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.

Independence Day Potpourri

The humanist pagan historians desire to give Thomas Paine all the props for energizing the American mind when it came to the necessary rebellion against the Crown but the Biblical Christian knows that the real literary work that shaped the Colonial mind on this subject was Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos by authors anonymous though history points to Huguenots Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1549-1623) and Hubert Languet (1518-1581).

John Adams said this book was “as prevalent and important as Thomas Paine.” It certainly had far more appeal to the Christian population. The point to keep in mind though is that Paine was writing out of a Atheist Christ hating worldview while the authors of the Vindiciae were writing out of a Christian worldview. Paine belonged to the French Revolution while the authors of the Vindiciae belonged to Christian counter-Revolution. The argument in the Vindiciae is grounded in scripture, articulate, and thorough, though even today the pacifist Reformed types curl up into a fetal position when its ideas are promulgated by someone from the pulpit.

One can be sure that there would have been no American Revolution were it not for that famous and now unknown Vindiciae Contra Tyrannnos (Vindication against Tyrants).

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Keep in mind during our celebration of Independence day that this could never have happened in America were it not for those damn Calvinists and their clergy. It was the black robed regiment that rang the tocsin for freedom across the land at that time. In their sermons they rallied the people to the battle against English tyranny. It was the Reformed pulpits that kept the rank and file informed about the Usurpations of the British parliament against colonial rule. It was Presbyterian and Congregational clergy up and down the coast and into the hinterlands that informed their congregants that rules must conform themselves to God’s higher law and if those rulers did not then they were not to be counted rulers.

There could not have been a 1776 if not for John Calvin. World renowned German Historian Leopold Van Ranke could write,

“John Calvin was virtually the founder of America.”

Which explains why I hate today’s Reformed clergy so thoroughly.

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The War for American Independence was never really a Revolution. It was to be more precise a counter-revolution. It was a completely different creature than the French Revolution pursued a few years later. The American Revolution was premised upon the Christian principles associated with the understanding that when a Covenant Head (King George III) violates covenant then the partner to the covenant (the Colonies) are no longer obligated to obey and have the place to throw off their former covenant partner (King George III). The rebellion of the American colonies was a Christian rebellion based on political covenantalism. The French Revolution on the other hand was based on Atheistic principles and was in pursuit of throwing off God.

This is seen in the various watchwords of the two Revolutions.

In the colonies there were mottoes like; “No King, but King Jesus,” and “Obedience to tyrants is disobedience to God.”

In the French Revolution the mottoes were; “No God, No King,” and “We will not be satisfied until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

There were two very different types of Revolutions. The American Revolution was in pursuit of restored Christian order whereas the French Revolution was in pursuit of a humanist order.

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This is seen in the various watchwords of the two Revolutions.

In the colonies there were mottoes like; “No King, but King Jesus,” and “Obedience to tyrants is disobedience to God.”

In the French Revolution the mottoes were; “No God, No King,” and “We will not be satisfied until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

There were two very different types of Revolutions. The American Revolution was in pursuit of restored Christian order whereas the French Revolution was in pursuit of a humanist order.

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Gary T. Amos in his book, “Defending the Declaration” argues that the Declaration of Independence was a supremely Christian document. He makes a convincing case. You should give that book a read and see why the idea that the Declaration of Independence was an Enlightenment document is pure myth.

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Ephraim Brevard was the author of the Mecklenburg Declaration of 1775. When Thomas Jefferson sat down and penned the “Declaration of Independence” there is little doubt that Jefferson did so with Brevard’s Mecklenburg Declaration at his right hand lifting whole phrases from the Mecklenburg Declaration and putting them into the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, it is no stretch in the least to say that Jefferson plagiarized Brevard in much of the Declaration of Independence. Compare to the two documents if you doubt me.

Now, the interesting thing about Brevard is that he was a Presbyterian deacon and the interesting thing about the Mecklenburg Declaration is that a large percentage who signed that document were Presbyterians.

So… all this calls into question the idea that the Declaration of Independence is an “Enlightenment document” that is dependent upon the ideological world of the rationalist thinkers.

