Holy Week — Monday

With the acknowledgment of Christ as the Messiah King on Palm Sunday Holy week continues with Christ leaning into His role as the Messiah King. On Monday morning Jesus returns with His disciples to Jerusalem. On the way the King curses the fig tree because it had failed to yield the fruit that was expected. Here we see the Messiah King taking up the prerogative to banish faithless servants. In many respects what the Messiah King is doing here is removing the chaff from the wheat of His Kingdom. The fig tree represented faithless Old Covenant Israel, who had rejected their prince and now the prince returns service by rejecting faithless Old Covenant Israel.

This cursing of the fig tree has been anticipated in Luke 13

He also spoke this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it [b]use up the ground?’ But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. [c]And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ ”

In the cursing of the Fig Tree on Holy Monday we find a consistency with the resolve to cut down the Fig Tree in Luke 13 if it does not produce.

We get the same theme again in Matthew 21 with the parable of the wicked tenants. What connects all these is that Old Covenant Israel as been faithless and the consequence is that God is going to divorce them. Of course, the Israel of God remains but official Israel has been faithless and is cursed, promised to be slain, and is going to be cut down. God is done with faithless covenant Israel as His people. The promise of divorce is made here and the divorce papers are finally served in AD 70 as Titus utterly demolishes the infrastructure of faithless Old Covenant Israel.

Christ is King and the King has the royal duty to bring rebels to a proper end.

Also on Holy Monday the Messiah King comes to His Temple palace where He finds worshipers being fleeced in their desire to worship God by the Jewish bankers/money changers. Here the King, out of zeal for the glory of the Father, forms a whip and runs the Jewish bankers/money changers out of His Temple. The Messiah King has the authority to do this in order to protect the honor of His Father, with whom He is one (John 10:30). The Holy Messiah King shouts out;

“The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46).

Observations

1a.) God is done with faithless Old Covenant Israel as a people. Israel has been replaced in God’s economy by His Church, all the while understanding that the Church is merely an extension of faithful Israel in the OT. The invisible Church is to God what Israel was responsible to be.

1b.) This is turn means that what happens in the Middle Eastern country called Israel is irrelevant to God’s eschatological clock, and that would be true even if they were related to OT Israel and not instead of Khazar and Edomite stock.

2.) If the God-Man Jesus Christ was so animated to protect the honor the Father’s name from being defaced by Jewish bankers/money changers shouldn’t we be animated by concern for the Father’s name?

2b.) Note it was a matter of economics that found the Messiah-King cleaning out the Temple. The Lord Christ was angered by the fact that worshipers were being cheated by Jewish bankers/money changers in their desire to worship God.

3.) There are times when righteous anger is the proper response.

Is Christ King or is He only Kind of King? — McAtee vs. Duncan & Hart

In the biblical worldview, the believer’s redemption in Christ is not limited to personal salvation from sin guaranteeing him entry into heaven at death. It must also include a universal perspective. Otherwise redemption reduces to anthropology, nullifying the material order created by God. Such reductionist theology truncates Christ’s saving work accomplished in the cross-resurrection-ascension event, which undermines the ultimate new creation age to come.

Ken Gentry

We are one day removed from Palm Sunday 2024 with its ringing endorsement of the fact that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. However, 24 hours later we are left asking many of those who insist they are Reformed  what they think the Kingship of Jesus Christ concretely means.

There is a large branch out there in the Reformed world who want to recite that Christ is King right up to the point where the idea of Kingship has any teeth. At that point the idea of “Kingship” is suddenly redefined in a very Gnostic direction. “Christ is King,” they say, “just so long as He is not intent on actually ruling as the alone King.” “Christ is King,” they chant “just so long as King Christ has no legislative Law-Word that we have to pay any attention to in our family order, social orders, and law orders.” “Christ is King,” they dutifully recite, “just as long as Christ has no territorial claims over any nation or over any footage on planet earth.” The Kingship of Jesus Christ for this group is esoteric, abstract, and invisible. The best that they offer for the impact of Christ’s Kingship is the insistence that Christians should demonstrate their belief in Christ’s Kingship by being nice and making room for a pluriform of competing gods in the public square.  “Christ is King” for these crypto-Gnostics means a pluralistic social order where Christ as King as to compete for the table scraps of recognition from the God-State, along with the demon gods of Islam, Molech worship, Talmudism, and Salt Lake city fantasies. The Gnostic Reformed insist with us that “Christ is King,” but then turn around and define Kingship to mean “not Kingship.”

