Uncategorized – Page 98

Cain’s City … Then and Now

Genesis 4:¹¹So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. ¹²When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a wanderer you shall be on the earth.”

“The city is man’s greatest work. It is his great attempt to attain autonomy, to exercise will and intelligence. This is where all his efforts are concentrated, where all his powers are born. No other of man’s works, technical or philosophical, is equivalent to the city, which is the creation not of an instrument but of the whole world in which man’s instruments are conceived and put to work.”

Jacques Ellul

The Meaning of the City — p. 154

Genesis begins in a garden and with the fall quickly moves to a city.
Cain after killing his brother Abel dwelt in the land of Nod. Nod literally means “wandering.” As we recall Cain’s punishment placed upon him by God was to be a restless wanderer upon the earth. So, the curse God placed upon Cain was to be a wanderer and he dwells in a land (Nod) that means wandering.

This suggests that it is a curse to not have roots and/or to not be attached to the land or a place. Wandering (moving from here to there without establishing connections) is God’s curse. There was a time in the not so recent past when this remained commonly understood. If you were a stranger moving to a new town you were suspect. It was Gypsies and the like who were traveling nomads. Respectable people settled down and grew roots.

In returning to Genesis we find Cain trying to avoid God’s curse upon him and so Cain builds a city and names it after his first born son Enoch. In doing so Cain is attempting to satisfy his desire for security by creating a place belonging to him and that quite independent of God. He will not be a wanderer despite God’s assigned curse. He will create his own anti-place place that overthrows God’s curse. An anti-place place where there is no need to be dependent upon the land. Cain’s city of Enoch is a material sign of his continued rebelliousness towards his creator. Cain will be responsible for himself and for his life. He does not need God’s protection (Gen. 4:15). Cain will use the city of Enoch for his protection. The city of Enoch is the direct consequence of Cain’s refusal to accept God’s protection choosing instead to provide his own protection. Cain, according to Genesis, will not only defy God’s punishment to wander by building a city (Genesis 4:17), but he will also produce a culture of evil, rebellious people.

We begin to see here that Cain’s city of Enoch is Babel before Babel was Babel. It is a place where wanderers (sinners) can gather in order to build a reality that can do fine without God. In the city of Enoch Cain takes his own destiny in his hands refusing the hand of God in his life. Cain replaced God-centered Eden with man-centered Enoch.

Cain’s Enoch — his chosen place of stability — thus becomes symbolic of a civilization that exists for the sake of security apart from God and under Man’s own control and order. We see here in Cain’s Enoch the first attempt to centralize and consolidate. We will see it again as Babel rises. The city has a proclivity to seek to divinize itself functioning apart from God’s order and law.

We see it whenever man seeks to consolidate and centralize in order to create a social order where God need not apply. Ever since Cain’s city of Enoch and then from there Babel, the city is autonomous man’s greatest work. In the city, man will arise to the most-high. In the city, man can hide from God in the midst of denizens who likewise are there to hide from God. In the city, autonomous man can defy God as he crafts his own reality. The city is where all man’s efforts, inventions, technology, and theory, are leveraged in order to overthrow God.

It is the city that had given us Churches that have sought to bring God down to the level of fallen man. Keller’s work at New York Redeemer has been the Church of Babel. Scott Saul’s church in Nashville has been the Church of Babel. Andy Stanley’s church in Atlanta has been the Church of Babel. And on and on it goes. The powerful churches in the cities are commonly (though not always) Churches of Babel and the influence of those churches trickles all the way down so that churches in rural America likewise become Babel Churches.

On Pantheistic Oneness & the Mask as Mascot

If the next worldview movement is towards occult oneness as writers such as Peter Jones and Carl Teichrib suggest in their works then the mask is a fine symbol for this. The mask moves in sync with the Pantheistic God and may well be its perfect symbol as the mask liquidates and absorbs all differences and distinctions. Together as we wear the mask we are Borg… we are one.