There is more Presbyterianism in the Declaration of Independence than anyone wants to admit?

Doubt me? Read Gary T. Amos’ “Defending the Declaration.”

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When the Declaration of Independence spoke about “All men being created equal,” the notion of equality there was not a philosophical abstraction. The sentiment was not that of the later French Revolution that all men were or should be of the same status and ability. The idea that Jefferson was communicating was that all Englishmen were created equal with the implication being that one set of Englishmen (those in England) could not dictatorially rule over another set of Englishmen (those in the Colonies). Jefferson was communicating one of the main beefs of the Colonialists and that was that the Colonialist were not being treated as those who has the same rights and privileges as other Englishmen.

How do I know this?

Well, one hint to this is found in the Declaration of Independence itself where Jefferson complains of the King;

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

Note the word “savages” above. If Jefferson was really using the idea of “equality” there the way that the WOKE crowd use “equality” today do you think he would have referred to his equals as “savages?”

Obviously Jefferson did not believe that the Indian savages were his equal.

Equality in the Declaration of Independence referred to only the idea that all Englishmen were equal.

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The American war for Independence was in all actuality a war for Independence on the behalf of 13 separate sovereign Colonies. The Colonists at the time looked upon one another as foreigners. The Virginians did not think of those living in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania as fellow countrymen and vice-versus.

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When the Crown brought English troops to the Colonies the custom was to quarter troops in the houses of the Colonialists upon demand. There was no negotiating. If the Crown put a couple soldiers in your home you were responsible to provide room and board for that soldier. Also, that soldier was obviously untouchable and the result of their status meant that many a Colonialist head of household had his wife and/or daughters molested by the quartered English troops. This issue was so important that it was included in the reasons listed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as to a reason why Independence was being declared and explains the third amendment in the Bill of Rigts.

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On this Independence Day do try to keep in mind that these united States won Independence from Britain in 1776 only to have their Independence taken away in 1865. You must understand that the “United States” as a consolidated, monopolistic government is a fiction invented by Lincoln and the Radical Republicans and instituted as a matter of policy at gunpoint and at the expense of some 600,000 American lives during 1861—1865 and at the expense of enslaving white and black men together to the FEDS.

In this vein this is why as combined with the greater reason that they surrendered on the 4th of July, 1863 that the residents of Vicksburg, Mississippi did not celebrate Independence day for 80 years until 1944.

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“In all there were three periods of drastic communal upheaval and sudden changes of fortune in the extended Calvinistic Anglo-Saxon Revolution. There was the Cromwell uprising leading to the short-lived English Republic. This was followed by the conclusive disruption of the Stuart dynasty, leading to the enthronement of William and Mary, succeeded by the Hanoverians. Finally there was the American War of Independence.”

W. A. de Klerk
The Puritans in Africa; The Story of Afrikanerdom – p. 154

Americas separation from England was a separation inspired by the ideology of John Calvin. The theology of Calvin rippled through English-American history and was exhibited in political theology by the rise of Cromwell, the ascension of William & Mary and the overthrow of King George III. Though these events were separated by more than 100 years they were each driven by the same Calvinistic theology.

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The Declaration of Independence should be taken as little more than a press release to the Western world that America was its own entity. It was never intended to be a governing document and we would be better off without taking that way.

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The non-Christian can not know liberty. He will say he knows liberty but what he is calling liberty is just some form of licentiousness. The non-Christian can not know liberty because he is a man in bondage to his sin and as being in bondage to his sin all he will create in the name of liberty are social order institutions that reflect his bondage to sin.

Only the Christian who has been set free from the bondage of sin by the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross can talk sanely about freedom, liberty, and independence. That is because they understand that their freedom, liberty, and independence means a freedom to obey Christ which they could never do before, a liberty to walk in righteousness which they could never do before, and a independence from the bondage which was characteristic of their life outside of Christ.

There is no social order Liberty that can long be maintained by a people who have abjured Christ and foresworn Christianity. No social order freedom to be had by a Church which disconnects the lifeline between freedom from sin and freedom from wicked governments and magistrates.

