The Latest In R2K Evening Wear

https://oldlife.org/2017/01/04/is-donald-trump-mainstreaming-apostasy/#comment-151497

“Nero did not violate God’s law if he executed Christians who obeyed God rather than man. If Paul continued to preach after the emperor said he may not, then Nero was doing what God ordained government to [sic] do. Christians don’t get a pass from civil law just because they follow a higher law. John Brown is no Christian hero.”

Dr. Darryl G. Hart
Comment timestamped — January 12, 2017 at 10:52 am
OPC Elder
R2K Heterodox Maven
Doing his best John Knox impersonation

1.) Dr. Hart is now in the position of holding that Nebuchadnezzar did okay when he threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace. After all, he was just doing what God ordained government is supposed to do.

2.) In Exodus 1 the Hebrew Midwives who disobeyed Dr. Hart’s God ordained Government in Egypt are rewarded for their following a higher law. Now, If Dr. Hart were serious about his statement, and if he were consistent, Dr. Hart would have to say that those Hebrew Midwives were disobedient to God’s ordained order. How will Dr. Hart explain that “God rewarded them with houses” because they did obey a higher law?

3.) When St. Peter says “whether it is better for us to obey God or man, you decide,” thus implicitly appealing to the higher law that Hart so detests, Hart answers, “Christians must obey man over God.” Even the Pharisees knew better than to answer the matter in that way.

4.) One of the doctrines of the church that was recovered in the reformation was the doctrine of the lesser magistrate with its insistence on resistance to tyranny in the name of a higher law than civil law. Both civil and church authority need to be resisted if they become tyrannical. The best proof of this is the protection offered Luther as well as the battle at Magdeburg right after Luther’s death. See, Christopher Goodman’s, “How Superior Powers Ought To Be Obeyed By Their Subjects And Wherein They May Lawfully By God’s Word Be Disobeyed And Resisted.”

5.) Dr. Hart is correct in offering that John Brown is no Christian hero but the reason that John Brown is no Christian hero is that John Brown was not following a higher law but was following anti-Christ Jacobin law. Surely Dr. Hart is not suggesting that the disobedience of John Brown was of the same nature and same character as the disobedience of the Hebrew midwives before Pharoah, the disobedience of the Hebrew children before Nebuchadnezzar, or the disobedience of Christ before Pilate?

Or … maybe he is?

6.) Now, to be sure, Christians who disobey man’s law must be prepared to suffer the consequences such as prison, loss of social standing, or even death. These are all possibilities. However, to intimate that authority figures get some sort of pass, simply because they carry some kind of illegitimate authority is just ludicrous wrapped in ridiculous as stuffed inside preposterous.

But this is the kind of heterodoxy where R2K inanity takes one.

 

 

 

 

Advent 2016 — Micah 4 …. The Eschaton & The Family

“And He will judge between many peoples
And render decisions for mighty, distant nations.
And each of them will sit under his
Vine and under his Fig Tree
With no one to make them afraid.”
Micah 4:3-4

Introduction

Part of what we have been doing in this Avent series is trying to emphasize that what was to Micah “the latter days,” were fulfilled in what we refer to as the 1st Advent of Christ. Micah’s future latter days have been fulfilled and in being fulfilled are promissory of going from fulfillment unto fulfillment.

Because Christian time is thought of as a progressing line moving from promise to fulfillment when dealing with prophecy,  it is possible for these promises to be fulfilled. In the words of theologian Oscar Cullman,

“a divine plan can move forward to complete execution; the goal which beckons at the end of the line can give to the entire process which is taking place all along the line the impulse to strive further; finally the decisive midpoint, the Christ-deed, can be the firm hold that serves as the guidepost for all the process that lies behind and for all that lies ahead.”

Oscar Cullman
Christ & Time — pg. 53 – 54
Christ and Time; The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History – pg. 53- 54

So Christ and the Kingdom was the goal for Micah but it is a goal that once arrived at was capable of continuing to be arrived at.

Balloon Illustration
Painting Illustration

Once Christ came with His Kingdom all past history was given meaning as the past is now interpreted in light of the completed work of Christ, and all the future found it’s North Star by which all meaning could be interpreted. In the incarnation and Christ’s life, death, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, and His AD 70 Judgment coming Christ Himself immanentized an eschaton that still retained its future quality.

This is seen even in something as simple as our Calendars. BC and AD. All time finds meaning as it is oriented to the Christ event. The wicked Academicians understand this which is why they seek to scrub BC and AD from usage in favor of BCE and CE.