We are seeing this all over the Reformed world today. Most recently it came out in spades with an interview of Establishment figures Dr. J. Ligon Duncan, and a podcast including Dr. Darryl G. Hart. If you  listen to these back to back it will take your breath away in turns of the animated hostility for traditional and historic Reformed views. Duncan goes especially after Theonomy and Reconstructionism. Hart has a wild hair growing over the possibility of Christian Nationalism, though he manages to make clear his loathing for theonomy type movements.

Duncan’s approach to the issue is almost comical.

He opens by insisting that mocking and slander are not Christian ways to deal with issues and then proceeds to slander fellow Christians who take Christ’s Kingship seriously all the way through the section he speaks on that subject.

Next Duncan tell us that King Christ was not a mocker and yet in His ministry Jesus mocks Herod by calling him a “she-fox.” The Pulpit Commentary offers here;

“The epithet “she-fox” is perhaps the bitterest and most contemptuous name ever given by the pitiful Master to any of the sons of men.”

Ellicott’s commentary reveals,

The word was eminently descriptive of the character both of the Tetrarch individually, and of the whole Herodian house. The fact that the Greek word for “fox” is always used as a feminine, gives, perhaps, a special touch of indignant force to the original.

We learn thus, that a Chancellor of a flagship seminary does not know what he is talking about on this particular mocking issue as it relates to the life of Jesus, and we haven’t even bothered to consider the treatment Jesus gave to the Pharisees. If all that is too complex for Dr. Duncan as it touches the issue of the appropriateness of mocking, perhaps he might consider Who is speaking in Proverbs 1:26; “I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;”

Duncan goes out of his ways that the bible teaches that there are different ways to be faithful, and that is true. However, Duncan doesn’t mention that the Bible also teaches that there are different ways to be unfaithful. It is my opinion that Duncan’s work in this interview is one example of how to be unfaithful.

As one continues to listen to Duncan boast of his creating a Christ, Culture, and Contextualization course that he taught one realizes that Duncan has embraced the contextualization model of Christ with culture. This paradigm can be understood by accessing Niebuhr’s book on “Christ and Culture” where Niebuhr gives different paradigms for Christians engaging culture. Niebuhr’s five views are: 1. Christ Against Culture, 2. Christ of Culture, 3. Christ Above Culture, 4. Christ and Culture in Paradox, 5. Christ the Transformer of Culture.” Clearly Duncan’s “Christ of Culture,” paradigm is one that liberals have embraced for quite some time. Duncan’s offense at the Reconstructionist paradigm indicates that Duncan is for appeasement. This is diametrically opposed to Scripture which finds Jesus teaching, “He who does not gather with me, scatters.”  We know that Duncan is for appeasement given the tongue lashing and the slander he visits upon theonomy and reconstructionism.

Duncan insists that those who disagree with him are doing what they are doing because “a lot of it is ego and envy,” and a lot of unimportant people trying to be important. Yet, in my estimation Duncan’s ego and self-importance is just dripping off the interview. Honestly, I don’t mind being critiqued but the mean-spiritedness of Duncan in his words against those who take God’s Law-Word seriously was palpable.

Something else here that doesn’t ring true. Duncan says he gave up on critiquing Theonomy in 1996 or so because it was dead. However, in the archives on Iron Ink you can find a piece from 2009 where Duncan was again slamming theonomy. In this interview Duncan says that theonomy has risen from the grave like a zombie. Yet another slander from Duncan comparing a Reformed movement with the living dead.

Here is the fact of the matter. As much as he might like to, Duncan cannot kill the Theonomy/Reconstructionist movement. (Though Moscow aberration of it might kill it.) The Theonomy/Reconstruction movement may be dead for the Boomers and those over 50 even. At 64 I am a relic and a Dinosaur … one of the elder statesmen of the movement. However, I am seeing the rise of a 20-40 somethings who are never going to accept Reformed-Surrender theology. They are not going to be taken off to the gulag camps without a fight. They are no longer going to salute the post-WWII consensus that Duncan and Hart (and most of those reputed to be pillars in the Church) cherish with their whole beings. The Enlightenment version of the Reformed faith with its bastardized version of the Westminster Confession of Faith is in a nursing home and the prognosis is not good for its long term health.