Social order liberty is the God-given inheritance bequeathed to a people set free from sin and gathered in resolve to incarnate that liberty in all their social order institutions.

A post-Christian world that blathers on about “liberty,” “freedom,” and “independence,” don’t know what they are talking about.

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“Unlike every other nation on Earth, we were founded based on an idea.”

Pederast Joe Bite-me

Independence Day speech

This is a damnable lie. It is the lie that insists that America is a propositional nation. It is not true. America was not founded based on an idea. That nonsense didn’t rise till Lincoln sold it in his Gettysburg Address. America, like all nations, was based on descent from common ancestors (blood and soil). The fact that America was founded upon blood and soil is seen in the preamble to the US Constitution where the founders write that;

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,

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On this Independence Day we have to realize that while there definitely were Christian influences operating there were also deep state influences operating. The whole “Norvus Seculam Ordo,” BS on our money is one sign of that as well as the whole pyramid and eye of Horus thing.

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FOn this Independence Day learn that it was the Reformed Clergy in America that inspired the Colonialists to take up arms against the Tyrannical Parliament in Britain. If we had today’s R2K clergy back in 1175 forward we would have put up with the King George refusing to interpose on the Parliaments tyrannical violating of the original Colonial Charters.

Reformed Clergy had steel in their spines in those days unlike the effeminate clergy claptrap today who kisses the arse of every estrogen-filled pajama boy civil magistrate who shows up with some kind of threat.

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“Very important for people to realize that while the founding fathers their achievement was not because they were male but they transcended their sex. They weren’t just chauvinists or racists. They created ideas out of the enlightenment that meant that you would have woman’s suffrage, that you would have civil rights because that was the logic of “all men are created equal.” They didn’t have to do that. There is nothing in the Constitution that mentions race or gender so that they were male is incidental.”

Victor Davis Hanson

On Tucker Carlson show

1.) The founding father’s transcended their sex? What does even mean?

2.) While they were chauvinists and racists they weren’t JUST chauvinists and racists. Well, that is a relief to know.

3.) I guran-damn-tee you that very very few, in any of those founding fathers would have supported women’s suffrage or civil rights.

4.) The majority of the founding fathers were not operating out of an Enlightenment worldview.

5.) The founding fathers did not believe that all men were created equal in the modern egalitarian sense. They believed all Englishmen were equal. That was the issue at hand. Whether Englishmen in the colonies were equal to Englishman in England. The fact that they did not believe that all men were created equal in the modern egalitarian sense is seen in the fact that in the Declaration of Independence they refer to the Indians as “savages.” An odd thing to say if you believe all men are created equal in the sense that Hanson is using it.

6.) I suppose that they were white is incidental as well. I mean, just as women could have as easily produced the same document (after all the men transcended their gender) so nonwhite men could likewise have produced that same document since race and gender are incidental.

What a maroon.

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“America’s original sin is rebellion.”

Rev. Brian Lee

United Reformed Church Ministerial Idiot

The only thing this quote tells me is that Rev. Lee has never studied American History. The Colonists did not rebel against the Crown but rather drew a line in the sand regarding the Crown’s violating their Charters (Political Covenants) with the Crown. If anyone was rebelling in the run-up to the American war for Independence it was the English Crown. The English Crown was rebelling against the Political Covenants that spelled out the responsibilities and privileges of both sides entering into political covenant via the Colonial charters. This is why, in the Declaration of Independence, the list of grievances is present. The Colonialists were saying to the Crown, “You have rebelled against our Political Covenants and because of your rebellion and breaking of the covenants we no longer, as before God, required to keep our commitments to the covenant documents.

Of course, Lee doesn’t know this, and just like all bottom feeders he sees America’s original sin as being rebellion and goes on to warn against our rebelling against the Masked, and social distanced mandates and pleads with Christians everywhere to kiss the arse of all wicked magistrates as they require us to break the 6th and 9th commandment. (And often the 8th).