The mask makes concrete the movement towards pantheistic oneness we have been pursuing in earnest at least since the French Revolution with its elimination of time-honored social order distinctions in favor of a rampant egalitarianism. One could even make the case that the move towards pantheistic oneness really began in the Garden of Eden. After all, what else could have been the temptation of the serpent “ye shall be as gods,” except the temptation towards a pantheistic oneness?

However, for our purposes, we will briefly trace out the urge towards pantheistic oneness for the past 100 years or so. The movement towards pantheistic oneness began in the obliteration of male covenantal headship first in the political realm and then in the family and broader cultural realm as women were first given the vote and then ushered into the heretofore male work world. This impulse has only expanded as formerly understood distinctions between Christian male and female God appointed functional natures have been incrementally eliminated in favor of absolute interchangeability between cogs and cogs. Women (using the term in embarrassing now that we are all one) now not only vote but they are heads of families, CEO’s, Generals as well as grunts in the military, First Responders, Ministers, and Heads of State. There is nothing that a man cannot do that a woman cannot do better – or so we are told.

Our move towards occult pantheistic oneness however didn’t halt there. The pantheistic oneness movement gained steam with the civil rights movement with its functional denial of race. (Something which most Reformed and Evangelicals genuflect before now.) Whereas our Christian Fathers almost universally believed that it was inadvisable to mix the races in marriage now we are told that there is no such thing as race and even that the more mixing in marriage the more godly we might become. Now we are being told that the more race-mixing we have in Churches the greater the evidence is that the church is healthy. The Church itself is supporting the movement towards Pantheistic oneness.

However, the pantheistic oneness movement did not stop here. Not long after the civil-rights movement arrived the environmental movement animated by this same pantheistic oneness. Earth day became a paean to the idea that man and nature were one. The environmental movement taught that there was a symbiotic relationship between man and nature and that we could only advance together was we appreciated that oneness.

Soon, pantheistic oneness progressed onward with the movement towards the elimination of biological sex as a consideration for marriage. Loving vs. Virginia quite logically gave way to Obergefell vs. Hodges as sure as day follows night. The great monad of oneness will cover all.

This pantheistic oneness now finds itself flexing its muscle as official state documents have been changed from reading “Father,” and “Mother” to “Parent 1” and “Parent 2,” so the oneness between parents can be appreciated. Consistent with that adoption agencies are moving away from placing children in homes with both Father and Mother making allowance that two sodomites or two lesbians could parent an adopted child just as well as the now passe distinctions once required when pantheistic oneness was on the prowl. And of course, we must not miss the whole transgender-ism movement which is the perfect expression of pantheistic oneness. It is anybody’s guess who or what Pat is.

This pantheistic oneness push early on found its way into fashion. My Grandmothers were born in 1905 and 1918 respectfully. They died in 1984 and 1995. I have zero memories of either one of them ever wearing anything but a dress in daily attire and that includes their work helping around the farm. A lady just did not wear anything except a dress. Seeing a woman in a dress today is more uncommon than common.

Another example. In the early 20^th century women did not smoke. Smoking was a male habit. However, through shrewd advertisement as coupled with the women’s suffrage movement smoking became common for liberated women. (Of course with the anti-smoking campaigns of 35 years ago comparatively speaking very few people – male or female – smoke.)

In closing, we return to the mask. The mask is the perfect mascot for a pantheistic oneness world. It is less bulky than a Mao Jacket and more convenient than a Phrygian cap. It covers us all and makes the sameness we have been arching towards since the French Revolution a reality. The mask eliminates the damnable distinctions that have made us – male and female – so ugly for so long.

Of course, this is all driven by the elimination of the Creator and creature distinction. If there is no difference between God and man then there can be no stable differences or distinction between man and man, man and woman, man and child, man and beast, and man and nature. The death of God requires us to be exactly where we find ourselves to be.

And herein you find the reason why it drives me to absolute rage when a “conservative” “minister” insists that “there is no such thing as race.” There is no way anyone could say that unless they were drinking out of the pool limned out above.

John Foster Dulles as a Christian Nationalist? They can’t be Serious

I think it was yesterday I posted on FB about the Seminary Prof interviewed by Thomas Kidd on “The Gospel Coalition” website.

