Answering the Gnostic Accusation that Bret’s too “Focused Upon This World”

Comment on Iron Rhetoric from a chap named “Machen”

“Ultimately, Bret and his followers are focused upon this world. They are hungry for things that they see with their eyes. They want their own country. But in doing so, they have failed to see that we have a much better country. One that our forefathers sought by faith, and yet they did not see it till death. When will Bret learn to stop cherry picking history and start looking above where Christ is?”

Bret responds with 12 response (One comeback for every Apostle),

1.) You couldn’t fill a phone booth (remember those?) with Bret’s followers.

2.) There was a time I wanted my own wife and my own children and my own friends. There was a time I wanted to Pastor my own church. Then there was a time I wanted my own grandchildren. Did all these realities prove that I was hungry for things I see with my eyes and that said hunger was not Christian?

3.) Damn straight I want my own country. Just like the pagan Chinese have their own country … just like the pagan Bagels have their own country (the US) … just like the pagan Mooselimbs have their own countries. It is the height of disobedience to Christ for a Christian to suggest that somehow it is sinful to desire to have a country that is Christian, White, and Heritage American. What? … it is the case that I am most holy when I go about not wanting my own country?

4.) I trust everyone easily sees how this is Gnostic to the core. Somehow being a Christian in this chap’s world means that corporeal things are un-holy. This chap probably spends his evenings before bedtime flagellating himself till he bleeds.

5.) This chap will have to ask those who have attended funeral sermons I’ve preached if I fail to see and emphasize that we have a better country. However, all because we have a better country coming doesn’t mean that we get to trash the present country we have or might have if we are faithful to the Lord Christ.

6.) I guarantee you this chap is either amillennial or premillennial.

7.) If death and the heavenly country is the be all end all for this chap why doesn’t he pray daily that he might die? If he dies soon he doesn’t have to put up with all the gross stuff that is this life.

8.) Has this chap ever read the verse; “Occupy till I come?” (Luke 19:13)

9.) Cherry picking history? Look if I’m cherry picking history let him and his idiot Gnostic cronies publish not one, but two, 500 page plus volumes of quotes from the Church Fathers who support their Gnosticism when it comes to Christian Nationalism and Kinism. Shoot, bang, I’ll even let him cherry pick if he wants to.

10.) Kinists have ALL the evidence on their side. We have two large published anthologies that supports the truth that the Church fathers have been on our side and that over the centuries.

11.) It is precisely because I make it endeavor to set my mind on things above, not on things on the earth that works in me the working out of my salvation in fear and trembling to the end of making every area of this life serve Christ.

12.) Something about “taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.” Thoughts about social order arrangement. Thoughts about race / culture / faith. Thoughts about history. Every thought.

I pray that this strand of Gnosticism would be arrested and extinguished in the modern church today. I pray that this chap would yet repent and along with all Christ’s people desire a nation of their own.

Should Clergy Be Culture Warriors?

“If we are really being honest the vast number of Pastor’s shouldn’t be trying to be cultural warriors.”

Sean Russell – Co-Host
For Future Generations Podcast
Episode 37 

This take is getting more and more traction and adherence. I suppose I adhere to it also when the proviso “the vast number” is understood. However, I don’t think ideally that this should be the case. It is only needs to be the case because the vast number of Pastors today are just dumb. They may (MAY) own a conservative theological position but if they do they have virtually zero ability to translate that theology into other realms that culture embraces. It should be the case that every pastor is a cultural warrior because every pastor has been trained to think organically and so understands that culture is nothing but theology externalized as poured over a particular people. Alas, the vast number of pastors do not understand this and so the vast number of pastors should not be culture warriors. Truth be told, in my estimation, the inability of a pastor to be a culture warrior probably means in the vast number of cases that he shouldn’t even be in the pulpit.

Look, as a pastor, I am telling you, that there is no way in Hades that one can pastor his flock well and not understand the culture that he and his flock are swimming in. Do people really think that one can pastor a flock well and not understand where the pushback against the culture needs to happen as he and his flock inhabit that culture?

I am appalled at the idea that pastors shouldn’t be able to understand the wickedness (and strengths) of the culture they inhabit so as to war for Christ against the culture, when necessary, for the glory of God and the protection of the sheep.

Again, though, I understand the frustration of the well read laity who themselves are seeking to be culture warriors in their proper place (callings) all the while their idiot pastor is speaking from the pulpit in such a way that it completely undercuts what genuine culture warfare might look like.

