The Devil Went Down To Moscow — With Apologies To Charlie Daniels

The Devil went down to Moscow
He was lookin’ for a soul to steal
He was in a bind ’cause he was way behind
And he was willin’ to make a deal
When he came across this old man
Writin’ a piece and workin’ it hot
And the Devil jumped upon a Palouse stump

And said, “Doug, let me tell you what”

“I guess you didn’t know it, but I’m a blog writer, too
And if you’d care to take a dare, I’ll make a bet with you
Now you write pretty good, old boy, but give the Devil his due
I’ll bet a book of gold against your soul

‘Cause I think I’m better than you”

The codger said, “My name’s Dougie, and it might be a sin
But I’ll take your bet, and you’re gonna regret

‘Cause I am the best that’s ever has been

Dougie, get your pencils out and and scribble fast and hard
‘Cause Hell’s broke loose in Moscow and the Devil deals the cards
And if you win, you get this shiny book made of gold

But if you lose, the devil gets your soul

The Devil cracked his knuckles, and he said, “I’ll start this show”
The fire flew from his fingertips as the words began to flow
And he swept his fingers across the keys, and they made an evil hiss
And by the time the piece was done, it read something like this

But when the Devil finished, Dougie said, “You know you’re pretty good old son
But you just look over my shoulder right now, And I’ll show you how my bloggin’s done”

Fire on the Palouse, run, boys, run
The Devil’s in the house of the Pale Ale Son
Chickens in the Cross-Politic, making lots of dough
Dougie, is your dog Jew? No, child, no

Well, that old  Devil bowed his head cuz he knew that he’d been beat
And he laid that golden book down on the ground at Dougie’s feet
Dougie said, “Devil, come on back if you ever want to try again
I done told you once, you son of a gun, I’m the best there’s ever been

Doug wrote, “Fire in the Palouse, run, boys run
Devil’s in the house of the Pale Ale Son
Chickens in the Cross-Politic, making lots of dough”
Dougie is your dog Jew? No, child no

Open Theism As The “Solution” To The Arminian Problem?

I grew up Arminian (Wesleyan). I know their theology well as I studied it in Undergrad earning one of my Bachelors in an associated field (Religion-Philosophy). I still have the blue test books from those Theology classes in my file cabinets. In those test books I received top score for my ability to slice and dice Calvinism, along with praise from the Professors.

Along the way, resisting as much as I possibly could, I gave up Arminianism and was born again, again. I became a Christian (sometimes known as Calvinist).

One of the hurdles I could not get over, thus pushing me towards Calvinism was the problem found in all standard Arminianism. Evangelical Arminianism, teaching Hypothetical Universalism (the idea that Christ died for all people without exception) had to likewise hold that all men has libertarian free will. If Christ dies for everybody, but everybody isn’t saved than that factors that divides those who are saved and who are not saved, per Arminianism is the fact that some cooperated with prevenient grace while others did not cooperate with prevenient grace. The reason that some cooperate with prevenient grace (the grace that goes before salvation) while others don’t cooperate is the result of some using their Libertarian free will to choose to be regenerated while others use their Libertarian free will to say no to God’s resistible grace.

The Arminians have this problem though. If man has this kind of Libertarian free will to tell God to “go pound sand,” as the Spirit of God intends to convert them, then Arminians can no longer teach that God is sovereign and so controls all things. Still, Arminians would teach that while God may not be exhaustively sovereign such as their Calvinist foe’s teach God still did foreknow all things that would come to pass even if God didn’t predetermine or predestine the beginning from the end the way the Calvinist insisted.  So, as it pertains to individual salvation, per the Arminian God knows (but does not determine) how each person will use their Libertarian free will in order to either accept or reject the “Gospel Invitation.”

The problem that eventually presented itself to the “smarter than the average bear” Arminian is that they understood that if God foreknows everything that happens or will happen, God thereby renders that thing He foreknows as certain. God in foreknowing all that will happen has in that foreknowing made certain all that will happen. If God foreknew from eternity past that I would mock Arminian theology in 2026, then that mocking had to happen. I would not be free to not mock Arminian theology. This is true even if we, along with the Arminian, reject that God makes everything happen. The relevant point is that God’s foreknowing of an event to occur before it occurs makes it certain that the event will occur even if God is not the causative source of said event happening.  Even if there is some other causality to my mocking Arminian theology, God foreknew that the other causality would lead me to mock Arminian theology and so the mocking of Arminian theology in 2026 by me would by necessity come to pass. Exhaustive divine foreknowledge necessitates determinism, whether or not determinism is the result of divine causality. The nub of the matter is that some Arminians began to understand they were on the horns of a dilemma here. What to do?

