all other agreements wherein bureaucracies, institutions, or individuals, other than the Congress of the United States, improperly assume responsibility for establishing policies which directly affect the economic well-being of every American citizen.
As indicated in Article I, section 8, duties, imposts, and excises are legitimate revenue raising measures on which the United States government may properly rely. As Abraham Lincoln pointed out, the legitimate costs of the federal government can be borne, either by taxes on American citizens and businesses, or by tariffs on foreign companies and products. The latter is preferable to the former. Similarly, we oppose other international trade agreements which have the effect of diminishing America’s economic self-sufficiency and of exporting jobs, the loss of which will impoverish American families, undermine American communities, and diminish America’s capacity for economic self-reliance. We see our country and its workers as more than bargaining chips for multi-national corporations and international banks in their ill-and evilly-conceived New World Order. The defense of the American nation and the preservation of its economic integrity is essential to the defense of the liberty and prosperity of every. American citizen.
We will recommend strict federal criminal penalties for any officer of the United States government who subsequently hires himself or herself out to represent any foreign government or other entity, public or private, with respect to influencing either public opinion or public policy on matters affecting U.S. trade with any such governments or other entities.
The indebtedness of the American government has dangerously contributed to making our economy more vulnerable to foreign takeover and manipulation. Particularly in the area of national security, foreign interests have thus been abetted in gaining access to America’s high-tech secrets under the guise of commercial enterprise.
We reject the concept of Most-Favored-Nation status, especially insofar as it has been used to curry favor with regimes whose domestic and international policies are abhorrent to decent people everywhere and are in fundamental conflict with the vital interests of the United States of America.”
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Don’t blame me. I voted for Howard Phillips in ’92.
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All too often, all conservatives really conserve is the last leftist victory:
“The conservative position of today is too often the leftist one of ten years ago.”
— John Lofton
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“All politics is local.” I never agreed with Tip O’Neill on much, but he got that right.
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Zach Garris on patriarchy vs the complementarian abuse industry:
“If a person cannot affirm that a wife is to obey her husband in all things, then that person is unfit to provide definitions of abuse, including “spiritual abuse.” For the feminist considers all exercise of male authority to be abusive.”
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Christian Zionism tries to make broken out branches bear fruit by sticking them into the soil of Palestine. But they’re still broken out branches.
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God kept his promise to give the land to Abraham:
Genesis 15:18:
“On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.’”
Joshua 21:43-45
“Thus the LORD gave Israel all the land He had sworn to give their fathers, and they took possession of it and settled in it. And the LORD gave them rest on every side, just as He had sworn to their fathers. None of their enemies could stand against them, for the LORD delivered all their enemies into their hand. Not one of all the LORD’s good promises to the house of Israel had failed; everything was fulfilled.”
1 Kings 4:21:
“Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.”
1 Samuel 8:14:
“And the LORD gave victory to David wherever he went.”
Nehemiah 9:8:
“You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous.”
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Interesting take on the SCOTUS ruling re: Trump’s tariffs:
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Why does the modern nation-state of Israel have a “right” to its land in the present day?
Israel has a right to its land because the people who ruled it before them gave it to them. That’s it. That’s the sole rationale. And that’s just fine. All nations have their land based on gift, purchase, or conquest. That’s the way the world works. We can debate the wisdom of what happened in 1948, but what happened happened.
Christian Zionists want to go one step further and claim that the Jews have a divine right to the land because of God’s promise to Abraham. But this is a misguided rationale for several reasons:
*The land God promised to Israel has much larger borders than the present nation-state of Israel, but this does not give Israel a right to take those lands from those presently living in them. God authorized the Israelites to drive out the Canaanites in Joshua’s day; he has not authorized modern Jews to drive out the present inhabitants living in those lands around modern Israel. Israel, like any other nation, has a right to wage defensive and just wars to defend itself; it has to no right wage offensive wars to claim land belonging to others. Taking the land of others is theft – something Jews should recognize (cf. the story of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21).
