What To Expect To See At The Annual Halloween Reformed Ball

What costumes they’re wearing this year to the annual Halloween Ball?

1.) James White is dressing up as a Crusader.
2.) Al Mohler is dressing up as Winston Churchill
3.) Russell Moore is dressing up as a Christianity Today Editor
4.) Sean Michael Lucas is dressing up in a R. L. Dabney costume
5.) Doug Wilson is dressing up as Confederate Sec’y of State Judah Benjamin
6.) John Piper is dressing up as a Ferret
7.) Aimee Byrd is dressing up in what her son recently modeled
8.) R. Scott Clark is dressing up as Oliver Cromwell
9.) Michael Horton is dressing up as a CIS Gendered white dude
10.) D. G. Hart is dressing up as court jester
11.) Toby Sumpter and Jared Longshore are wearing Doug Wilson costumes
12.) Michael Foster is wearing his Elmer Gantry costume
13.) Matt Walsh is dressing up as a raw dairy salesman
14.) Thabiti Anyabwile (aka – Ron Burns) is dressing up as a KKK Clansmen
15.) Francis Collin is dressing up as a Christian Humanitarian
16.) David Van Drunen is dressing up as a 16th century AnaBaptist (John of Leiden)
17.) Rachel DenHollander is dressing up as dutiful housewife
18.) SBC pastors are dressing up as strict moralists
19.) Stephen Wolfe is dressing up as Klaus Schwab
20.) Chris Gordon (AGR) is dressing up as the anchorman from “The Simpsons.”
21.) Kevin De Young is dressing up as Tim Keller
22.) Greg Johnson is dressing up as a Anita Bryant
23.) Matthew J. Tuininga is dressing up as a Dutch Theologian
24.) Reggie Smith is dressing up as the head butler of a Plantation home during the ante-bellum South era.
25.) Clay Libolt is dressing up as a Theonomist
26.) Ken Bieber is dressing up as “a reliable source.”
27.) Owen Strachan is dressing up as an patriotic American
28.) Rev. Aldo Leon is dressing up as a Kinist
29.) Rev. Brenda Kronemeijer‐Heyink is dressing up in one of these;https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-portrait-of-a-young-muslim-woman-covering-her-face-by-a-black-veil-89138149.html

30.) David French is dressing up as a tabloid journalist
31.) Rod Dreher is dressing up as a faithful loving husband and father

It ought to be quite the affair.

Me?

I’ll be the guy dressing up as Doug Wilson wearing a “Have You Hugged A Bagel Today?” T-Shirt while carrying a tankard of “Pale Ale” around with me.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends; Ethan Holden On Transparency

“I’ve always believed in a “Flags Out Front” approach to things.

Meaning:

1. Be upfront and honest with what you believe politically, theologically, philosophically, and morally.

2. Don’t be afraid to put your views out in the open, especially the ones that people will find most controversial.

3. Fight for those views without apology.

4. Eventually, you will have the “Adam Carolla” or “Howard Stern” affect. Have you ever noticed how those two men can say anything they want, and nobody calls for them to be cancelled anymore? They used to….but not anymore. Why? Because they know that both of those men are too far gone to be scolded and scorned into changing their opinions. The sons of earth are shrewd in that way, and we should be too.

5. Don’t lie or obfuscate your views unless you are dealing with your enemies. You do not owe them any information. But your family, friends, and church leadership are not the folks that you want to hide your beliefs from. To do so is to put them in the same camp as your enemies.

6. If your more controversial “flags out front” views are not shared by your Elders, do not undermine them by trying to convert the congregants to your point of view. Sure, use your public platform to discuss what you want to discuss. But do not be a subversive.

7. Lastly, enjoy yourself! Don’t be a shrill, get wrapped around the axels, and self righteous. State your business, and have a good time doing it!

Raise the flag.

They are going to find out anyway.”

On Mastering One’s Fears

“I have a friend in Hollywood. He is an actor. He is a well known actor. He has work. He strongly supports President Trump. He’s a real patriot. He just asked me to be sure that I don’t tell anybody (that he supports Trump) because of the system.”

Roger Stone
Interview with Robert Davi

I am running this quote not in connection with the political aspect but rather with the reality of the fear that people have in connection with their putative convictions. I say, “putative” because how much of a conviction can someone hold who is ashamed of that conviction, or fearful of what would happen to them should their conviction be known?

I have had, as a minister, on more than one occasion have had people speak to me the same kind of idea that Roger Stone had spoken to him by his Hollywood actor friend. More than once I’ve had people say something like, “I agree with you but I can’t be associated with you because it would put my career in danger”, or “I would lose my friends,” or “my family wouldn’t understand,” or “agreeing with you publicly would make it hard on my children.” Another version of this is, “I agree with you but you make the issue at hand far more important than it really is.” Usually, such statements circle around Theonomy, or Kinism, or my views on Government schooling.

I can be very bi-polar about my response to this. On one hand I understand the necessity sometimes to play one’s cards close to the breast. There are times when one keeps the false flag flying and doesn’t raise the Jolly Roger to let everyone know you’re a pirate. I, myself, have, in the past,  played the “clever to protect myself” game. I genuinely understand the more than a few ministers who correspond to me telling me that they agree with my Kinism but they dare not let Kinism come from the pulpit or in their online writings — and that even though they agree it is a Biblical doctrine. The price to be paid by especially clergy is a high price to be paid. It means very possibly the end of their career, the inability to provide for their family, and the hatred of countless numbers of dumb people (i.e. — the Normies).