We have sought to make the point in this series that for Christians, the Redemptive sequence of events initiated by the birth of Christ marks the future age of glory as planting itself in a present wicked age that is opposed to Christ and His Kingdom. As such, for every Christian since the 1st advent the present crackles with the meaning that the future invests it with. For every Christian has the Holy Spirit who is the anticipation of the end as occupying the present. We know this because Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. What is the Holy Spirit a deposit of? Why naturally He is the presence of God as well as the deposit of that future age of glory. That we are living in that future age of glory now is seen in the fact that Scripture teaches that every Christian has been translated from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear son (Colossians 1). Scripture teaches that we have been already resurrected with Christ (Colossians 2).  Scripture teaches that God has already raised us up with Christ, and seated us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6-7).  The book of Hebrews teaches that every Christian is now tasting of the powers of the age to come in their existential present. We are living in the eschatological latter days in our current existence because with Christ’s work the latter days have arrived.

Ill. — Christians are like Tolkien’s elves who occupy two worlds at the same time.

As being citizens in the age to come we are God’s agents of change as inveighing against this present evil age wherever we find it. We are those whom God uses to turn the wilderness of this present wicked age into the garden of the Lord so that it blooms with age to come beauty.

All of this makes us a future-oriented people but it is a future orientation which is rooted and grounded in the past because the future orientation is dependent upon how the Christ event brought the future into the then present and so into our present.

It is true that we are moving towards the future eschatological age but this is only true because in the Christ event the future eschatological age located and locates itself in the present.

So, for the Christian time is Linear, as it moves towards the 2nd Advent but it moves towards that 2nd Advent as all of life is interpreted through the 1st Advent.

All of this is why St. Paul could say, “We are more than conquerors.” We might say it this way … “Victory is inevitable.”

Alright … all that by way of review. It is an important concept and if I could I would get it into you by translating it to a recipe and then whipping up a batch and providing it as a dish @ one of our fellowship meals.

Given this understanding, we have seen how with the coming of the Messiah these prophetic words of Micah 4 came to pass.

I.) Christ was and is the Mountain Kingdom that has lifted himself above all other Kingdoms

II.) With the Arrival of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, we have seen people streaming into the House of the God of Jacob

III.) With the Arrival of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom we have seen the rise of Law as informed by God’s law. People have asked for God’s ways and have been taught God’s path.

IV.) With the Arrival of Christ and His Kingdom we have seen the rise of peace (swords beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks) where the Gospel has flourished.

V.) Today we want to look at how with the Advent of Christ the family is restored.

We may have to do this in two bites.

First, we want to see where we find the family in this passage,

We note that every time we see the word peoples and nations spoken of we recognize that language is merely communicating the idea of extended family.

Etymologically speaking — Hebrew — goyim  / Greek ethnos

Particular people groups related by blood and covenant.

nation (n.) Look up nation at Dictionary.comc. 1300, from Old French nacion “birth, rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland” (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio) “birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe,” literally “that which has been born,” from natus, past participle of nasci “be born” (Old Latin gnasci; see genus). Political sense has gradually predominated, but earliest English examples inclined toward the racial meaning “large group of people with common ancestry.” Older sense preserved in application to North American Indian peoples (1640s).

Building on that Edmund Burke defined a people as being

constituted by the living who recognize, respect, and identify with their dead in the things and imprints of places that they left behind. The living love their dead by training their young into the social affections that keep their dead alive to them…

This idea of families as being a group with a common ancestry and the work of the Messiah in relation to them also comes through in the vs. we are looking at today.

And each of them (the nations) will sit under his
Vine and under his Fig Tree

Micah, sees in the Latter days that nations (extended families) will exist and each have their own property uniquely theirs. We will have more to say about property in the future but we want to stay concentrated today on the importance of family.

Everything in our culture is designed to destroy the stable family. First, we  have the whole New World Order agenda devoted to taking us out of our families and giving us in exchange the universal “family of man.” We have the demasculinizing of man; and the rise of Feminism, which is nothing but the de-feminization of women; we see, the attempt to create revolution among children demanding their rights (UN Children’s rights). We have The multi-tens of billions of dollars pornography industry and the reality of how it is ripping families apart. We have the FEDS inheritance laws that have been written so as to weaken the family and instead strengthen the government as the FEDS become in essence the first born son who receives the double inheritance.  We have social legislation that subsidizes behavior that is destructive to strong family life.  We have the purposeful creation of a culture that has stripped the family of its role as an economic unit. We now have the redefinition of marriage and with the redefinition of marriage, the redefinition of family comes in its wake. Our Churches too often reinforce this attack on the family by how they age segregate members of the family once you walk in the door.