It is interesting that Lee would do this, since as an R2K lover, he is of a crowd who is forever saying that, “Ministers need to stay in their lanes.” This means that Minister, per the R2K crowd, shouldn’t talk about history (among other things) since that is not their lane. But here is Brian Lee doing just that — recklessly careening into the lane of Historians and writing about something he doesn’t know Jack Squat about.

Lee may intend well (who doesn’t?) but his theology at this point is uninformed (see, I can be polite).

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“I have endeavored to show, in the preceding part of this review, that the people of the several States, while in a colonial condition, were not “one people” in any political sense of the terms; that they did not become so by the Declaration of Independence, but that each State became a complete and perfect sovereignty within its own limits; that the revolutionary government, prior to the establishment of the confederation, was, emphatically, a government of the States as such, through Congress, as their common agent and representative, and that by the Articles of Confederation, each State expressly reserved its entire sovereignty and independence. In no one of the various conditions, through which we have hitherto traced them, do we perceive any feature of consolidation; but their character as distinct and sovereign States is always carefully and jealously preserved. We are, then, to contemplate them as sovereign States, when the first movements towards the formation of the present Constitution were made.”

Abel Parker Upshur

Our Federal Government; Its True Nature and Character – p.90

Independence Day Reading List

There are a plethora books on subjects surrounding America’s founding. This list is only comprised of books that I have read on the subject. I am confident there may be finer books one could read but these are some of the one’s I have read and found quite delightful. I will be adding to this list over the next few days as I have books in my head but I can’t remember the author. One should not conclude that I agree with everything in every book. I try to be a discerning reader. However there are times in reading when a author can get something wrong in such a way that it can help the reader get it right in his own head.

1.) Mitre & Sceptre — Carl Bridenbaugh

2.) This Independent Republic — RJR

3.) The Nature of the American System — RJR

4.) Theological Interpretation of American History — Singer

5.) Our Federal Government: Its True Nature and Character —

Abel Parker Upshur

6.) Defending the Declaration: How the Bible and Christianity Influenced the Writing of the Declaration of Independence — Gary T. Amos

7.) From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition

by Clyde N. Wilson and Joseph R. Stromberg

8.) Bringing Back the Black Robed Regiment Vol. I & II — Dan Peters

9.) The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates

10.) A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution — by M. E. Bradford

11.) A Better Guide Than Reason: Federalists and Anti-federalists (The Library of Conservative Thought) — M. E. Bradford

12.) Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution — M. E. Bradford

13.) The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding — David W. Hall

14.) The Roots of the American Republic — Rev. E. C. Wines
15.) The Federalist Papers — Hamilton, Madison, Jay
16.) The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution — Bernard Bailyn
17.) George Washington; Sacred Fire — Pete Lillback
18.)Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution — Forrest MacDonald
19.) Fountainhead of Federalism — Charles McCoy

1964 Civil Rights Bill; The Warnings Issued Then and the Reality Now

“Two former Presidents of the American Bar Association, Lloyd Wright, and John C. Satterfield, candidly described the 1964 Civil Rights Bill — now Public Law 88-351 as it neared the end of Congressional debate, they said,

‘If it is enacted the states will be little more than local government agencies existing as appendages of the central government and largely subject to its control. The legislation assumes a totally powerful national government with unending authority to intervene in all private affairs among men, and to control and adjust property relationships in accordance with the judgment of government personnel.

It is impossible to prevent Federal intervention from becoming an institutionalization of special privileges for political pressure groups. This must lead eventually not to greater freedom, but to ever diminishing freedom.

The civil rights aspect of this legislation is but a cloak; uncontrolled Federal executive power is the body.'”

Kent Steffgen

The Bondage of the Free — p. 4

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave us a new de facto Constitution and we have since the passage of that law seen the Federal Government incrementally gain ever more power and control over the people in their respective states gathered. We are seeing this power now being exercised not only in the name of racial minorities but now we are seeing this Federal Power acting in order to give both racial minorities and sexually perverted minorities special privileges Vis-à-vis white heterosexual Christians.