Think about it …. do you really want to attend a Church where the pastor doesn’t speak in the name of Christ against Marxism (even Charles Spurgeon did that), against the diminishing of human life, against the Scripture’s clear teaching on immigration issues, against feminine leadership in church and culture, against the dangers of AI and trans-humanism and how they are promissory of a tyranny that would seek to roll God off His throne if not kept in check? There are countless issues that the laity should be informed via the prism of a Scriptural and Christian theological explanation.

What the church needs right now is more pastors who can be cultural warriors… not fewer.

I get it guys, that you’re frustrated by multitudinous bovine-headed clergy but the answer is not to lobby for a clergy that is culturally inert. Let’s keep in mind that throughout our Christian history clergy have been culture warriors. Reformation era and Puritan pastors led the culture warriors. John Calvin for instance created Genevan culture warring against the cultural mess that Geneva was in when he arrived in Geneva. Later history finds  John Owen as Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain. Later still, Pastor Jonas Clark trained the Minutemen and may have fired the shot heard round the world. Later again, Abraham Kuyper was Prime Minister of the Netherlands. We could go on and on citing examples where Pastors fulfilled their calling as Pastors to be cultural warriors.

 

From the Mailbox; Pastor, Why Do You Insist That The CREC Is On The Left?

Dear Pastor,

Can you tell me why you say that the CREC is on the left as a Christian denomination? As a Pastor in the CREC I think I should know this.

Rev. Kent

Bret Responds,

Hello Kent,

Of course, I am speaking of the denominational spokesmen like Doug Wilson, Uri Brito, and Rich Lusk. Even if you’re not on the left yourself those people who are the face of the denomination you’re part of are on the left. If the wife I’m married to is a whore it says something about me if I stay married to her.

These are my observations thus about the CREC

1.) They are Alienists (multiculturalists). They insist that race does not exist or that race is a social construct. They keep pushing for documents to be accepted by the denomination that will codify those beliefs. Nobody of any stature before the rise of Franz Boas believed this. Franz Boas non-Christian anthropology is what is informing the CREC’s push in Race issues.

2.) Doug Wilson is on record as advocating voting for a female for political office (Sarah Palin). This is a position on the left.

3.) Doug Wilson has said;

“Our family would be much more involved on an active personal level if terrorists overran Israel that we would if terrorists overran Vermont.”

This is a take from the left. It is a confusion of categories. It is a reversal of the Ordo Amoris to love the stranger and alien over your own countrymen. It is Alienism.

And if Doug insists that it is not Alienism because his wife, and grandchildren putatively have so much Jewish blood in them then it is Kinism which Doug derisively calls “skinism.” A derision that only rises as from the left.

Doug Wilson is the face of your denomination (whether you like it or not) and when he speaks he paints everyone who is part of the denomination.

4.) The inclusion by the CREC of both Baptists and non-Baptists in one denomination is a position that only the left could embrace. Reformed Baptists and Reformed non-Baptists are different expressions of the Christian faith so significant that to combine them in one denomination communicates that the denomination doesn’t understand the idea of distinctions. This is a position of the left.

5.) Then there is the whole Federal Vision thing which is humanist to its core since it advocate works salvation. This is the position of humanism and so is on the left. Individual Pastors may not agree with Federal Vision theology but if they are in a denomination that salutes it they are in a denomination that is on the left.

6.) I know for a fact that Wilson has been phoning Pastors of other denominations in order to warn those Pastors against young men who the CREC have deemed unworthy because those young men took up race realist views. This is a position on the left.

You may be my Brother in Christ and as such it is my responsibility to tell you that you are in a denomination that is on the left. I also was also loosely associated with a denomination on the left for years and years and it was something I had to live with every day before I departed. My prayer is that either the CREC repents of its leftism or, failing that, that the orthodox men like you depart from the CREC.

A Response To The CREC Knox Presbytery Propositional Declaration On Ethnic Balance

On Ethnic Balance

We believe the human tendency to congregate around shared affections is natural and can be good—it creates the blessing of cultures and subcultures, for example. But as with all natural goods in a fallen world, there is a temptation to exalt it to a position of unbiblical importance, thus making it an idol. While an ethnic heritage is something to be grateful for, and which may be preserved in any way consistent with the law of God, it is important to reject every form of identity politics, including kinism—whether malicious, vainglorious, or ideologically separatist/segregationist.