“On no single institution has the modern political state rested with more destructive weight than on the family.”

Robert Nisbet
Twilight of Authority — pg. 238

And of course, the reason for this attack is that the family unit — in both its nuclear and extended clan expression — is the foundational social order unit in a Christian civilization. The foundational social order unit is not as so many suggest the individual. It is not that the individual is unimportant in Biblical Christianity. Indeed only in Biblical Christianity does the individual find importance. However, it is the case that the primary social unit that God has ordained is the family. The whole idea of covenant screams this truth.

With the family as being God’s primary social unit, naturally, then God’s enemy as our enemy desires to destroy the family. Again, it is the family that God primarily deals with. When God calls Noah God saves Noah with His family. When God calls Abraham one of the promises is that “in you, all the families (nations) of the earth will be blessed.” It is promised that the forerunner of the Messiah will, in anticipation of the Messianic age,   “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers;”  Even in the new Jerusalem in the book of Revelation we see the presence, not of a conglomeration of people, nor of just mass atomized people, but the new Jerusalem is occupied by the families of men (nations).

All this is underscored in the NT. The NT is family-centric and rife with instructions for family including instructions for husbands in providing for their family and kin, instructions on how families are to take care of widows, instructions for raising children, instructions to children on honoring parents, instructions on how husbands are to treat wives and how wives are to treat husbands.

Micah tells us though that in those latter days that came with Christ the family would be again prioritized so that

And each of them (the nations) will sit under his
Vine and under his Fig Tree

Robert Nisbet speaks of the importance of family,

“Every great age, and every great people … is characterized at bottom by the strength of the kinship principle. We can, he argued, use the family as an almost infallible touchstone of the material and cultural prosperity of a people. When it is strong, closely linked with private property, treated as the essential context of education in society, and its sanctity recognized by law and custom, the probability is extremely high that we shall find the rest of the social order characterized by that subtle but puissant (having great power or influence) fusion of stability and individual mobility which is the hallmark of great ages.”

Twilight of Authority — pg. 232

We can agree with Nisbet when just a few paragraphs later he observes,

“Family yet remains the greatest single element of a creative culture.”
Robert Nisbet — pg. 233

But of course, hell being hell, it opposes the family and the modern God-state being the agency that Mephistopheles possesses is a bureaucratic state and with the ever growing expansion of bureaucracy comes the expansion of egalitarianism if only because the bureaucrat is a great lover of a uniform standardized everything. The modern god-state with its egalitarianism is death to the family because families are by definition not the same. They are not equal. The hierarchy families introduce is also anti-egalitarian.

As such the family must be eliminated. You see uniformity is to the bureaucrat what catnip is to your household kitty. The bureaucrat dreams of an assembly line social order where all citizens are easily replaceable cogs. Less paperwork that way. Biblical Family gets in the way of all that.

“It is impossible to be certain in such matters, but the historic roots of the greater ages have lain in diverse, varied, relatively small areas rather than in the atmosphere that goes with bigness, impersonality, and standardization.”

Robert Nisbet
Twilight of Authority — pg. 243

But Micah sees that in the latter days there will be these families and of course Christian civilization in the West has been organized around the family unit.  Indeed, wherever Christianity has flourished there you find the flourishing of the Biblical family and thus we can know that this promise of Micah was fulfilled in an inaugural sense. Conversely, wherever you find Christianity in decline there you find family life shattered and so broken individuals and there you also find the certainty that Christ will again bring the power of the eschaton to the healing of family lives again.

Bavinck offers on this score,

The human cannot create; the foundations of society have been laid by God himself once and for all; but on those foundations, he can build further and restore what needs restoration. One must never despair about the reformation of human and family and society; even if the modern human despaired about this, the Christian must not give in to this despondency, because true godliness holds promise for both the present life and the life to come. (1908ch, 185; 1912ch, 193; for the last sentence, cf. 1 Tim. 4:8)

So, the Redemption event of Christ has happened. The future has taken up residence in the present because of that past event, and as such, we look forward to the time when families will once again be biblically patriarchal. Victory on this score is inevitable.

And the reason that it is inevitable, despite temporary setbacks, is that Christ, has come and on the Cross, He defeated all principalities and powers that would resist His intent to cover the globe with Christ-honoring families. In His Cross work Christ paid for the sins that make for the ruination of families and in the outpouring of the Spirit upon those who have been owned by Christ the Spirit works to continuously tame the selfishness and lust which so often are the reasons why family life is ugly.