The new gun laws just passed and signed into law are a example of what Lloyd Wright and John C. Satterfield warned about in the day. In that law we see again a totally powerful national government with unending authority to intervene in all private affairs among men, and to control and adjust property relationships (ownership of firearms) in accordance with the judgment of government personnel. The diminished freedom that they warned against has been routinely seen in the recent masks mandate and Feds arm twisting in relation to vaccines.

We are living under tyranny and there will be on end to the expansion of that tyranny until the Federal Government is smacked on the snout and told to get out of the private citizens business.

Orwell & McAtee on The Feds Diminishing of the 2nd Amendment

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Bill of Rights
2nd Amendment

“The Big Brother’s endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments and vaporizations are not the result of people breaking laws for there are no laws in Oceania. The punishments are merely the wiping out of persons who perhaps might commit a crime at some time in the future.”

George Orwell

1984

Hello Red Flag laws and the FEDS as Orwell’s Big Brother.

Under Red Flag laws a person not charged with a crime and having no criminal background can lose their 2nd amendment rights on the basis of “a preponderance of evidence,” that they might be a danger. This preponderance of evidence standard for seizing a judicially innocent man’s guns is a different standard then that which is required in a criminal case in a court of law where the standard is “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” The new standard for stripping away from someone their constitutional protections found in the 2nd amendment is now a matter of someone’s subjective opinion that the absent accused is 50.1% likely be a danger with their firearms vs. a 49.9% chance that they are not a danger. And this is determined completely apart from the accused being able to martial a case as to why his firearms should not be taken away because he is absent from the proceedings.

Red Flag laws, which are such a part of the new Gun Law just passed during the last week of June 2022 seem to be premised on Philip K. Dick’s book “Minority Report,” except in this case instead of three precogs in a pool of chemicals the precogs are now Justices who are now predicting the future while dwelling in a pool of random accusations from potentially vindictive parties seeking to hurt people they have a grudge against for who knows what reason and this quite apart from the protections of Due Process.

Red Flag laws deny due process. Deny someone to face their accusers. Deny the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Deny the idea of proper search and seizure laws. The gun laws just passed and signed by the Pedophile in Chief are as anti-Constitutional as they come.

The chipping away of the guarantees found in the 2nd amendment is a emboldening of the FEDS to ignore the negative charter of liberties completely that is our Bill of Rights because if citizens are limited in being able to defend themselves against a Federal Government that continues to squeeze the definition of the Bill of Rights is a Federal Government that can’t be put back into its proper place by the necessary use of force. Diminishing the force then of the 2nd amendment is to diminish the entire Bill of Rights. As such the Red Flag laws, being encouraged by the Federal Government through bribery on the States is an attack on our political Covenantal document and so by itself warrants the same kind of response seen by the Colonials as when King George III once upon a time ignored the Colonial political charters and covenants. This warranted response we now celebrate as Independence Day.

This is not the America of my forebears. This is the America of Mikhail Gorbachev’s forbears.

Oh, and while we are thinking of it, don’t ever try to argue with me again that if we just vote Republican things will be all better. Here are the Benedict Arnold Senators who voted against the clear and unmistakable language of the 2nd Amendment.

Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Senate minority leader
Roy Blunt of Missouri
Richard Burr of North Carolina
Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia
Bill Cassidy of Louisiana
Susan Collins of Maine
John Cornyn of Texas
Joni Ernst of Iowa
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
Rob Portman of Ohio
Mitt Romney of Utah
Thom Tillis of North Carolina
Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania
Todd Young of Indiana

Considering Tyranny

“Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, Who write misfortune (violence), Which they have prescribed. To rob the needy of justice, And to take what is right from the poor of My people, That widows may be their prey, And that they may rob the fatherless.” 3. And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?

Isaiah 10:1-3

Here in Isaiah, the Prophet picks up a sub-theme he had begun in chapter 1.

Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!

Your rulers are rebels,
    partners with thieves;
they all love bribes
    and chase after gifts.
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
    the widow’s case does not come before them.

Isaiah 1:10, 23

Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter….

23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
but deny justice to the innocent.