Knox Presbytery, December 1, 2022


Our Response;

On Propositional Declarations

We believe the human tendency to congregate around shared propositional declarations on certain positions is natural and can be good—it creates the blessing of cultures and subcultures, for example. But as with all natural goods in a fallen world, there is a temptation to exalt the making of certain propositional declarations to a position of unbiblical importance, thus making those propositional declarations an idol. While shared propositional declarations are something to be grateful for, and which may be preserved in any way consistent with the law of God, it is important to reject every form of identity politics, including propositional Declarationism – whether malicious, vainglorious, or ideologically separatist/segregationist.

 

 

A Response To CREC Knox Presbytery’s Proposal On Issue of Jews

“We believe the conversion of the Jews is key to the success of Christ’s Great Commission, and it is incumbent upon us to pray and labor toward that end. (1) While, apart from Christ, the Jews are as all others—alienated from God—they have remained an object of God’s care because the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. (2) God’s plan for converting them is for them to see Gentile nations under the blessings of Christ’s lordship, thus leading them to long for the same. (3) Hence, the cancerous sin of anti-Semitism has no place in God’s plan.” (4)

CREC – Knox Presbytery
December 1, 2022

1a.) This whole statement is based on a misinterpretation of Romans 11. Romans 11 was future to Paul but has been fulfilled and so is past to us. The conversion of those who are (wrongly) referred to as “Jews” has nothing to do with the success of Christ’s great commission.

1b.) It is no more or less incumbent for Christian to labor and pray for the conversion of those who call themselves “Jews” then it is to labor and pray for the conversion of any other ethnic people group.

1c.) If the conversion of Jews as a people is “key to the success of Christ’s Great Commission” it would logically imply that Jews must continue to exist as a coherent and distinct people group. The eschatology offered here demands “Kinism” for Jews, right? And yet Doug Wilson continues to derisively refers to those who champion the Ordo Amoris as “skinists.” To be “saved” as a people necessarily demands existing as a people. Given Doug Wilson’s proud proclamation of the Jewishness of his own family this sentence in this proposal sounds vainglorious.

1d.) To say that conversion of the Jews is ‘key to the success of the great commission’ would mean the great commission is a failure until those that call themselves “Jews” are converted is absurd. Further to hang the success of the conversion of all nations on them as if it didn’t hang on the conversion of other nations just as much makes nonsense of the whole question.

2a.) God converted the Jewish Israel of God by AD 70.

2b.) God divorced Israel in AD 70. There remains no special relationship between what is now called “Israel” and the God of the Bible. This divorce was promised in the OT;

2 And He said, “Amos, what do you see?”

So I said, “A basket of summer fruit.”

Then the Lord said to me:

“The end has come upon My people Israel;
I will not pass by them anymore.  (Amos 8:2)

“Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom,
And I will destroy it from the face of the earth;
Yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”
Says the Lord.  Amos 9:8

And the coming dismissal of Christ hating Israel as God’s chosen people for their sin of rejecting their Messiah was made clear in the NT; Luke 13:1-8, Mark 11:12-25, Matthew 21:37-43. Finally, in AD 70 with the Judgment coming of Jesus against Israel, Israel as a nation which had previously served as the chosen people of God was served divorce papers. The ruination of Jerusalem and the Jewish abomination Temple were destroyed by the Roman armies of Vespasian and Titus. According to Josephus 1million Jews were slaughtered. This was God’s final word regarding National Israel. God may and does still call individual Jews but as a nation God is done with them. God is done with Israel as a nation or people. Now any Gentile nation that God calls and which then covenants with God can be one national expression of God’s people as long as they own the graciousness of grace and then walk increasingly but never perfectly in terms of obedience to God’s gracious Law-Word.

2c.) Then there is the whole issue of whether or not those currently referred to as Jews are indeed Jews. Israel itself has passed laws making it extraordinarily difficult for the “Jewish” inhabitants of Israel to do DNA testing in order to determine ethnic heritage. Could that be due to the fact that they don’t want the hoi polloi to know that they are not really ethnically “Jewish?” The fact of the matter is that the Palestinians have more Jewish blood in them then the Khazars, Edomites, Khazars, Turks, etc. who call themselves “Jews” now living in Israel.

3.) Fulfilled by AD 70.

4.) We really need a definition of the “cancerous sin of anti-Semitism” before we can comment much on this statement. Currently, anti-Semitism often seems to be defined as “disagreeing with a Jew.” In point of fact, per the CREC, I’m pretty sure this whole post is “anti-Semitic.”

There are two major points here.

1.) Modern day Jews in Israel are not likely even Jews

2.) Even if they are Jews the Scripture does not allow us to think that they, as in their unconverted Christ hating state, are still God’s chosen people, since God divorced them as a people in AD 70 — consistent with the statements of Scripture.