Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Jeffrey Epstein & The Long Honorable Tradition Of Our Government Not Lying To Us

Currently, it is all the buzz to mock and laugh at those who are trying to tell us that there is no there, there in the Jeffrey Epstein saga. The attempt to tell the American population who know what time it is that Jeffrey Epstein had no “list” of clients. If there is no list of clients then why is Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell in prison? I mean, if there is no clients list then how can it be proven that Ghislaine was procuring underage talent for the high profile perverts like Bill Gates, Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and countless others? If there was no client list why did Epstein “kill himself?” If there was nothing smelly about Epstein then why was Alex Acosta, “told to back off [Jeffrey] Epstein” when he was a Department of Justice prosecutor “because he (Epstein) belonged to intelligence.”

Of course what is happening now with Trump, Bondi, Patel and Bongino’s announcement that there is nothing further to pursue in terms of Epstein is just gas-lighting in its most concentrated form.

However, we did not get to this place of immense distrust of our leadership overnight. This has been a very long time coming. This pathological lying by government officials to their constituents has been going on before the citizenry ever came to know it. In the last 40 year or so, those who still remember how to read have feasted on revisionist history books that expose the lies we have been told by our federal government for scores of decades. One of those books, I finished a couple days ago. That books was “Stalin’s War” by Sean McMeekin, and it is just one more book that brings all the receipts on how often we have been lied to by the American government. Lie after lie. One could as easily pick up any number of books on different time periods in US history to discover how much and how often the American citizenry has been lied to. One could read M. Stanton Evan’s, “Stalin’s Agents,” or his “Blacklisted by History,” to see how often the American public was lied to. One could pick up and read Herbert Hoover’s “The Theme is Freedom,” and discover the repeated lies. One could read the work of Jim MacGregor as partnering with either John O’Dowd or Gerry Docherty. One could read Michael Collins Piper’s “Final Judgment,” to see the lies piled upon lies told to us, by the federal government on the JFK assassination. Stinnet and D’Angelo have written books detailing how FDR, Stimson, and Marshall knew the Japs were coming and left the door open for them to come in the Pearl Harbor debacle. You can read Tolstoy about the lies told to us about the forced repatriation of Soviet citizens during WW II. You can read James Bacque chronicle the lies about Allied murder of unarmed German prisoners after WW II in his book “Other Losses.”

For decades our government could get away with these lies (and I’ve only scratched the surface of what I have read) but with the democratization of information that has arrived with the internet more and more people are finding out about these lies and having found out about these past lies they are not having anything to do with the current lies. I guess you could call it a national resolve to no longer be gaslit. To be sure, there are always going to be a large percentage people who think FOX, CNN, MSNBC etc. are “telling us the truth,” but more and more of us have dropped out of that echo chamber and have chosen instead to do our own research.

Now, to be sure, it is not only the federal government that has excelled at this kind of lying. The institutional church likewise have lied like troopers over the decades to its rank and file. Gary North’s “Finger’s Crossed” spends somewhere around a 1000 pages chronicling the lies told by the Presbyterian clergy and their denomination. When read in combination with Machen’s “Christianity & Liberalism,” one sees that not only the FEDS but also the Church has routinely lied to those whom it is supposed to be penultimately serving.

In this context… a context that had building and bubbling for decades and decades arises the Epstein perv saga. Epstein, clearly was serving a high clientele list of pervs. Further, the hints at the existence of these pervs have been around for decades. Retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson in the early 80s was out warning about pervs in high places. During the Reagan administration a huge story broke, that was later killed, about the connection between Boys Town and pervs in the Reagan White House procuring boys. This was known as the Franklin scandal. We were finally all assured that it was a carefully crafted fake story. However, this kind of story keeps popping up. We all remember the perv case of the aptly named Congressman, Anthony Wiener. Wiener was caught sexting minor. Who knows what he wasn’t caught doing. All this sexual perv dynamic came up again in the 2016 election with the whole Ping Pong Pizza episode and the strange accusations against the Podesta brothers. Have you looked at the paintings that decorated their homes? Then there was the creepy Spirit cooker Marina Abramovic who was also a big story during that election cycle.