Isaiah’s complaint here is about the ruling class in Judah – likely what we call legislators – were continually writing laws that today we would describe as anarcho-tyranny. That is laws were being passed that were manifestly unjust towards the needy, poor and have nots and so tyrannical while at the same time the lawless were exempt from law and so were allowed to be anarchistic. They were in short perpetrating the most egregious wrong under legal forms. It is the perversion from the seat of judgment that is being rebuked by the Prophet.

It is the same old story where God is cast out of consideration among the high born and among the political sock puppets of the high born. They who rise to these positions of political power and influence eventually think themselves as exempted from the ordinary lot of the little people even eventually concluding that they are not answerable to any God.
However, Isaiah tells them in vs. 3 that they will be the first to be visited with God’s judgment. Where will they turn in their day of Desolation? What good will all their power be in that day of visitation?

Isaiah brings back the reality of the God who remembers all before the potentates and sovereigns of Judah. He reminds them there is a God who sits in heaven and sees and who will mete out the whirlwind of divine justice in repayment for that wind of graft and injustice the Kings, Princes, and Leaders did sow.

In this warning Isaiah reminds his listeners and us today that there are many things which God appears to pass by in this life but which in point of fact is merely being set aside till that final day of visitation. How many have been the godly righteous through the centuries who counted on this reality. How many Christians suffered under the rule of a Nero or a Bishop Laud, or a Catherine Medici or Julian the Apostate or a King Charles I counting on the reality that God would not forget to bring a day of visitation upon wicked tyrants who would not repent.

Calvin offers here,

Accordingly, visitation must here be understood to mean the judgment by which God, in opposition to the waywardness and insolence of the ungodly, will bring them back like deserters. But if the judgments of God be so dreadful in this life, how dreadful will he be when he shall come at last to judge the world! All the instances of punishment that now produce fear or terror, are nothing more than preparations for that final vengeance with which he will thunder against the reprobate, and many things which he appears to pass by, he purposely reserves and delays till that last day. And if the ungodly are not able to bear these chastisements, how much less will they be capable of enduring his glorious and inconceivable majesty, when he shall ascend that awful tribunal, before which the angels themselves tremble! (Calvin)

So what this passage is dealing with is the reality of Tyranny and tyrants … of usurpation and Usurpers. The Prophet makes the case that God will by no means acquit the tyrant. God will have His way with the wicked who have oppressed His people and who have overthrown His law in favor of a completely subjective law that serves their own purposes and feathers their own nests. By this passage we can authoritatively say that “God Hates Tyrants,” and promises that there will be a payday some day unless they repent now.

And so today as we take up this matter we want to hold out again to the tyrants who might stumble across this message that will receive them as His own if they will but repent and trust Jesus Christ. If they will but end with their Tyranny and usurpation against God and His just law they can be assured that they will be received but should they spurn this offer from the Sovereign of the universe then they this warning will for eternity ringing in their ears.

Webster 1828 Dictionary defines TYR’ANNY as

1. Arbitrary or despotic exercise of power; the exercise of power over subjects and others with a rigor not authorized by law or justice, or not requisite for the purposes of government. Hence tyranny is often synonymous with cruelty and oppression.
We learn from this just what we read in the passage from Isaiah. Here as in Isaiah the point is that authority and power are be exercised in a illegitimate fashion inasmuch as they are exercised as inconsistent with God’s law revelation.

This is possibility of tyranny is a reality whether or not one holds that God’s law is revealed via natural law or whether one holds that God’s law is to be considered as being revealed via Holy Writ. In both of these positions there is the conviction that Tyranny and tyrants are possible and as such the governing rule of such men has no legal or moral legitimacy. There is nothing in their rule that compels or requires obedience.

Of course tyranny and the tyrant remains a problem for modern man. Indeed, we live right now under circumstances not completely different from Israel experience during Isaiah’s time. Americans likewise have those in leadership who decree unrighteous decrees and who write misfortune. The West is covered with tyrants and here in this country we have been living under tyranny of one degree or another for 150 years with each passing year finding the tyranny ever increasing in degree and substance.