In the Cross all things are reconciled to God and one of those “all things” is the family. In Christ, our tumbleweed social order that is characterized by the lack of family health will be renewed so that we are once again a Christian people with Christian roots.

The Cross is the center. Micah speaks of these latter days but these latter days could not have arrived apart from Christ’s defeat of Satan in the Cross. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Observations Surrounding the Cross …. Forgiveness

Luke 23:27 And following Him was a large crowd of the people, and of women who were mourning and lamenting Him. 28 But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”…

33 When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. 34 But Jesus was saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves.

Note the difference responses of our Lord relating to the different participants in the Crucifixion narrative. In the context of the weeping and wailing of the “Daughters of Jerusalem,” Jesus doesn’t ask the Father to “forgive the Jews for they know not what they do.” In point of fact we know from earlier encounters with the Jews Jesus said that the vengeance of God upon the Jews for the killing of the Son of the Vineyard owner came at the cost of their very lives,

What, then, will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and destroy these vine-growers and will give the vineyard to others.” When they heard it, they said, “May it never be!” 17 But Jesus looked at them and said, “What then is this that is written:

‘The stone which the builders rejected,
This became the chief corner stone’?

18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”

For the Romans crucifying Jesus, Jesus pleads for the Father to forgive them. For the Jewish women lamenting the crucifixion of Jesus, Jesus, in a likely prophetic reference to AD 70, warns about the coming wrath of God.
This distinction between these two kinds of speech for two different kinds of people is also captured in the difference of Christ towards Judas and Peter. To Peter Jesus says,

31″Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. 32But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

While to Judas, Jesus says,

“What you are about to do, do quickly.”

The difference between Judas and Peter is one was the son of perdition while the other was one of the elect. One wonders if that might not be the discriminating difference also in the way Jesus does not plead forgiveness for the Jews who crucified Him but does plead forgiveness for the Romans who served as those executioners who would do the bidding of the Jews in crucifying Jesus Christ?

Addendum

Some have insisted upon reviewing Christ’s request for forgiveness for the Romans soldiers that at that point the Roman soldiers would have been forgiven at that moment, in the sense of sins forgiven, since the Father and the Son are in agreement. This overlooks one meaning of the word forgiveness.

One meaning of the word “forgiveness” can be deferment or temporary suspension of the charges. Sanday advocates for this in his commentary on Romans when reviewing vs. 25 of chapter 3 he notes that forgiveness (remission — paresis) may be a “temporary suspension of punishment which may at some later date be inflicted.” So, when the Lord Christ prays, “Father forgive them (suspend the charges for the time being) for they know not what they do,”  the request is for a deferment or temporary suspension of the charges. As such, when Jesus prays this I don’t think it is proper to think that at that point the Roman soldiers’ sin is forgiven in the sense of the debt canceled.

We should end here by noting that usually when forgiveness is used in the Scriptures it has reference to a legal and not emotional / psychological resolve. Forgiveness occurs after there has been a debt incurred followed by the legal satisfying of that debt. For example, when we are forgiven by God it is not because God has a warm fuzzy towards us and is willing to let bygones be bygones. God forgives us because our indebtedness to Him as violators of His law as been satisfied for us by the work of Jesus Christ in our stead on the Cross. Our forgiveness is thus a juridical (legal) reality. God forgives us because our debt has been paid by our surety.

(Surety — a person who takes responsibility for another’s performance of an undertaking, for example, their appearing in court or the payment of a debt.)

Modern man would do well to re-examine his idea of forgiveness. We tend to think that forgiveness is an emotional or psychological disposition towards someone who has committed offense when in point of fact forgiveness is a legal term that requires, when necessary, restitution before forgiveness can be extended.

What we typically call “forgiveness” is perhaps better termed charity or mercy.

 

 

Ezekiel 33:11 … It Doesn’t Mean what the Non-Calvinists say it Means

Say unto them: ‘As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?’

Ezekiel 33:11

This passage is often presented by non-Calvinists of various hues and stripes to try and prove that Calvinism is all wet with its affirmation of God’s total Sovereignty. The idea as presented by the Arminian is that here in Ezekiel we find God wanting something (the wicked turning) that He can’t get. Poor God, frustrated by the sovereign will of the Arminian and Molinist wicked.

However when we read this text as against other passages we know that a frustrated God, who can’t get the wicked to turn, is not an option.