Folks, our elites are not right in the head.

Now, combine all this with the fact that we know that children are being sex trafficked on a scale that is beyond our ability to comprehend and it is not a stretch to believe that we are being ruled by perverts.

And now we are being told that Jeffrey Epstein was just some poor Jew that was clearly connected to the Mossad and Ehud Barak who while in the sexual blackmail business did not have a client’s list.

Yeah … just like the Lusitania was not carrying military ordinance for the Brits during World War I but was savagely, without cause, sunk by the disgusting German U-boat.

Oh… that was another lie told by the FEDS.

Francis & McAtee On The Modern Institutional Church

“What is indisputably happening today is the deliberate extirpation from Christianity of the European heritage by its enemies within the churches. The institutional Christianity that flourishes today is no longer the same religion as that practiced by Charlemagne and his successors, and it can no longer support the civilization they formed. Indeed, organized Christianity today is the enemy of the West and the race that created it.”

Sam Francis

I would go further than Francis. I would say that the Institutional Christianity that flourishes today is not only not the same religion practiced by Charlemagne, it is not even the same religion as practiced by Dabney, Machen, Van Til, and O T. Allis. It is not the same Christianity embraced by Bavinck, Vos, Murray, and Gordon H. Clark. Those eight men would have had disagreements between themselves but the disagreements they would have had pale in comparison to the disagreements that exists as between modern “Reformed” “Christianity” now and that which they practiced only a wee bit over 100 years ago.

It is an embarrassment what passes now as Christianity among the Reformed. We have just become our own version of a Pentecostalism that is untethered to any historical reality, relying instead on a more rational and polished “moving of the Spirit.”

I can only say that I rejoice that I am not longer even loosely associated with the Institutional Reformed Church as it is incarnated among the putative “White-Hat” denominations.

God’s Remarkable Providence #2

God sets the solitary in families;
He brings out those who are bound into prosperity;
But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

Psalm 68:6

In the last entry talking about God’s remarkable providence and His ability to do the unexpected in the lives of His people in order to keep them and protect them we looked at events in 1988-1989. With this next entry we consider 1976-1977 when I was still yet what today we call “a teenager.” Interesting thing about the word “teenager” is that is didn’t even exist before 1950. Sometime in the 1950s the word and idea was created in order to market to another niche of people with the purpose of capturing more of their disposable income.

Anyway, I had just turned 17 when, because of my own sullenness and rebelliousness I had managed to find myself without a living situation. I still had a year of high school to complete and even though I was promised by my Father that he would allow me to finish my last year at the school system I had been in my entire life that promise had been suddenly pulled. He eventually cast me out of his home because “I was a troubled adolescent.” I tried living with my Mother for while and even began my Senior year in that school system but I was not a happy camper in that new school environment and due to my own fault I had worn out my welcome in that context.

Instability was the theme of the day at that time. I had lived almost my whole first 16 years at one address in one home. From that time forward, over the course of the next year I bopped around living in eight different locations – most of them house trailers – usually, but not always, with one of my parents.

On a Sunday during October of 1976 we were back in Sturgis and I was attending the evening service. Most of my friends were in this church and being around them was a refuge. I wish I could say I was in Church because I was such a righteous and holy teenager but that would be a unrighteous lie.

I was supposed to meet my Mother after the evening service in order to go 2 hours north to her new living situation. However, the chap who worked with the youth group choir (we had a large one) decided that he needed to counsel me and strongly insisted that I come to his house after the service so he could counsel me. Even though I did not ask for any “counseling” he apparently was compelled to “help” me. I’m sure his intentions were good.

His house was just a short walk behind the Church and as my ride had not yet arrived I decided to yield to his insistence. I remember nothing of that counseling time except the odd white spittle that, for some reason, seemed to collect at the corner of his mouth while talking. I remember wondering, “how is that possible?” Remember, I said I was a rebellious and sullen kid.