*Further, even in the old covenant, Israel’s right to possess the land pivoted on their faithfulness to God and the covenant he made with them. When they were unfaithful, he eventually exiled them, as he threatened in Deuteronomy. Possession was never an unconditional right. And when they returned to occupy the land in the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah, they did so under the oversight and rule of Gentile empires (cf. Nehemiah 9:36), analogous to the way a Gentile empire granted them the land in 1948. Even if Zionists were right about the divine promise of the land to Israel, it would not apply to the modern nation-state of Israel, which, from a biblical perspective, is not a nation keeping covenant with God.
*Most importantly, the restoration of the Jewish people in the Bible requires them to return to the Lord and the Messiah he sent them. There is no true restoration of Israel apart from repentance and conversion to faith in Christ. Modern Israel is a secular, Christ-rejecting people and nation. There are a few Christians there, to be sure, but it is decidedly not a Christian nation. The return of ethnic Jews to the land in 1948 did not fulfill biblical prophecy. It was not the restoration of Israel promised in Romans 11. Most Jews are still hardened to the gospel. The Bible does promise ethnic Jews will eventually be converted to faith in Christ (see Romans 11), but that hasn’t happened yet.
*The land promise to Israel did not expire in 70AD, but it was transformed in the new covenant. The land was typological of the whole world (Romans 4:13). The true Israel of God — the church — will ultimately possess everything (1 Corinthians 3:21-23) because Christ possesses everything. This obviously does not mean individual Christians can take what they want from others – that would be absurd – but it does establish an eschatological trajectory. Everything belongs to Christ right now and ultimately everything will belong to his bride, the church. The current land squabble in the Middle East is mostly between unbelievers and it is not going to last forever. The church can wait it out. The Arabs will someday be converted to Christ. The Jews will be too. The Middle East will have its own Christendom in due time (indeed, it had a kind of Christendom briefly in the past, though very imperfect and immature).
*There is a tradition of Protestant theologians who believed the Jewish people would eventually return to their ancestral land — John Milton, William Gouge, David Brown, and an assortment of other mostly British Christians. But this was never contemplated apart from the conversion of the Jews to Christ and entrance into the church. They envisioned the Jews as a Christian people dwelling in a Christianized Canaan. That’s obviously not the case at present.
*Of historical interest, it’s worth noting that Jews debated amongst themselves in the 1940s what their new nation should be called. Some wanted to name it after Theodore Herzl because of his role in championing a Jewish homeland. Others wanted to call it Judea or Zion or The Jewish State or Ever/Ivri, which means “Hebrew.” For various reasons, “Israel” won out, but that decision created a lot of confusion. Now we have to ask a question that pre-1948 Christians did not have to wrestle with, namely, “who is the true Israel?” If they had named it Herzl-land, we are probably not having these debates.
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Back in the 1980s, leading Dispensationalist Hal Lindsey accused run-of-the-mill Reformed Christians who held to an amillennial or postmillennial eschatology of anti-Semitism. Those were fun times…
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An old X post – the replies are worth looking at:
Even if every last illegal immigrant gets deported by Trump, and a wall gets built to stop further illegal immigration, America will still be a multiracial society. Then what?
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There is one human race.
What we call “race” today are biological/genetic subgroups within the one human race. Race in this sense is a real category but it’s not very significant biblically or theologically.
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Mother hunger is real. Elizabeth Stone explains the importance of motherhood, especially in the early years of a child’s life:
“You can call it career ambition, you can call it empowerment, you can call it progress, but the end result was the same everywhere: mothers disappearing from the very children who needed them most.
And so entire generations of children, just like me, have grown up learning that comfort comes in rotations, love came in shifts, and security came second to personal dreams. We normalize it now, but unfortunately, children feel absence long before they can explain it.
This is what feminism promised us, that a baby wouldn’t change anything, that a woman could slip back into her old life with only minor adjustments. But babies come and they change every single thing. They are supposed to. The lie wasn’t just that mothers could “have it all,” but also that their children wouldn’t notice or even pay the cost. But children are wired for one face, one smell, one voice, one consistent presence.