Ducan, Hart and their ilk are wedded to pluralism but let’s consider what pluralism has done. I’m old enough to remember the residuals of Christian America. I’m old enough to remember the theonomic blue laws that found every business, park, and amusement shut down on Sundays. I’m old enough to remember how on good Friday every year all the businesses would close at 12noon in order to attend noon good Friday services. I’m old enough to remember distinct male and female roles that were premised upon Christianity. I’m old enough to remember the necessity to refer to your elders as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” I’m old enough to remember Sunday being enforced as a day of rest. And remember, these were only the residuals of a Christian American that was already in its death throes. Darryl Gnostic Hart in his conversation asks, “what could it possibly mean for a nation to be Christian” and I offer the above as a partial answer.

At appx. the 49:40 point of the interview with Duncan he begins to mock fellow Christians. Irony much Lig? From there Duncan goes on to say that the Reconstructionist understanding of Christ’s Kingship has no possibility of being implemented in any possible world. First of all we would ask, “Lig, not being God how could you possibly know that?” Second we would ask, “Even if you could somehow know that is true would that mean therefore that Christians should cease to continue to advocate for the crown rights of Jesus Christ?” Third we would ask, “If it is possible for Sharia to be the law of nations why is it impossible to think that God’s better law could not be the law of nations? Is the Allah stronger than King Jesus Lig?”

Next Duncan trots out the old canard that Reconstructionism/Theonomy is not a Reformed view. These chaps have been trying to sell that nonsense ever since this ker started to fuffle. A book that came out early in this debate was “Theonomy; An Reformed Critique,” and in that book the authors try to sell the bilge that Theonomy/Reconstructionism was not Reformed. The fact of the matter is, is that it is the surrender monkeys found among the Reformed Establishment who are the ones holding to a Reformed faith that isn’t particularly historically or traditionally Reformed. Can anyone look at the original Westminster Confession on the Civil Magistrate or the original Belgic Confession of Faith on the Civil Magistrate, and tell me with a straight face that either the Westminster Divines or Guido de Bres would have recognized the pablum that Duncan and Hart are trying to sell as “historic Reformed Christianity?” To suggest that the Divines or de Bres would have agreed with Duncan and Hart is just gaslighting at its best.

Much more could be said but others have probably already said it. I come to this, as I said earlier, as an Elder Statesman to this debate. I’m a year older than Duncan. I wasn’t following the debates at ground zero but I was pretty close to ground zero. I know the players. I have read around all sides. I know Duncan and Hart are peeing on us and trying to tell us it is just rain. Don’t you believe them.

My fellow believers in Jesus Christ, either Christ is King with all that Kingship means or He is a the Gnostic King of Duncan and Hart and most of those reputed to be pillars in the Church.

Palm Sunday tells me that Jesus Christ is King and that His  Kingship is tangible.

Stalinist America

We have finally arrived at Communist America as the two links below demonstrate.

In the first link peaceful protestors, inside the hallway and so outside the office of an abortion clinic were arrested. Six of them have been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison and some of those six may have another 10.5 slapped on them for protesting a different abortion clinic in the same way.

This Stalinist technique needs to be reckoned in comparison to the Black Lives Matter violent protests, where if people were arrested they were instantly bailed out of jail by various organizations including those  connected with Vice President Kamal Harris.

We see again here then, a two tiered system of justice. Criminals receive leniency while middle Americans receive tyranny of the very worst sort.

Samuel Francis, over thirty years ago, labeled this behavior as “Anarcho-tyranny.” The idea in Francis’ theory is that criminals would be treated with a light touch while the law-abiding would be visited with the most draconian treatment.

Indiana Couple Appeals to Supreme Court After Losing Custody for Not Using Transgender Son’s Preferred Pronouns (VIDEO)

This second article is even more outrageous than the first. This one tells a story about a Indiana (Red-state) couple who had their child seized from them by the State authorities merely because the parents refused to countenance the claim of their son that he was really a daughter. CPS admitted there was no abuse in the home besides the “abuse” of not using the preferred pronouns of their insane child.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/pro-life-verdict-up-to-11-years-behind-bars-for-demonstrators/ar-BB1hSODz

If these things can be done, why should any of middle America believe that they can get justice from this corrupt Christ hating Federal and State governments.