Long story short …. I missed my ride. Folks were still milling around the church, once I had made the short walk back, and one family, noticing I was all dressed up with no place to go, offered to take me home that evening. That is where I stayed for several days but it was not a permanent solution as that young couple with young children were having their own marriage problems.

The ministers at the Church got more involved serving as liaisons with my folks. I have no idea what those discussions involved, but soon enough I found yet another family from the church I knew offering to let me live with them for my final year of High School. This was God’s remarkable providence. I was not an easy lad. Indeed, I was damaged goods. This family who took me in was young with a baby, a toddler and two young daughters. Yet, out of the largesse of kindness in their hearts and out of a sense of Christian responsibility John and Roseann took me in for my Senior of High school.

It was remarkable providence also because the court system at that time felt they had been cheated by not being involved in the decision making process as to where I was going to live. I remember a visit with the “Friend of the Court” at the new home I was now a member of (interestingly enough that home was right across the street from the county courthouse) and during that meeting the “Friend of the Court” said directly to me, “The court does not think that a 17 year old should be the one making the decision about where he should live.” It was not the first time I had engaged this surly “Friend of the Court,” and I curtly responded that “I was not aware that the court spent much time in the practice of thinking.” Anyway, it was God’s remarkable providence again that found the court leaving me alone for the next 12 months.

It was only years and years later that it registered with me what a remarkable providence all of this was. I desperately needed stability and stability meant being in the familiar context of church and school. I honestly do not think I would have graduated High School if the Davis family had not, in God’s remarkable providence, opened their home to me.

I was still a messed up kid. When the following September rolled around I was miles away from being ready for college – but I was more ready for that than I would have been if it was not for John & Roseann. I floundered terribly in my first two years of college (that’s another story for another time) but if not for God’s remarkable providence I would not have even made it to University at all.

When I look back and realize all that they had to sacrifice in order to take me in I am amazed by their generosity but I am even more amazed at God’s remarkable providence. What makes all this even more amazing is that today if a young family like the Davis family came to me and asked my counsel about taking in a troubled youth for his Senior year in High school for one year I know without a shadow of doubt, I would say, “Don’t do it.”

I am an older man now and as I look back I am astonished over and over again at all the occasions where God’s remarkable providence demonstrated itself in vibrant living colors.

Thomism And Its Sacred vs. Secular Divide

We continue to deal with the problem, in our current setting, of people in the “conservative” “Reformed” “Churches” who desire to relativize the Scriptures by creating a hard sacred vs. secular divide. This has been most handily and readily captured by Dr. D. G. Hart’s constant blathering about the need to live the “hyphenated life.” By this, Dr. D. G. Hart means, that some of life is to be placed and lived in one container that is dualistically distinct from other portions of life that are placed in lived in a different container. These separate containers are called “sacred” and “secular.”

This mindset is being openly pursued again especially by the Thomists who seek to neatly divide life into a natural realm and a sacred realm. Dr. Stephen Wolfe is leading the way in this resurgence of classical Thomistic thought as among Reformed thought leaders. However, there are variants that exist today on this Thomistic schematic and the variants are so pronounced that the fellow travelers in the Thomistic thought world are often at each other’s throats.

There are two variants to the straight up Thomism that is practiced by Dr. Wolfe and his followers. The first is not seen as much though a recent publication by Willem Ouweneel, “The World Is Christ’s: A Critique of Two Kingdoms Theology,” was an example of the thought of Herman Dooyeweerd, a Dutch Theologian who lived from 1894-1977.  In Dooyeweerdian thought (Cosmonomic-ism) reality was dichotomized into variant modal spheres each having their own distinct laws. In such a manner theology proper remains a distinct discipline largely unrelated to other modal realms of reality (eg. Law, Politics, Art, Education, Sociology, etc.) which instead find their own trajectory as anchored in their own distinct modal beginning points. The second variant to straight up 100 proof Thomism is what is being offered by the Escondido Westminster West chaps. This has come to be known as Radical Two Kingdom theology (R2K). In R2K, the beginning inspiration, Meredith Kline, dichotomized and dispensationalized the canonical authority of Scripture by positing that both between and within the Old and New covenant discontinuity was to be presupposed when reading the whole text as opposed to continuity. In such a fashion sundry dichotomies were invented in order to sustain a theology that demanded Hart’s “Hyphenated life.”