This Seminary Prof is question is one John D. Wilsey, associate professor of church history at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the author most recently of God’s Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles. I lamented that someone could, with a straight face, write about John Foster Dulles as someone who could be described, per the headline of the article, as A Modernist Christian Nationalist. I have read one biography of John Foster Dulles and have come across him in several secondary sources. Everything I’ve read about both the Dulles boys is that they were screaming Internationalists and NOT nationalists.

Well, in God’s providence I was reading today about this putative Modernist Christian Nationalist named John Foster Dulles and this is what I came across;

“A crop of organizations emerged to advocate for world order. The World Federalist community, the one I tapped into in the millennium Forum, is rooted in this historical milieu.

Church groups too joined this chorus.

In 1940 the Federal Council of Churches formed the commission to study the Basis of a Just and Durable Peace. John Foster Dulles — later to become the US Sec’y of State — was the commission’s chairperson working with a board comprised of leaders from Harvard, Yale, and Chicago University, seminary Presidents and professors, and well-known ministers. Members of the Church Peace Union and the International Missionary council were part of the board too. The purpose: ‘To clarify church commitments FOR A NEW INTERNATIONAL ORDER, so that the latent power of Christianity can be galvanized into effective action.”

Carl Teichrib

The Game of Gods — p. 341

Honestly though, how seriously can we take any author who not only wants to call John Foster Dulles a Christian Nationalist but also desires to speak of Woodrow Wilson as a Christian Nationalist?

From the Dulles article linked above;

Dulles is an example of a particular kind of American Christian nationalism that arose during World War I. This Christian nationalism emerged from progressive figures like Woodrow Wilson. Wilsonian Christian nationalism was idealistic, committed to something often called “Christian civilization,” and animated by a sense of American Christian duty and mission to the world.

Hells bells, by next week Wilsey is going to be telling us that Leon Trotsky was also a great Nationalist.

It is laughable to call Dulles a Christian Nationalist — modernist or otherwise. John Foster Dulles supported the League of Nations (hardly a Nationalist organization). For Pete’s sake Dulles even helped write the preamble to the United Nations charter document — the sort of thing I’m sure one finds Nationalists doing all the time. Not only that but Dulles sponsored coups in Guatemala and Iran. Further Dulles was a key instrument in building the US Imperium that found International organizations built around the world. Finally, as if all that is not enough to prove my point that it is the sign of the presence of a lobotomy to refer to Dulles as a Nationalist we have the fact that Dulles drafted a public statement, in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombings of Japan, that called for international control of nuclear energy under United Nations auspices. Dulles, the nationalist wanted to strip ownership of the bomb from all nations and just give it to the pre-eminent International organization of the day. Calling John Foster Dulles a “Christian Nationalist” is on par with faulting Gloria Steinem for being too domesticated.

Now as we consider the Christian part of Christian Nationalist we also have to howl with peals of laughter. JFD can’t represent Christian Nationalism because by any orthodox standard JFD was not a Christian. John Foster Dulles’ Father was a minister in a mainline liberal denomination. John Foster Dulles thus grew up in the tradition of the Historical-Critical anti-supernaturalism and definitely not in the tradition of Christianity. (Though admittedly those two traditions have often been strange bed-mates in history.) John Foster Dulles even served as Harry Emerson Fosdick’s attorney in the Presbyterian Church trial that was convened to toss Fosdick out of the Presbyterian Church. Dulles was no Christian and therefore could not be a Christian Nationalist.

One can only speculate as to why in the world someone would try to make not only John Foster Dulles a Christian Nationalist but also would even go as far as to intimate that Woodrow Wilson (another son of the Presbyterian manse) was also a Christian Nationalist. Either one believes there is some deeper agenda here or one has to conclude that Seminary professors are profoundly stupid.