Well, there really are only two choices. The Red Pill solution was “become a Calvinist,” and deny Libertarian free will. Forty years ago plus, I took the Red Pill. However, some former Arminians took the Blue Pill and so denied foreknowledge. The Blue Pill allowed the Arminian to become more consistently inconsistent. By taking the Blue Pill the Arminian moved from Arminianism to Open Theism. The Arminians joined the Open Theists (a form of Socinianism) and so rejected the idea of the Arminian doctrine of God’s foreknowledge. For the Open Theist if God was sovereign He was sovereign quite apart from any exhaustive foreknowledge. Of course the idea that God can be sovereign without either Calvinist sovereignty or Arminian foreknowledge is just a surd.  The Arminian by choosing Open Theism became more consistently inconsistent inasmuch as he now has found a way to consistently embrace Libertarian free will. However he has done so at the cost of magnificently gross inconsistency inasmuch as he has embraced a God, who by definition, has been drained of all that makes God, God. As it were the Arminian, when affirming Libertarian free will, was already worshiping a emasculated god. However, in moving to Free Will Theism (Open Theism) he is now worshiping a emasculated man as god said loudly. The Arminian has embraced anthropological consistency at the cost of theological inconsistency.

It seems like, to a certain degree, Open Theism has been beaten back. However, Arminianism remains the major report in terms of numbers as among American Evangelicals. Very few people believe in a muscular doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Most Evangelicals … even most Reformed, in a De facto sense, embrace enough of the shards of Arminianism to bring into doubt their Calvinistic bona fides.

And thus the Church in the West continues to limp along.

Addendum:

Touching Libertarian free will we would note that for every bit of Libertarian free will that you give to man you take that much from the Triune God. Man cannot have Libertarian free will without God not having Libertarian free will.

The Scripture exhaustively teaches that God exhaustively controls all things (Lamentations 3:37-38;  Rom. 8:28, 11:33-36; Eph. 1:11). As that control extends to our free decisions we read in Scripture wherein God controls the free decisions of people. (Joseph’s Brothers – Gen. 45:5-8; Cyrus – Isa. 44:28; Judas – Lk. 22:28, Acts 2:23-24, 4:27-28, 13:27.)

Now, that people do what they want to do while it still being the case that God is in exhaustive control is taught by the doctrine of Compatibilism. Compatibilism teaches that man does what he wants to do and is not coerced in his decision making. Man’s decision are voluntary. Compatibilism further teaches that man’s freedom presuppose his nature. Fallen man is free to choose all kinds of option  but because of his fallen nature, fallen man can never choose not to sin. Compatibilism teaches that whatever it is we voluntarily choose it does not mean we had the freedom to choose otherwise. We were pushed to choose whatever we choose consistent with pre-existing influence, inclination, or disposition. In choosing nobody starts from neutral in choosing what they choose. Considered from the macro understanding though, compatibilism affirms that all wills are in bondage to God’s sovereignty.

 

Ryan Louis Underwood Unearths A Kinist Quote From Prominent Anglican

“Around the Englishman are others, born of the same race, speaking the same language, living under the same laws, fed from the same soil; In fact, satisfying almost all of the conditions under which a family exists together in its home. Sprung from different parents, localized in different neighborhoods, there is yet one common parent of all these, and one unvarying home. Our country is our general Mother, and her bounds our natural home.

Within those limits, we are like brothers and sisters of a family, not strangers, but native: not guests but members.

Whatever is there, is, in place and degree, for us; for the body of which we are parts, and for us, inasmuch as we are bound up with the body …

As regards the rest of the world, the nation is as one: as regards one another, national greatness, national advantages, national success and failure are common to all its citizens. In all these particular does the mind, true to its original training, recognize and embrace as a great home, the common country of the whole race of which the individual forms a part.

A man finds himself bound to his fellow-countrymen by a common language, which has grown up amidst events, and bears trace of changes, whose effects are still acting on the great brotherhood of the nation.
The history of their country is the history of all.”