There was a time when the Reformed Church above all other churches would lift its voice regarding tyrants, tyranny and Usurpers and Usurpation. There was a time when ministers would mount their pulpit and cause the walls to shake with their voices raised to heaven decrying tyranny. Such days have long since passed as the church as been declawed, defanged and tamed. Today we are told from seemingly every quarter that we must not raise our voices against tyrants and tyranny. We must “keep in our lane” we are told, completely ignoring the driving habits of our Fathers who joined with Isaiah and said things like we hear from the Divine Samuel Rutherford in his Lex Rex;

“Tyranny being a work of Satan, is not from God, because sin, either habitual or actual, is not from God: the power that is, must be from God; the magistrate, as magistrate, is good in nature of office, and the intrinsic end of his office, (Romans 13:4) for he is the minister of God for thy good; and, therefore, a power ethical, politic, or moral, to oppress, is not from God, and is not a power, but a licentious deviation of a power; and is no more from God…”

Samuel Rutherford- Lex Rex. p. 34

Or from

Calvinist Francis Hotman who posed this rhetorical question,

“If a state was once free, but later was conquered by a tyrant, was it not lawful to overthrow the tyrant and revert to that ancient Independence?”

“The nature of wicked princes is much like to warthogs, which if they be suffered to have their snouts in the ground, and be not forthwith expelled, will suddenly have their snouts in all the body; So they if they be obeyed in any evil thing be it ever so little will be obeyed in all at length.”

John Ponet

Magisterial Reformer

”When therefore the supreme ruler has become a tyrant, he must be deemed by his own perjury (as against the covenant document with the people) to have freed people from their oath, and not to the contrary, when the people assert their rights against him.”

Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

(Thought to have been written by a one of two men … both of whom were Calvinists)

“As often as the Magistrate commands anything that is repugnant EITHER to the worship which we owe unto God OR to the love which we owe unto our neighbor, we cannot yield thereunto with a safe conscience. For as often as the commandment of God and men are directly opposed one against another, this rule is to be perpetually observed; that it is better to obey GOD than men.”

Theodore Beza

Calvin’s Successor in Geneva

“Resistance to tyrannical governors was, according to (Calvinist Pierre) Viret, a legitimate act of self defense. He even endorsed the use of disinformation if the tyrant were persecuting as analogous to resisting a band of robbers. If the political leader acted like a criminal, Viret thought he should be treated like a one, and the citizens were justified in resisting him.”

The Political Ideas of Pierre Viret

Robert Dean Linder — p. 131

The Calvinist Peter Martyr stipulated that others in the public weal, who were in ‘place and dignity lower than princes’ and yet in positions of responsibility to ‘elect the superiors,’ have power by existing laws to govern the commonwealth. If, therefore, a prince does not preform his covenant as promised, ‘it is lawful to constrain and bring him into order and by force compel him to fulfill the conditions and covenant which he had promised, and that by war when it cannot be otherwise done.’

And who does Martyr include in his list of “others in the public weal’ who had a responsibility to keep an eye on wandering Magistrates?

Why Peter Martyr includes “Ministers of the Churches,” as those who had a responsibility to keep an eye on wandering Magistrates.

“Loyal shoulders should sustain the power of the ruler so long as it is exercised in subjection to God and follows His ordinances; but if it resists and opposes the divine commandments, and wishes to make me share in its war against God, then with unrestrained voice, I answer back that God must be preferred before any man on earth.”

-John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 1159

“The Lord does not give Kings the right to use their power to subject the people to tyranny. Indeed when Liberty to resist tyranny seems to be taken away by princes who have taken over, one can justly ask this question; since kings and princes are bound by covenant to the people, to administer law in truest equality, sincerity and integrity; if they break faith and usurp tyrannical power by which they allow themselves everything they want: is it not possible for the people to consider together taking measures in order to remedy the evil?”

John Calvin

Sermon I Samuel Chapter 8

“…when constitutional limited government is abandoned, tyranny is a result. And citizens have a right to resist tyranny.”

– Robert Godfrey

(2010 Ligonier Regional Conference)

“When Tyranny is abroad, submission is a crime.”

Rev. Andrew Elliot

Election Sermon, 1765

Coming in the context of the English “Stamp Act”

Today that kind of preaching is largely considered “out of place.”

