Beneath The Blood Stained Lintel

To the Tune of ” Beneath the Cross”

Beneath the blood stained lintel I with my children stand
A messenger of evil is passing through the land
There is no other refuge from the destroyer’s face
Beneath the blood stained lintel shall be our hiding place.

The Lamb of God has suffered our sins and griefs He bore
By faith the blood is sprinkled above our dwelling’s door
The foe who seeks to enter doth fear that sacred sign
Tonight the blood stained lintel shall shelter me and mine.

My Savior, for my dear ones, I claim thy promise true.
The lamb was for the household the children’s savior too.
On earth the little children, once felt thy touch divine.
Beneath the blood stained lintel thy blessing give to thine

O Thou who gave them, guard them, Those wayward little feet:
The wilderness before them, the ill of life to meet.
My parent love is helpless, I trust them to thy care.
Beneath the blood stained lintel, O keep them ever there.

The trust I place upon Thee, Thou wilt not disappoint.
With wisdom, Lord to train them. My shrinking heart anoint.
Without my children, Father, I cannot bear thy face,
I plead the blood stained lintel, Thy covenant of grace.

O Wonderful Redeemer, who suffered for my sake,
When o’er the guilty nations, thy judgment storm shall break,
With joy from that safe shelter, May we then see Thine eye,
Beneath the blood stained lintel, My children, Lord, and I.

Lord, keep me from that error, that holds my child outside
And steals from them your promise, that for them you have died
We bless thee Holy Father, Our children you have claimed
Beneath that blood stained lintel, and wearing now your name

The generations gather, in one unfallen line
To jointly lift our voices, to praise your name sublime
You’ve gathered sainted Fathers, You’ve given us our seed
Beneath that blood stained lintel, we have all that we need

Vs. 1-6 — H. A. Ironside
Vs. 7-8 — B. L. McAtee

The Church’s Role Of Policing It’s Members — McAtee Interacts with Rev. Bill Smith

Recently Rev. Bill Smith (CREC) wrote an article in the Kuyperian

Freedom of Speech?

suggesting that people should be held responsible in the context of possible church discipline for what they write on social media The idea is that when a member of a church writes something that would be a black eye on the church he is a member of, the Church ought to have the place to discipline that member if needs be.

Now, this certainly has merit as an argument. For example, if someone who is a member of a Church is writing something like, “People who homeschool their children are a stigma on the community and not responsible parents,” then obviously the Church officers need to deal with that issue, with formal church discipline even being a possibility.

However, having admitted that, one must consider the state of the Church today. For example, though Bill Smith is a fine chap, I would not want him policing what I write. I have, for example, inveighed against Federal Vision and Bill would likely find that to be something he and his Elders would need to talk to me about were I a member of the church Bill serves.

It’s simply the case today that the state of the Church is in such shambles that if one desires to have the ability to speak God’s hard truths (e.g. — Sending children to Gov’t. schools is sin, Federal Vision is heresy, R2K is heresy, Our Seminaries are Compromised, Christians are biblically required to resist our current tyrant State, illegal immigrants need to be deported, etc.) then one must go slow on agreeing with the premise of Rev. Bill Smith’s article.

If anything all Rev. Bill Smith’s article really teaches is that if you want to be able to speak your mind don’t become a member of a conservative Reformed Church because, exceptions notwithstanding, the conservative Reformed Church currently is only referenced as a “church” by way of courtesy.

Sure, if the Church was orthodox today, Rev. Smith’s insights would be spot on. But the Church is not orthodox (Rev. Smith is Federal Vision) and so, unless I am extraordinarily confident in the Church I might join — that it shares my Christian world and life view — I would not join a Church if I thought they were going to police my words.

To underscore this, I know of Reformed people who are political activists and they, for the reasons cited above, refuse to join Reformed Churches understanding that the political noses they are tweaking could well mean church discipline if one of those politicians picked up a phone and called the Minister of the Church they are a member of.

In brief, I suppose this can be summed up as,

1.) The Church is in disrepair
2.) Because of that they will go after those who are orthodox
3.) If you’re going to raise your voice don’t join even a conservative church
4.) UNLESS you’re absolutely certain they are on board w/ your controversial Christian positions.

If you disregard this counsel don’t come crying to me when your church threatens church discipline for not towing their post WW II consensus line.

What Was Righteousness In 1973 is Now Sin In 2024

In 1973 a new Reformed denomination was being birthed. It eventually became known as the PCA. Dr. John Edwards Richards was one of the founders of that new denomination and Dr. Richards gave us some of the reasons why this new denomination was leaving the PCUS.

Causes of Separation in 1973

The Socialist, who declares all men are equal.  Therefore there must be a great leveling of humanity and oneness of privilege and possession.

The Racial Amalgamationist, who preaches that the various races should be merged into one race and differences erased in oneness.