Dr. Greg Bahnsen analyzed Kline’s “theology” in this manner;

“In the latter case (speaking of Kline’s offerings), the moral authority of certain elements of Scripture is arbitrarily dismissed on the basis of separating (without conceptual cogency or exegetical justification) faith-norms from life-norms, individual norms from communal norms, and ‘common grace’ principles from ‘eschatological intrusion’ principles – implying that the most explicit biblical directions about political ethics may not be utilized today.” 

Dr. Greg Bahnsen 
The Structure of Biblical Authority

In both Dooyeweerd and in Kline a variant of Thomistic thinking is applied that leaves men as being the autonomous and sovereign authority in determining standards and principles for all areas of life except for the portions of life designated as “sacred.”

It is humorous to see these different schools engaged in their intramural struggles over which variant of Thomism is going to be embraced. Ouweneel wrote his book against R2K and R2K is forever denouncing Dr. Stephen Wolfe and his straight up 100 proof Thomism. Wolfe vs. R2K is especially entertaining because they both and each appeal to the same Natural Law standard in order to prove that the other is in error over their respective uses of Natural Law.

Of course the non-Thomistic variant that wars against both Cosmonomic theology and Radical Two Kingdom theology is that Christianity that was embraced by the Reformers as seen in Scriptures, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and as seen in the Sermons by John Calvin from the book of Deuteronomy. This line of thought has been dubbed “Theonomy” or “Reconstructionism” but it would be better to just label it as “Historic Christianity.” Biblical Christians deny a hard sacred sacred vs. secular divide insisting to the contrary that all of life is Holy unto God while at the same time admitting that what might be called “the common things of life” are made holy when they are handled in terms of God’s authority and revelation.

The correction offered by Biblical Christianity to the antinomianism inherent in all forms of Thomism is that all things are to be regulated and legislated according to God’s Word. In every area of life the Christian is to say, “In thy light we see light (Ps. 36:9).” There is no area of life where God’s Word, rightly handled and understood, should not be brought to bear in order to inform and guide. In God’s light we see light not only for ecclesiastical matters, but also for family life, political order, educational ordering, jurisprudence and law, as well as every other area of life.

Biblical Christians understand that as long as we continue to refuse God’s explicit Word on morality — a morality that informs the making of laws by our legislators — the result will be what we are now seeing; “And each man did what was right in his own eyes.” There must be a standard and Biblical Christianity from Ælfred the Great’s “Doom Book,” to Calvin’s sermons on Deuteronomy, to the Westminster standards, to the early colonial government laws in Puritan New England, that standard has been God’s revelation in the Scriptures.

Now it must be conceded to Thomistic views that for centuries Natural Law theory held sway in the Church — both Rome and later the Reformed church. However, I contend that only worked because the Western Christianized populations and leadership were all already presupposing some form of a Christian world and life view. When one advocates for Thomistic Natural Law theories while dwelling among a people who presuppose Christianity then naturally enough Natural Law is going to teach Christian morality and ethics. However, after over a couple hundred years of Enlightenment thinking — an Enlightenment thinking that is itself now breaking down under its own presuppositions — we no longer live in a time where Natural Law can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Natural Law will not provide a code wherein everyone will sign on. Enlightenment thinking has gone to seed producing early in the 2oth century Nihilism and Existentialism to now evolving in post-modernism and post-post modernism. The dialectical movement of the Enlightenment from mystical irrational apprehensions of reality (Romanticism, Kantianism, Existentialism, post-modernism) to rationalistic apprehensions of reality (Deism, Rationalism, Common Sense Realism) have demonstrated that only a return to an epistemology that is grounded on God’s revelation can fix what is broken about Western and formerly Christian man.

So, as Isaiah said long ago; “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.”