It is long past time that some lines in the sand be drawn. If we do no stand now we will soon find ourselves complaining, consistent with the complaints of Solzhenitsyn many decades ago;

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Word Games

The Marxist left has been doing this as long as I’ve been alive.

They are masters at controlling our language. They somehow manage to be the “word police,” dictating to us what words or phrases can’t be used. Control the language, and one controls what is societally acceptable and unacceptable, not only in terms of speech but also in terms of behavior. When the left forces us to use their language and their words they set up a hegemon over reality by controlling the way we speak. Keep in mind that the way we speak controls the way we think and when we are controlled in the way we think we are controlled in the way we behave.

The illustrations of this are abundant. Just recently we saw this logomachy at work when the chap who is serving as President spoke of, in his  State of the Union address, “an illegal immigrant,” who had murdered a young lady.

The following morning after the speech our handlers (the Lugenpresse / Corporate Media) was outraged. Were they outraged by the murder of this young lady by this illegal immigrant? Were they outraged by the border policy that allowed this illegal immigrant to be here? No, what the Lugenpresse was furious with the President about is that he referred to this murderer as an “illegal immigrant,” as opposed to their required “undocumented worker.” You see, if one uses the phrase “illegal immigrant,” per the Lugenpresse’s dictates one is a “racist,” or is suffering from xenophobia. If one uses the phrase “illegal immigrant” one is a social outcast, not fit for civilized company. So, by the constant drumming of this idea, the enemies of Christendom take from the friends of Christendom a perfectly good phrase that carries a perfectly fine concept. Over the course of time, we lose the conceptual category of people who are here in our country who have gained entrance in a criminal fashion.

Now our elite handlers are not playing games here. Eventually, those who retain the phrase “illegal immigrant” will be socially shunned. They may even experience forms of cancel culture. The left always seeks to put the bite on those who will not conform to their lexical tom-foolery.

Of course “illegal immigrant” is just one example. Other examples abound. Another example of a word that can not be used anymore is the perfectly fine word “sodomite.” Sodomite was long ago replaced by the word “Homosexual” which likewise was finally changed out for the word “gay.” The reason for this logomachy switcheroo is that the left understood that sodomite was such a graphic word that people found the word and the concept attached to the word instantly revolting and so it was changed out for the word “Homosexual.” In time the word “Homosexual” developed a negative connotation and so the masters of the Universe villainized that word and insisted that the word “gay” be used instead. The wicked brilliance in all this is admirable. Who would have ever thought that a word (gay) that meant jovial, and happy would be attached to such a disgusting lifestyle as sodomy? The cultural Marxist left is good at this game.

The marvel is, is that the Church follows right along. I challenge anyone to attend a denominational meeting and bring up the problem of “sodomites” and the need to resist sodomy as a policy without finding out very quickly some stuffed clergy telling you about how improper it is to use that word.

We could continue to multiply the examples of how our speech is governed. American Indian is now “Original Peoples” or “Indigenous Peoples” and don’t get caught using the word “Indian” among certain leftist group-think. A word like “patriarchy,” is now villainized and is verboten to use in a positive sense in certain Ivy League company. Indeed, in order to cleanse our minds of patriarchy we now have gender neutral hymn books and bible.

The concepts of B.C. & A.D. have been replaced by BCE and ACE in order to eliminate the taint of Christianity. Even putative Christian academics are now using this language in their academic treatises.

Of course the technique in changing our language and so changing our thinking and behavior is to villainize, scandalize, and berate our previous words, phrases, and concepts as being filled with the guilt of not being acceptable to our Cultural Marxist masters. Further, those who refuse to get their minds right are visited with being outcast. You see, our language is run through a worldview that competes with Christianity and seeks to overthrow it and the result is words and phrases are dropped in order to satisfy the standards of a worldview that is in competition with Biblical Christianity. Slowly and inexorably we, as a people, are changed from the inside out and become a different people that our Christian ancestors would not recognize.