Psalm 115:3 But our God is in the heavens;
He does whatever He pleases. 

Psalm 135:6 Whatever the Lord pleases, He does,
In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.

Daniel 4:35 “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’

So, how do we read this Ezekiel 33:11 so as to eliminate the idea that there is a contradiction here while at the same time frustrating Arminian and Molinist misconstructions?

The answer is to read the Ezekiel text in light of another text that explicitly says that there are some deaths of some people over which God does delight,

Psalm 116:15 Precious in the sight of the Lord
Is the death of His godly ones.

God does not delight in the death of the wicked. God does delight in the death of His saints. It would seem what we must conclude is that whether or not God delights in the death of someone is determined by their covenant standing with Jehovah. If one is part of the covenant community then God delights (and ordains) their death. If one is not part of the covenant community God does not delight (but does ordain) their death. So, God not delighting in the death of the wicked does not speak to a frustrated God but does speak to a God who delights in His people’s deaths because they are covenantally related to Him, but who does not delight in the deaths of those not His people because they are not covenantally related to Him and His wrath lies upon them. God not delighting in the death of the wicked then is a covenantal pejorative. It is as if God says to the wicked dying, “You’re outside the covenant. I could care less about your death.”

This would be consistent with God’s character we find elsewhere in Scripture. God is the one whom wicked men are to fear,

Luke 12:5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear the One who, after you have been killed, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him!

He (God) has brought back their wickedness upon them
And will destroy them in their evil;
The Lord our God will destroy them. (Psalm 94:23)

So, we see here that essential to God’s character marker of being Just is His absolute delight in defending His name against rebels by exercising Justice and Vengeance against the wicked. He does not delight in the death of the wicked because in the death of the wicked His disposition is Wrath against them as not being covenantally united to Christ.

So, what the Arminian has done with this text is to make it teach the opposite of what it does teach. The Arminian has a nasty habit of this kind of “exegesis.” The Arminian or the Molinist has to overturn the perspicuous plain teaching of countless Scripture in order to read this passage the way they do and they are perfectly willing to do so in order to get a frustrated God who wants to save the wicked but can’t and  then loses sleep over their loss.

Of course, this text is good news to the wicked because it reminds them again that there is only one solution to God’s lack of delight in their death and that is for them to repent and trust Christ who is the assuagement of God’s just anger against the wickedness.

Hat Tip Dan Brannan for putting me on this. 

Progressive Reduction … Progressive Advance and the Postmillennial hope

The movement of Scripture seems to require a postmillennial eschatology.

Think about it. The Old Covenant moves from the Universal to the Particular after the fall. After the fall God’s salvation design is towards all men, but after the flood and after Babel that design is particularized to one people (Israel). From there the failure of Israel, like the failure of mankind prior to the flood, means an even more progressive reduction moving to “the remnant” and then finally culminating in this progressive reduction in the election of Jesus Christ to be God’s representative for the Redemption of His people. However, with the resurrection of Christ, we find the reversal of the previous progressive reduction to a progressive advance and broadening of redemption. What had been, prior to the arrival of Christ, a redemptive movement of the many to the one, with the resurrection the redemptive energy reverses and is now from the one to the many. We are still looking at election and representation, but the further salvific development unfolds so that from the center reached in the resurrection of Christ the way no longer leads from the many to the One but rather, as seen in the incorporating of the Nations, the movement of Redemption is progressively advancing from the one to the many. Consistently traced out this pattern and trajectory requires a belief in postmillennialism.

This hour-glass movement of Redemption (progressive reduction and narrowing to progressive advance and broadening) is most clearly articulated in Galatians 3:6 – 4:7. In that passage St. Paul begins with the promise to Abraham and his seed and reveals how ultimately the promise is to the Christ (3:16) who effectuates the ransom by His substitutionary death (4:5). This vicarious atonement results in the broadening of Redemption’s reach as all men and people may now become descendants of Abraham (3:26, 29) by faith alone in Christ alone.  All may become “sons and heirs” (4:4-7) through baptism.

Maybe Warfield’s “Universal Postmillennialism” was correct?

In an interesting aside one can also see this double helix hourglass movement in the Christian measuring of time by way of metaphor. Before Christ (BC) the years are numbered in a progressive reduction. However, with the arrival of Christ (AD) the numbering of the years continues to climb progressively year by year. This becomes an excellent illustration for the way that the first Christians measured redemptive time. The center and focal point is Christ and with Christ time is reoriented with the Christ event.