The Lord gave the word; Great was the company of those who published it

God has been pleased to allow me to know many wise men and in this post, I want to make you aware of some of them and where you can find their writings. These friends have served to be the iron in my life that sharpens my iron. My only regret is that they do not have a larger platform because what these chaps are writing exceeds in quality anything you will find anywhere else on the web, in journals, in books, or in weekly publications. Like myself, they write on a host of subjects — everything from theology proper to anthropology to Cultural Marxism to sociology to exegesis to history and everything in between. Some would label us “renaissance men.” We are generalists. Think of us as filling the role of the country doctor who didn’t know any single medical field exhaustively but who knew enough about every field to point you in the right direction to learn more about how to be cured. I prefer to think of us as the lesser successors of greater men like Dabney, and Rushdoony, who write with the salt and satire of Mencken. We aspire someday to hold the hem of those men’s garments. We hope someday to be worthy to be counted among the number of men like Dabney and Rushdoony as well as men like Christopher Dawson, T. S. Eliot, Turretin, Luther, Calvin, Tozer, and many many others. We along with others who I have not had the pleasure of calling “friend” are the continuation of the Old West. In the words of C. S. Lewis, we are the Old Narnians who have not yet be snuffed out. The fact that we can’t get a publishing gig proves that there is an effort to silence our voices but if being silenced is the price of being right then we will gladly pay that price knowing that if nobody else reads us it is enough to know we are writing before heaven’s gaze.

One thing we all have in common is that we are Reformed Dissidents. We are Calvinists who, in the best tradition of Protesting Protestants, are raising a clamor so that people might be motivated to remove the stench that is covering the contemporary Reformed denominations in America and the West.

I will list their names and then provide a link for each one. From there you can find their other writings. Their names are as follows,

Mark Chambers

Unfortunately, Mark does not have his own writing platform. You can find several of his pieces here on Iron Ink. Mark as a layman was to the Reformed Faith what Pete Maravich was to the NBA — they both were ahead of their time and so their talents were not as appreciated as they would have been if they had come one generation later. Mark writes with such perspicacity that it inflicts pain upon those who he has taken up his pen to correct. Also … woe to the man who Mark has decided is being disingenuous in conversation. What was perspicacity immediately turns to thunderclaps of satire.

Dan Brannan

https://tribaltheocrat.com/

You can find Dan’s work at Tribal theocrat but don’t begin reading unless you’re willing to up your game as a reader. Dan will send you to the dictionary and as a reader, you should be thankful for that. Dan’s ability to connect the dots between what might have been seen as matters unconnected is peerless. Dan also has the added advantage of being the best Editorial cartoonist in an age that where the market of Editorial cartoonists is the size of a postage stamp. If Dan had been born in 1930 he would have been a household name just by virtue of his Editorial Cartoons. You can learn a great deal dear reader by reading Brannan

Davis Carlton

Davis’ work is also at Tribal Theocrat. Davis has the ability to take complex matters and simplifying them so that they are easier to understand. He has done yeoman’s work on demonstrating the biblical foundation of ethnocentrism. Any writer that can make the complex understandable is a writer one wants to continue to return to over and over. Read Davis and by reading Davis learn how to craft an argument so that it can be easily understood.

Michael Fort

Michael also writes at Tribal theocrat. Michael is an Engineer by training and it shows up in his writing. Michael’s writing is meticulous and precise and once that meticulousness and precision have been followed the conclusion Michael is driving you towards is inescapable. If one disagrees with Michael’s conclusions after reading Michael’s arguments their only recourse is ad-hominem — and I’ve seen plenty of people go that route after reading Michael.

It was Michael’s writing in early March of 2020 that instantly convinced me that I would keep the Church’s doors open for worship as Michael laid out the argument that the numbers that the FEDS were throwing around in terms of the dangers of the ChiCom virus were a statistical impossibility.

Addie Schlebush

Addie is a South African who has traveled the world. You can find his writing here.

Pactum Institute

Addie has a terminal degree yet because of his Christian worldview convictions Addie has been shunned by the WOKE academic world. Addie writes with the care that you would expect to find in a research expert with academic training. He footnotes carefully and you can easily see the intellectual origins of his convictions. Addie has paid the price for being a Biblical Christian. More Christians should read him.