Another example is the word “Kinist.” Kinist is a word coined in the mid-1990s to communicate what WASP Christians had believed for millennium on race relations (See Achord & Dow’s, “Who is my Neighbor,” and Storen’s “A Survey of Racialism in Christian Sacred Tradition.”) However, the cultural Marxist left, along with their clergy allies (I’m looking at Moscow) has villainized and scandalized this word so that it can no longer be used without people becoming somewhat timid concerning what might happen to them if they are known to be compatriots with someone who uses this dreadful, vile and scary word. And this, in spite of the fact, that I have bent over backwards in order to specifically point out what I am and am not saying.

An example of this treatment was seen online recently. Rev. Michael Shover gave an excellent sermon, and in that sermon Shover pointed out the dangers of the 1st amendment being embraced as more important than the first commandment. A firestorm erupted. What was interesting is that in this firestorm a bloke named Keven Johnson flung at Rev. Shover and Shover’s sermon, the epitaph “Kinist Pastor” in order to vilify anything Rev. Shover might say on any subject.

So, what is to be done about this? Well, we could invent new words (Oikophillia — “Love of One’s own Household”), we could just use old words (ethnonationalists, race-realist,) but of course you have to realize that whatever word we use the cultural Marxists are just going to scandalize, villainize, and fill with calumny any word a Christian reaches for in order to communicate this set of ideas. We cannot win by playing according to the left’s rules.

Because of this technique of emptying us from our language through the process of villainization and scandalization of perfectly good words, we have nothing to do but to play the man and to use all of our language and words doing all we can to violate the speech code that the left increasingly seeks to press down upon us and we do this as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Of course, we have to be wise in how we go about all this, but if we just allow the left to determine what language we can and cannot use we will eventually find ourselves owning a diluted Christianity. I mean how much Christianity can there be left in someone who constantly plays by the left’s logomachy rules?

A closing word has to be added. We need to realize that we are in a war. The left has successfully taken over the role of cultural gatekeepers. This means that when we violate the code of the cultural gatekeepers there is the possibility of consequences the cultural gatekeepers will press upon us. For example, just this morning I learned of a chap who has already been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for peacefully protesting an abortion clinic. He’s looking at an additional 10.5 years because he did the same at a second abortion clinic in the same area. By all accounts there was nothing at all violent in what he had done. However, he did violate the code of the cultural gatekeepers and he is now in staring at 21 years prison time, which amounts to a life in prison ruling given his age.

All of us, as Christians, who refuse to play by the rules of the cultural gatekeepers need to count the cost. We need realize that we are living in 2024 and not 1984 or even 2000. Matters have changed drastically and it is just a fact that anyone who wears their Christianity too boldly is going to run afoul of the cultural gatekeepers.

May the Lord Christ give us courage for the days ahead.

Francis Roberts Arguing that the Noahic Covenant is a Gracious Covenant

While this (taking the Noahic covenant as a common grace covenant) is a common construction among many today (think R2K) (17th century Puritan) Francis Roberts rather understands the Noahic covenant as an ‘expressure’ of the Covenant of Grace. Roberts will write of a double covenant made with Noah, one before the flood, in which God covenanted to save him and his household, and one after the flood ‘superadded’ to the former covenant. In this second instance of covenanting, several things are noticed that indicate not common, but special saving grace. The first is the occasion of it, that God ‘smelled the sweet savor’ of Noah’s sacrifice, as the outward moving cause of it, which indicates an appointment to Christ and His sacrifice, the inward ‘moving cause’ being God’s ‘mere grace and commiserating mercies’ to Noah. Second, the parties covenanting are the appeased God on the one hand, smelling that ‘savor of rest’ and second, Noah and his sons, and their ‘seed.’ Third, the matters covenanted consist on God’s part that He will not again destroy all flesh. For Noah and his sons, on their part, and especially in reference to the ‘seed,’ to believe God’s gracious dealing in this promise, but more to believe in Christ, the true sacrifice as the one who appeases God’s wrath and restores rest to the perishing and cursed creature, preserving God’s gracious design. Fourth, the token of the covenant, the rainbow in the cloud, concerning which Roberts declares, ‘So then the rainbow which physically and naturally denotes rain theologically, supernaturally and by institution signifies fair weather and security from rain and flood.’ ”

God’s Covenants: The Mystery & Marrow of the Bible Vol 1 — p. 36
Rev. Dr. Todd Ruddell — Preface