So, I understand the sentiment captured in the opening quote. And I get people’s fears. I myself live with those fears daily.

But at some point it is my conviction that people have to rise above these natural fears because until people in the shadows come out and nail their flags to the mast, the depredations of our egalitarian culture, our lawlessness, and our thinking destroying habits is going to destroy us, first as a visible church, and then as a people.  If we will not stand up in favor of Kinism, in opposition to government schooling, and in opposition to the prevalent opposition to God’s law then we will disappear as a people and our children and grandchildren will be the victims of what too often is nothing but cowardice dressed up in the evening clothes of personal pragmatism and an egocentric self protection.

Jesus spoke about the necessity of taking up the cross, and denying one’s self. The writer to the Hebrews reminds his recipients not to give up on Christianity because of the difficulties they were facing by embracing Christianity, reminding them, “you have not yet resisted unto the point of blood.” Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progess” is all about the theme of the winning through the difficulties of following Christ. It was not about the theme of avoiding the difficulties of following Christ.

I can hear now the potential protests. “But those issues and those types of issues are not really hills to die on. They are not the issues upon which Christianity pivots.” It’s hard to believe that someone would argue this way given how government schools are brainwashing our children against Christianity, and given how our culture (and Church) is manifestly doing everything it can to evade championing God’s law, and given the egalitarianism that has now gone so far as to seek to normalize the most aberrant of behaviors. This egalitarianism did not start with the transgenderism that we are embracing as a culture now but started far further up on what turned out to be the slippery slope of all slippery slopes.

And yet people are frightened. So frightened that even some of them don’t want to it to be publicly known that they embrace what Trump symbolically stands for. (Admission … I like Trump as a symbol, but I do not think the man matches the symbol and so will not be voting for Trump.) However, fear, is no reason to not play the man and come forward consistent with one’s “secret convictions.”

Here I am in the middle. Being frightened myself I get that people are scared. However, the whole idea of courage is the ability to stand even in spite of legitimate fears.

I hope, that in the near future, Roger Stone’s Hollywood friend can have enough courage to come out of the closet and let it be known he is done being ashamed of his convictions, and that regardless of the cost.

A Response to Dimitry Wilsoneyev On Pulling Down Criminal Statues

“In such a moment, our task should be two-fold. First, don’t help them tear down anything else. I don’t care if it is a statue of Cecil Rhodes, or Winston Churchill, or Nathan Bedford Forrest—nothing else comes down.”

Doug Wilson

Imagine you’re living in 1990 Communist Russia. Finally, there is a crack in Communism and you and the boys decide you’re going to pull down a few statues of Commie heroes — Oh, let’s say a Trotsky statue or an Iron Felix statue or even a lowly Brezhnev statue. Change is in the air and you are determined that you’re going to cast off the “heroes” of the past.

But then comes Dimitry Wilsoneyev who warns you about all the social instability you’re going to create if you tear down statues — even if the statues you’re going to tear down are statues of mass murderers and criminal villains.

Of course your immediate response is…. “What the hell have we been living under for the last 80 years if not ever incrementally increasing social instability as created by those raised up for posterity in statue form?”

But Dimitry Wilsoneyev, good Christian that he is, reminds you that by pulling down these statues that you may well be letting loose anarchy upon the land.

Again, you stare unblinkingly at this Boomer. You’re bumfuzzled and are thinking, “You prefer this four score tyranny instead? You want to say to Dimitry, ” Even if you’re right about social instability and anarchy being set loose by tearing down statues of criminals and delinquents is that worse than what we lived under during the reign of these madmen? A reign that will continue and even increase if we don’t change the equation. Keep in mind Dimitry, that those supporting the maintenance of these statues we want to pull down are intent on continuing this criminally aberrant social order. Further, Dimitry, you’re counsel to go slow is serving to the end of supporting those that would turn the whole world into one vast gulag.”

“Think about it Dimitry …. if Cromwell had listened to your kind of counsel England would have never been set free from the villain Charles I. If the Colonials had listened to you we would still be quartering Red Coat soldiers in our homes. And if Europe had listened to your kind of counsel in 1989 the Berlin Wall would still be standing.”

“The problem honorable Dimitry Wilsoneyev is not that the idols erected to Churchill, Lincoln, or FDR are being torn down. The problem is that they were ever raised up to begin with.” Also, dear Dimitry, we need to ask, “what are we to do while living in already socially unstable times that find us having to barricade our homes against those who are ginning up the teeming crowds of refuse and delinquency to the end that someday statues of their vomitous likeness will be erected?

Sorry, Dimitry, but we are well past the exit that said “waiting will fix things.” Any counsel to people that in effect says… “it’s ok, go back to sleep,” is not going to cut it for people who love God, their family, and their people. Some statues / idols have to go, Dimitry and there is no time like the present.

Winston Churchill is one of them.

Won’t you help us tear down the old idols and statues of the post-war liberal consensus — even in the context when the enemy is out there pulling down the statues of genuine heroes?

Finally, Dimitry Wilsoneyev, social change is seldom without convulsions. Read an old book on Oliver Cromwell and learn that again.