Colby Malsbury

Colby writes at Tribal Theocrat

Colby writes with a punch. He has the ability to make the reader heartily laugh as he exposes the absolute silliness of his opponent’s positions. It is said that Satan fears mockery more than anything else. If that is true then Satan and his minions fear Colby’s essays. Of all those listed here, Colby is probably closer to Mencken than anyone else given the bite that one will consistently find in Colby’s writing. If one can’t convince the devil, shaming him will have to do. Colby shames the devil in his articles.

Darrell Dow

You can find Darrell’s writing in several places. One such place is,

Essays and Articles

Darrell writes in one of my favorite styles and that is compact and pithy. Darrell gets right to the point, states the point, gives the implication of the point, and then gives you a certain conclusion. Darrell’s writing then requires time to unpack it in order to find more implications than what lies on the surface. This means that even though Darrell’s pieces are compact and pithy you have to read them a couple of times to get all out of them that lay within the text. Like all these writers Darrell’s writing is lucid and so easily understood. There is nothing more a writer cherishes than being easily understood.

Stuart DiNenno

Stuart writes at the links below. I have given you two links in order to push a particularly good piece that Stuart has recently written.

https://www.christianityapplied.org/inside-the-mind-of-the-conspiracy-denier/

https://www.christianityapplied.org/a-biblical-view-of-conspiracy-and-the-christians-duty/

Stuart like all here mention has grown weary with the modern Reformed Church and so has taken upon himself to try, by God’s grace to do something about the mess the current Reformed Church is. Stuart’s writing is comprehensive inasmuch as he brings all possible strands together in order to substantiate whatever point he is making. If you are going to disagree with Stuart you are going to have to do your homework to find where his comprehensiveness has failed.

All of these men except for Colby in the nether regions of Canada and Addie who lives in South Africa I have had the privilege of breaking bread with. All of these men are my friends and I can not think of a better group of friends to be privileged to have their backs. Do yourself a favor and read these chaps. It would be more healthy for you than the claptrap you will find on most Reformed sites today.

Interposition

The doctrine of interposition is normally applied to lesser magistrates intervening against the wickedness of greater magistrates and so overturning their rule.

Three things here

1.) In these united States it is ipso facto an error to think of the FEDS as the greater Magistrates. The FEDS are not automatically the greater magistrates. As such if and when a state magistrate had to step in to contravene a decision from the Federal magistrate this would not be an example of interposition since often the state magistrate is the greater magistrate vis-a-vis the Federal magistrate.

2.) When it is the case that there are no lesser magistrates in the civil social realm to practice the doctrine of interposition that does not mean that there are no longer options. When there are no lesser magistrates to embrace and practice interposition then interposition would seem to require a magistrate from a different jurisdiction finally stepping up to adhere and practice this doctrine. This means if there are no lesser magistrates in the civil-social realm to stop the evil of wicked magistrates — perhaps because of fear or timidity — then interposition can still take place as magistrates from other jurisdictions are now responsible to place themselves as God’s spokesman between the wicked magistrates and the people.

These other magistrates from other jurisdictional realms that must step forward to practice interposition where there are no lesser magistrates to practice interposition in the civil social realm are the Clergy and Elders if any exist. If no lesser magistrate from the civil-social realm will interposit themselves between the people and the greater magistrates then the Clergy and Elders must practice the doctrine of interposition as magistrates coming from a different jurisdictional realm to straighten out a jurisdictional realm that had gone completely rebellious against God and His law-order. Clergy and Elders must rebel against the rule of the greater and lesser magistrates in order to be faithful to God and His law-word.

I believe that this is the point we are coming to and there may be little hope even in this because so few clergy members are willing to step up and resist wickedness from wicked magistrates.

We see this kind of action in the OT with Elijah as a member of the Prophet class practicing interposition against Jezebel and Ahab. As such, there is precedent for what I have laid out above.

3.) Following John Knox, I believe that if neither the lesser magistrates in the civil-social realm will not interposit themselves against greater magistrates for God’s glory and for the protection of the people and if clergy and Elders will not, in turn, interposit themselves against wicked greater and lesser magistrates then the responsibility for interposition falls to the jurisdictional realm of the family and faithful fathers must step up to practice interposition.