And my friends … my family in Christ, Tyranny is abroad and I for one will not submit. For almost 50 years we have put up with the work of the Tyrants who have tortured and killed the judicially innocent while inhabiting their sanctuaries of life. It has seemingly ended but our tyrant in chief of this country stands before God man and laments that it is a dark day in our history that this small portion of tyranny has come to an end.

But for every one portion of tyranny that seemingly passes us by our Luciferian tyrants prepare for us another crown of illegitimate and immoral law to press down upon our brows by passing legislation that overturns our political covenant as a people.

In the typical fashion of the Usurper and Tyrant our rulers pass an omnibus like legislation this week attacking our political covenant that was arrived upon in the darkness of hidden counsels and presented and passed without the opportunity to even fully read and dissect the legislation that has no passed the US Senate. No amendments were allowed to be offered to this legislation which had more the character of a drive by shooting in Chicago then well thought out and crafted legislation And all of it is fouled with the smell of control that the tyrant so much loves and which the Christ lover hates.

Tyranny now covers what has been called our charter of negative privileges. That document growing out of English common law that was itself so influenced by Biblical law. That document that was committed to explaining what the Federal Government could NOT do to the people in their states organized. That document that is commonly called our Bill of rights but perhaps should be more properly called the “Bill of Prohibitions.”

What happened this week is just the kind of thing that Isaiah was seeing in his time. Legislators who decree unrighteous decrees, and those who write misfortune (violence), Which they have prescribed. To rob the needy of justice.

With the tyrants work this week the Federal Government has broadened its ability to infringe the God ordained assignment to keep and bear arms. With the tyrants work this week all that is left of the Due Process guaranteed in the 5^th amendment is the Cheshire’s cat’s smile. With the tyrants work this week the Federal Government has weakened your 6^th amendment right to face your accuser. Let’s not even talk about the 9^th and 10^th amendments.

With the voice of Patrick Henry from long ago; I ask friends, what means this legislative action, if its purpose be not to force us into submission?

All of this, if allowed to stand, is the State once again seeking to arise to the position of the most high with the goal of being God walking on the earth. It is the state’s play for divinity … for the right to control the way only God does control. It is this aspect of all of this tyranny that should give the Biblical Christian unrest and cause Him to call out to the God of War. It is this that should energize the clergy across the land to lift their voice to decry wickedness and tyranny in high places. Why should the clergy of all people sit by and remain silent in the face of the State’s attempt to be a god that ranks itself before the only one God? God people can never acquiesce to being controlled by and so serving a God besides the God of the Bible.

Our voices remain mute and our actions are not concentrated because we have lived under long term incremental tyranny and we have adjusted ourselves to the increments of tyranny so that one no longer even notices the next ratcheting up of the tyranny. This gun bill that is being shoved down our throats is just the next instantiation in a long line of tyranny but very few people are screaming ruddy murder. We have become inured to the reality that the FEDS are usurpers and now we just roll with whatever the most recent punch is that they deliver in our direction.

This is so because we have become a Christless people. Having abandoned our great King we no longer have a King to whom we owe a allegiance which would provide us with the solid grand upon which to stand in order to defy Tyrants and Usurpers. We have become so malleable and weak that we even gladly surrender our own seed to the maw of the God-State that we are currently living under.

I am so weary of this Christ-less tyranny. So weary of having to adjust in order to find a way to accommodate it. So weary of having to bow my knee to jackanapes, mountebanks, and blaggards when it should be the tyrants who are the ones bowing their knees to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

From Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson to FDR and nearly every President since then the tyranny has continued to inflate so that the intolerance of it all screams to the heavens.

And the Church? The Church is like C. S. Lewis’ Lady of the green kirtle who casts spells in order to put people to sleep when they begin to become aroused about the nature of their peril in living under her tyranny. The visible Church is largely useless in this hour having herself decided to now be a servant of the Tyrant that at least a few of us so despise.

If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which our Christian Fathers and we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must prepare to fight! I repeat it, sir, we must prepare to fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

Patrick Henry