God’s Remarkable Providence – #1

All of those who are Christians, I think, have times and events in our lives that when we look back on them we clearly see the hand of God orchestrating and superintending. It is good that we remember these because they remind us of the goodness of the Lord Christ and because they serve as encouragements when we face other tight situations.

In the Psalms we see this kind of thing often. In the Psalms this is called “recital theology.” These are texts where the Psalmist is reciting some greatness of God in the past often in order to give him hope for the future.

Psalm 136 is one such example where the Psalmist practices recital theology. He remembers God’s previous provision to the end of being confident in God for the future;

to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
His love endures forever.
11 and brought Israel out from among them
His love endures forever.
12 with a mighty hand and outstretched arm;
His love endures forever.

13 to him who divided the Red Sea[a] asunder
His love endures forever.
14 and brought Israel through the midst of it,
His love endures forever.
15 but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea;
His love endures forever.

16 to him who led his people through the wilderness;
His love endures forever.

I have tried to teach from the pulpit that we should all have our own recital theology. We should all have the ability to remember God’s past goodness and provision so that we never despair of the Lord Christ’s ability to deliver us from present trials.

As such, I’d like to do a series of these where we (and sometimes just I, before Jane came along) saw the Spirit of God provide in ways I could never have expected or anticipated at the time.

The first one I like to recall is when we took up our first ministerial charge.

The year was 1988. I had been finished with Seminary since December of 1987. I had sent out a few sending resumes looking to see if I could find some interest but to no avail. I was operating without any institutional support and so I did not have a natural network or structure to work within. Further, I was still doing a good deal of reading as I was moving from Arminianism to a Reformed understanding.

I was still working part time at United Airlines (about 30 hours a week) but it was clear that something had to change. We were living in a really nasty situation (a hovel that we shared with mice, palmetto bugs, termites, and bees — depending on the time of year). It was, as you can imagine, very inexpensive (150.00 dollars a month) but it was the kind of place one lives in when one is scraping buy in Seminary. It was not the kind of place where one settles in for long term.

Laura-Jane had been born in July of 1986. She had experienced more than one bout of getting stung up by bees while sleeping. However, by 1988 we learned that Jane was with child with Anna and fitting four in this living situation was something we could have done if we had to but certainly not ideal.

The quarters we were living in, there in South Carolina had only one room that was air conditioned (and SC can get oppressively hot in the summer) and that air conditioned room was due to the kindness of the Church we were attending at the time. They saw Jane’s condition when she was pregnant with Laura and bought us a small unit and installed it in our bedroom. We were very thankful for that kindness of that small church.

Similarly, in the winter time we had one small heater in the house that could not heat the whole house and we had to keep a portable kerosene heater running to keep whatever other room in the house we were occupying warm.

This was our situation in 1988. We knew we had to change things but we were, by all observations seemingly stuck.

The God’s providence and provision descended upon us. A chap who was a couple years ahead of me in Seminary and who I had known just a wee bit was pastoring a church in rural South Carolina about 45 minutes from where we lived. I had lost touch with him and didn’t even know what had become of him after he graduated Seminary. Come to find out he had been filling the pulpit at a PCA country church in Longtown, SC. That Church had been a vibrant church before experiencing a church split before my friend arrived and so it was experiencing hard times. My friend, who was affiliated with the PCA, had some trouble getting fully ordained in the PCA (that’s a story in itself but is ancillary to this story) and was told he could not fill the pulpit of this small rural church until the PCA ordained him. The refusal of his ordination was political and he was not happy with the PCA and the Church as well was not pleased with the PCA. The Church believed that the man was capable and orthodox and that the Presbytery was being a further hindrance to their ability, as a Church, to get back on track after a devastating split.

Before he left that congregation the Elders at Longtown Presbyterian asked him to recommend a name for them to phone in order to secure pulpit supply. For reasons that to this day amaze me, he recommended me and gave them my phone contact. The reason this amazed me is that I didn’t really know John that well. We had had a few interactions over the course of time but we were more acquaintances than friends. I was amazed (and remain amazed almost forty years later) that he gave the Elders my name and that he would recommend me.