The Communist, who would have one mass of humanity coerced into oneness by a totalitarian state and guided exclusively by Marxist philosophy.

The Internationalist, who insists on co-existence between all peoples and nations that they be as one regardless of ideology or history.

John Edwards Richards
One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

“No human can measure the anguish of personality that goes on within the children of miscegenation… Let those who would erase the racial diversity of God’s creation beware lest the consequence of their evil be visited upon their children.”

John Edwards Richards
One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)

“The vast majority of good thinking people prefer to associate with, and intermarry with people of their respective race; this is part of the God-given inclination to honor and uphold the distinctiveness of separate races. But there are many false prophets of oneness, and many shallow stooges, who seek to force the amalgamation of the races.” 

Dr. John E. Richards

Dr. Richards perhaps knew that Marxists were pushing for a world and social-order that was the very opposite that he believed should be supported by Christians.  When you read the above it sounds like Dr. Richards was aware of the Marxist agenda. An agenda which was clearly put forth by Marxist “wise-men.”

1.) ”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

2.) “The equality of races and nations is one of the most important elements of the moral strength and might of the Soviet state. Soviet anthropology develops the one correct concept, that all the races of mankind are biologically equal. The genuinely materialist conception of the origin of man and of races serves the struggle against racism, against all idealist, mystic conceptions of man, his past, present and future.”

—Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959
“The Origin of Man” (Moscow)Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959:

3.) “The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together but to merge them….”

Vladimir Lenin
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76

4.) “… Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their right to secede. “

Vladimir Lenin 
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination 

5.) “Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.” 

K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A
Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

6.) “Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

Nikita Khrushchev

Today it has become passe’ and nekulturny to disagree with the Marxists on this matter and to agree with Dr. Richards. It is an odd thing that a whole new Christian and Reformed denomination in 1973 could be birthed based on issues that are now seen as non Christian in putative conservative Reformed Churches.

A “conservative” church in Pella, Iowa for example just adopted a tenet that I’m pretty sure that Dr. Richards and the people who, at that time, formed the PCA — having seen this kind of conviction in the denomination they were leaving — would have strenuously disagreed.

“Furthermore, we reject Kinism, which teaches that it is consistently unwise or a sin for people of different ethnicities or races to intermarry, and that civil societies ought to take steps to remain ethnically or racially segregated.”

I don’t know if Dr. Richards would have said it was sin for people of different ethnicities or races to intermarry but from the quotes above I know he would have certainly said it was consistently unwise.

There are two things that trouble me about this kind of thing.

1.) It seems to me that given enough time, truth will change because the Overton window moves to the left.  The PCA is formed because certain things they are seeing in the Churches they were leaving were understood by those leaving as being, at the very least “unwise.” Now 50 years later conservative churches are saying that the reasons why people left their previous denomination were unwise for doing so because their reasons were unbiblical and sin. This is lightning fast social change.

2.) Because of these kinds of social order changes people alive today who agreed with the convictions of Dr. Richards and those that formed the new denomination no longer can find a denominational church home. Bad theology hurts people and this theology that crept into the liberal churches in 1973 that required people to leave has now crept into what is thought of as Conservative churches and some people, who have a memory longer than 5 minutes, have no where left to attend church.

Understand when this Pella, Iowa church “rejects Kinism,” they are rejecting what the people who abandoned their previous faithless denomination believed in 1973 was standard Christianity. They didn’t call it Kinism then. They just called it Christianity.

Truth forever on the scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne 
But the scaffold sway the future
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadows
Keeping watch above His own

A Book Review … Rodney Stark’s ‘Bearing False Witness; Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.’

I completed Rodney Stark’s ‘Bearing False Witness; Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.’

I can’t recommend this highly enough. Stark takes a battleax to modern embraced narratives and hacks them to shreds by  examining revisionist historical evidence and by citing the best and brightest scholars in each respective field.

This book necessitates that Protestants understand that our Church in history is the Roman Catholic church before it excommunicated itself upon excommunicating and casting out the Reformers. As Protestants we are in error when we don’t understand that the Church in History is our Church and it’s history thus should be defended. We should be careful defenders when we can be of the Church’s actions in history that goes behind the Reformation.

Stark does just that in this volume by demonstrating that the modern narratives surrounding the “guilt” of the Christian faith for this or that unconscionable activity as capture in some false narrative is pure bunkum.

Stark gives us evidence that the being based is Church history by exposing the falsity of modern narratives against Christianity in chapters dealing with,

1.) The Church being anti-Semitic.

Stark does admit that the Church did discriminate but he (rightly) insists that any social order in order to maintain its hegemony must discriminate. Stark teaches the idea that the Church was hunting down Bagels in order to kill them is just ridiculous.

2.) The Christian faith persecuted the tolerant Pagans after Constantine legalized Christianity.