Henry Alford – 1810-1871
Anglican Dean Of Canterbury Cathedral
The Nation An Extension of Family
Lectures on the 5th Commandment

The Continuing Mystery Surrounding J. C. Ryles Quotes & Contradictory AI Testimony

One of my valued friends from Tennessee has continue to search out information on the J. C. Ryles quote on the issue of race. It seems now that AI is giving us decidedly mixed signals to the point of being in contradiction. Below is my friends report on whether or not those quotes exist in J. C. Ryle.

I’ve continued the search in original scanned archived materials found online from reliable sources (e.g. Library of Congress, etc. ) and the quote is not to be found in Matthew or Luke.

I asked ChatGPT about it. The reply,

“Upon a search of Ryle’s archived volumes on Expository Thoughts, I cannot find this attributed quote,

“Let us beware of giving way to the modern notion that there is no such thing as God’s providential arrangement of the nations, and that the present attempt to amalgamate all nationalities and races, and to denationalise and unchurch people, is wise and politic. God has divided the world into separate nationalities, climates, languages, and churches, and it is the height of mischief to try and break down the divisions.”

Here’s what I was able to verify about that quotation and its attribution to Expository Thoughts on the Gospels by J. C. Ryle:


*1. The quotation you cited does not appear in the standard text of Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels


Authoritative digital editions and searchable versions of Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on Matthew (and the other Gospels) do not include the lines you quoted. Ryle’s commentary on Matthew 24 is available in public-domain editions, and there’s no trace of the specific passage about “amalgamating nationalities and races” in those texts.


2. What Ryle did write about nations and races (19th-century context)


A blog post discussing Ryle (with commentary, not a direct source text) quotes a passage from Ryle’s commentary on Matthew 24 that reflects a 19th-century evangelical observation about the diversity of nations, languages, and races being a providential fact. The blog then extends that into the longer passage you’ve seen circulating online. However:


That extended passage appears to be secondary or interpretive wording, not directly from Ryle’s original published volumes.


The post explicitly acknowledges it is making inferences and its own interpretation of Ryle’s position.


3. Why your search of Expository Thoughts likely didn’t find it;


The version of Ryle’s commentary that’s in the public domain and reproduced on sites like StudyLight and Monergism is a faithful transcription of his published work. Since the exact wording you quoted does not appear in those editions, it’s likely misattributed or paraphrased by later writers.

4. Summary

There is no reliable evidence in the original Expository Thoughts that Ryle wrote the quote exactly as you’ve given it.

The related idea (that God has providentially divided humanity into nations, races, languages) may reflect Ryle’s commentary on Matthew 24, but the extended warning about amalgamation and denationalisation appears in secondary online sources rather than in the original text.

If you’d like, I can help you locate the exact wording Ryle did use in his Matthew 24 commentary (with a direct quotation and link to the public-domain text). Just let me know!”

So, today ChatGPT contradicts what I posted from it yesterday. Another AI hallucination. I’ll keep searching but it appears that the quote is not properly attributable to JC Ryle.

Tennessee Doc

___

Now I would still like to see what Ryle said that found someone concluding that Ryle’s words have the implication that someone saw in them concerning amalgamation.

Bits of Conversation With Rev. Joseph Spurgeon

“Take the language of invasion as an example. I think it is legitimate to speak in political terms about an invasion when referring to mass immigration being brought into a country. That kind of language functions the same way politicians speak about fighting or war. But that is very different from an actual military invasion.

If China or Russia or some other foreign power started paratrooping troops into my home city, with soldiers dropping from the sky, it would be legitimate for me to grab the guns I own and shoot those invaders. That is a real invasion. That is not the same thing as political rhetoric about immigration.

Rev. Joseph Spurgeon

Has this man never heard of guerilla warfare? Has he never read about the Vietcong guerilla tactics during the Vietnam war? Harmless civilians by day … terrorists by night.

Clearly, Spurgeon doesn’t know what time it is culturally speaking. We are being invaded unto the end of being replaced. This is not political rhetoric. It is religious rhetoric. God nowhere calls us to disappear as a people. That is the effect of Spurgeon’s inability to differentiate categorically between criminals/invaders and neighbors.