Well, the Elders phoned me in September of 1988 and asked me to come fill their pulpit one week. I did so. At that point they asked me to come the following Sunday and I did. Pretty soon I was out at Longtown SC filling the pulpit weekly and doing visitations with the Elders in various homes.

By March or so, they asked me to consider coming to live out in Longtown. I told them that really wasn’t financially feasible. A few weeks later they said they wanted to make it financially feasible by purchasing and bringing a brand new double wide trailer and sitting it on a portion of the 80 acres the Church owned. They also said they wanted to add a substantial front porch so we could entertain folks on the porch.

There was just one hitch in all this and it disappointed me that I had to admit it to them. The hitch was that I was still figuring matters out in terms of being Reformed vs. being Arminian. I had grown up Wesleyan and my experience, before moving to South Carolina, was all Reformed churches were liberal. Now while in Seminary, I learned that was not true but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t still struggling to get my head around Reformed theology. I mean, I had taken the required classes in Seminary. I had done the reading required. I did well in the classes but I still was not convinced. In point of fact I was not convinced of either Arminianism or Reformed theology at that point.

And I had to tell them that. I had to tell them that I couldn’t try to be ordained in the PCA because I just was not there yet. I thought that would be the end of their pursuit. It wasn’t. The Elders said to me when I told them this, “Look, we’ve been listening to your preaching now for a few months. We are confident that you are headed in a direction you don’t even realize yet. If you promise to keep studying and reading on this subject, we would still like to consider you to come. You don’t need to worry about denominational issues because we are leaving the PCA. Our departure from the PCA has nothing to do with you. We are leaving whether you come or not.”

So, seeing this as God’s open door we showed up in our new home about a month after Anna was born in 1989 and we stayed there for over six years. I kept my job at United and commuted the 45 minute drive and worked as a tentmaker for those six years. I continued to keep up my reading and eventually God convinced me that Reformed theology alone was consistent with His revelation of Himself. Before we left Longtown Presbyterian we even had our three children baptized in the context of infant Baptism (though they were all toddlers at the time).

The new home was glorious, compared to where we had been living. The children had all kinds of room to run and play. Eventually the Church put up a playhouse for the children and a out building for storage for us. All of this Lord Christ dropped in our laps in the most unexpected manner possible. His provision came out of nowhere. It was not the first time and it would not be the last but it is one of those times where the impact of it remains beyond my ability to reckon.

The church also paid us a small stipend weekly while we were there. Remember, they had just gone through a split themselves and so there was not a lot of money for a salary. Some of those first few Sundays, I remember we would have only 9 people in the service — most of them widows. The group that split off built a PCUSA chapel just down the road about 5 miles. We would eventually build up to about 25 people on any given Sunday before the door closed at Longtown and the Lord Christ brought us to Michigan. Longtown, Presbyterian is still open today. They are again now part of the PCA. I know very little about how all that came about but I rejoice to know that the Church continues to glorify God where it is at.

And almost 40 years later I marvel at God’s hand of provision for Jane and I and the children (Anthony came along in 1990). Those years at Longtown were a challenge but we never doubted that tiny congregation and community loved us. It was hard on us when the time came, because United Airlines was closing its operation in Columbia, SC, we had to leave that congregation and that place.

Most of those folks we ministered to their in Longtown almost 40 years ago have gone to be with Christ. I think if Jane and I just showed up today for worship at Longtown Presbyterian no one would recognize us because the congregation is a different congregation than the one we served. I think there might be one or two who might recognize us, but on the whole we could slip in and out on a given Sunday just being visitors in the area who decided to visit one random Sunday.

However, these many years later I remain amazed at how the Lord Christ opened up a situation that I could not have foreseen in a million years. I am amazed at His work not only in providing a home for the McAtee family but also in distinctly placing us in the ministry. All of this is part of my recital theology and I return to it over and over again when I am in a sticky wicket that I have no idea how I am going to get out of.

And then six years later, when we moved to Michigan the Lord Christ did it all over again.

But that is a different chapter in my recital theology and is for another time.