Looking back, now as a mom and a woman who was in the feminism movement, who lived and embodied it, it’s obvious why I struggled the way I did. How does a child learn security when you don’t have any from anyone? How does a child form trust when every attachment is temporary?
We talk so casually about “childcare” like mothers are interchangeable, as if babies simply adapt to whoever is placed in front of them. But children don’t just need care, they need their mothers. They need the steady presence, unchangingness, the same face at the beginning and end of every day.
The world wants to pretend that none of this matters, that babies are resilient and mothers are replaceable. But the child knows. Even if they can’t articulate it, their memories keep score, the fear lingers, their bodies know. Just like mine did.
And what a cruel tragedy isn’t it to have a child wondering every day… are you my mother?”
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If Jesus is the promised Seed of Abraham, how can those who reject him be part of Abraham’s family?
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Laws cannot be enforced without the use of force.
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A lot of talk about climate change has faded away into oblivion. Gladly, most people have come to recognize it was all just a scam to make America more socialist than we already are.
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A couple bits on baptism from the Second Helvetic Confession:
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BAPTIZED. Now to be baptized in the name of Christ is to be enrolled, entered, and received into the covenant and family, and so into the inheritance of the sons of God; yes, and in this life to be called after the name of God; that is to say, to be called a son of God; to be cleansed also from the filthiness of sins, and to be granted the manifold grace of God, in order to lead a new and innocent life. Baptism, therefore, calls to mind and renews the great favor God has shown to the race of mortal men. For we are all born in the pollution of sin and are the children of wrath. But God, who is rich in mercy, freely cleanses us from our sins by the blood of his Son, and in him adopts us to be his sons, and by a holy covenant joins us to himself, and enriches us with various gifts, that we might live a new life. All these things are assured by baptism. For inwardly we are regenerated, purified, and renewed by God through the Holy Spirit and outwardly we receive the assurance of the greatest gifts in the water, by which also those great benefits are represented, and, as it were, set before our eyes to be beheld.
THE OBLIGATION OF BAPTISM. Moreover, God also separates us from all strange religions and peoples by the symbol of baptism, and consecrates us to himself as his property. We, therefore, confess our faith when we are baptized, and obligate ourselves to God for obedience, mortification of the flesh, and newness of life. Hence, we are enlisted in the holy military service of Christ that all our life long we should fight against the world, Satan, and our own flesh. Moreover, we are baptized into one body of the Church, that with all members of the Church we might beautifully concur in the one religion and in mutual services.
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“Evangelical defeatism is a failure of historical perspective. After all, the statistics are out there. It took 1400 years for 1% of the world’s population to become Christians, and then another 360 years for that to double to 2%. Another 170 years saw that grow from 2% to 4%, and then between 1960 and 1990 the proportion of the world’s population made up of Bible-believing Christians rose from 4% to 8%. Now, in 2007, a third of the world’s population confesses that Jesus is Lord and 11% of the world’s population comprises ‘evangelical’ Christians. The evangelical church is growing twice as fast as Islam and three times as fast as the world’s population. South America is turning Protestant faster than Continental Europe did in the sixteenth century. South Koreans reckon that they can evangelize the whole of North Korea within five years once that country opens up. And then there’s the Chinese church, consisting of tens of millions of Christians who have learned to pray, who have confidence in Scripture, who know about spiritual warfare, have been schooled in suffering and are qualified to rule. One day in the next century that church (tens of millions of Christians trained to die) will be released into global mission and our prayers for the fall of Islam will be answered.”
— David Field on postmillennial growth of the kingdom across generations.
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The saying, “The world I grew up in no longer exists,” is usually a lamentation.
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“The Christian religion is a faith of ultimate victory, where the very gates of hell cannot prevail against Christ and His chosen people (Matt. 16:18).”
— Rushdoony
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