Stark gives the historical account demonstrating that such a narrative is pure fairy tale. The Christian Crown was quite tolerant of pagans as long as pagans did not seek to overthrow Christianity. This chapter gives us a glimpse on the life and failure of Julian the Apostate.

3.) The idea that any thing called “the Dark Ages” ever existed. Stark explodes the myth that the time of the burgeoning Christian social order following the fall of Rome was backward and dull. Stark demonstrates that this was a time of great learning and advancement. Stark demonstrates that it was the Christ hater later writers that dubbed this time “The Dark Ages,” and then the later time periods of “The Enlightenment,” and “The Age of Reason.”

4.) Stark demonstrates that Christianity opposed slavery thus denying modernists to cast in the teeth the idea that Christian were always slavers. I do think that we need to distinguish here the sin of man stealing for slavery which requires the death penalty, and the fact that Scripture supports the idea of slavery as Biblically conducted. However, Stark’s chapter here demonstrates that the Christian faith never countenanced man stealing.

5.) Stark demonstrates that the Church has not historically supported naked Authoritarianism. He cites the experts who note that if and when the Church supported Authoritarians (such as Franco) it was because those who opposed the Authoritarians they were supporting had been trying to snuff out the Church. Here Stark cites the Church’s support of Franco against the Communist “Republicans.” Stark in this chapter also goes out of his way to explode the myth that Pope Pius XII was in any way ‘sreltiH Pope. In this chapter Stark recites the record of the oppression of the Church by the State during Revolutionary France, Spain, and Russia during their Revolutions.

6.) Stark takes on the idea that Capitalism didn’t exist before the Reformers. Stark seems to think modern Capitalism is a good idea. He can have that idea. Stark notes how interest and capitalism goes way back behind the Protestants to the 11th century. Stark insists that the early Monastic movement was quite capitalistic. Stark notes that usury was not uncommon prior to the Reformation even citing Aquinas in support of usury. (Stark does say Aquinas spoke out of both sides of his mouth on the issue. I was quite glad for this chapter because I’ve met many Roman Catholic who has insisted that usury started with the Reformation. Stark puts the lie to that idea.

7.) Stark demonstrates that the Crusades were a defensive maneuver on the part of the Church in order to defend itself from the offensive marauding and land stealing of the Muslims. Stark spends some time explaining the connection between Christian piety of the time and going on Crusade. Stark spends some time talking about the quality of the character of many of the Crusaders. He also spends time demonstrating that the Christians were not more bloodthirsty than the Muslims whom they were defending Christendom from. In brief, the Muslims were animals and the Crusaders in order to defend human life from these animals had to be brutal themselves in many instances. Stark clears the Crusaders and crusading from the false witness of the Christ haters who maintain the modern narrative.

8.) Stark demonstrates that modern science could not have existed without Christendom producing Christian scientists. Stark demonstrates that the whole idea that Christianity was and is against science is a creation of those who hate Christianity.

Stark cites medieval scientist scholar after medieval scientist scholar to demonstrate that these men were faithful and pious Christian men.

He cites;

“The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and the harmony imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”

Johannes Kepler

In his last will & testament, the great chemist, Robert Boyle (1627-1691) wrote to the members of the Royal Society of London, wishing them continued success in their ‘laudable attempts to discover the true Nature of the works of God.”

Rodney Stark
Bearing False Witness – p. 162

Stark reveals how only Christianity, with its concept of a personal and logical God alone could examine the cosmos. It was the presuppositions of the Christian faith that made modern science possible. In this vein, Stark notes regarding about false faiths and science;

“For Islam, the orthodox conception of Allah is hostile to the scientific quest. There is no suggestion in the Qur’an that Allah set his creation in motion and then let it run. Rather, it is assumed that he often intrudes the world and changes things as it pleases him. Thus, through the centuries, many of the most influential Muslim scholars have held that all efforts to formulate natural laws are blasphemy in that they would seem to deny Allah’s freedom to act. Thus did their images of God and the universe deflect scientific efforts in China, Ancient Greece, and Islam (as they held to pagan notions of God.”)

Rodney Stark
Bearing False Witness — p. 162-163

Stark also has a chapter demonstrating the absolute falsity of recently discovered “Gospels.” Stark does so in order to put the lie to the idea that these “new” Gospels have anything to add to the Christian faith.

Finally, Stark puts the lie to the now givens of the fantastical horrors behind the Inquisition. All that really needs to be said here is that when one compares the Inquisition (and burning of witches) to the real horrors of Secular governments like those of the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, and Mao’s Revolution suddenly one begins to understand that in comparison the Inquisition was a day at the park.

Stark has done the Church a great favor by exposing these ridiculous narratives that continue to plague the Christian Church today. Genuine Biblical Christianity has nothing to apologize to secularists, atheists and Christ haters.