Here I quote one Elizabeth Makis (an attorney) who just eats Spurgeon’s lunch with her response;

“This post is a great example of classic, White naivete, where you project your own ethics onto foreign hostile groups. Russians and Chinese, etc., KNOW they could never accomplish a full frontal ground assault. It’s called asymmetrical warfare, and they intentionally use “immigration” as a weapon precisely because of attitudes like yours (Spurgeon’s). If the American communists are intentionally using 3rd world immigration as a weapon, would it matter if the people being imported knew the full extent of the intentions of those importing them? If the causal factor in their being here is the intended destruction of American culture and civilization, then it’s an invasion. They ARE the weapon. The whole reason why it works is BECAUSE we would not be justified in violently unaliving random people. That also doesn’t mean they’re legitimate neighbors anymore than the people still in Somalia are our neighbors.”

I wonder, if Spurgeon read “The Camp of the Saints” if he would get it even then?

____

“The question then becomes how they treat the people they actually meet. That calls for a different kind of action. I am not blurring distinctions. The people critiquing me are the ones doing that.”

Rev. Joseph Spurgeon

Illegals are criminals and invaders and so, to honor God, we are to treat them as criminals. You don’t give casseroles and babysitting services to a criminal.

As REO Speedwagon once sang,

That ain’t love
Well, at least it doesn’t sound like love to me

You would aid them if you happened upon them unconscious and beaten up on the side of the road. In that case you would take them to a ICE hospital where they could be stitched back together and then extradited back home. However, if you wouldn’t invite Ted Bundy or Charlie Manson to have tea and crumpets with your house as with your wife and children the principle is established that one treats criminals different than they would the Stewarts who have lived across the street for 20 years as your neighbor.

_____

“In particular, in his commentary on the Good Samaritan, Calvin says that Jesus teaches our neighbor does not end with those who are like us in nationality or religion. All people are neighbors, including even our enemies, which is why Jesus says we can love our enemies. So Calvin upholds the fact that distinctions are real, while also upholding a general love that we owe to all people. He affirms that civil magistrates can and should do what is best for their people, while also calling individuals to do good to their neighbors.”

Rev. Joseph Spurgeon

1.) Love for enemies here does not exclude doing that which they would consider “hate.” For example when one gives the Law to the sinner he considers that act of love to be an act of hate. In the same way love of civilian invaders can be an act that they would consider “hate.” Would Rev. Spurgeon insist that it would be a lack of love to enemy if I turned in my illegal invader neighbor to ICE? Would Rev. Spurgeon say it was an act of hate to my illegal invader neighbor if I asked them over for a meal and invited ICE agents as well in order to arrest them? I would say that these are acts of love. It is an act of love to not let the Criminal get away with their criminality and/or criminal behavior.”

2.) Rev. Spurgeon here also continues with his habit of forgetting about the necessity we have to love our White Anglo Saxon Christian neighbor. Is it neighbor love to them to welcome the stranger and alien thus allowing the stranger and alien to eat up resources that will not longer be available to the citizens of this nation? Rev. Spurgeon seems to be forgetting that these people we are to love are criminals as seen in their theft and fraud – not to mention being here illegally. Love does not allow the criminal to continue to be a criminal… does not reward the criminal for being a criminal. The illegals are criminals. God’s law does not say… “Treat the criminal as if he is not a criminal. Treat him as if he were the Stewart family who has lived next door to you for 30 years.” Love to God requires us to do all we an to make sure the criminal is arrested by ICE.

We see therefore that Rev. Spurgeon really does not understand what love is when dealing with criminals and invaders.

3.) Rev. Spurgeon makes the mistake of turning the criminal/invader into the victim as found in the parable of the Good Samaritan where the fact of the matter is, is that the criminal/invader are those who beat up the victim that the Good Samaritan finds beaten and bruised.

I close with a quote from a friend of mine, Dr. Jaime Castillo, a Filipino;

It looks like the example of the Good Samaritan has been used to defend (wrongly) the naïveté dealing with members of dangerous tribes. Helping a person with true needs does not mean being recklessly indiscriminate about groups that are physically proximal to us.

Clearly the Samaritan was being wise knowing that the person was indeed fully helpless and alone, and hence was not a threat. I will assist such a person too, regardless of their tribal affiliation. It is situational compassion however, not unity of tribes as happy neighbors in one multicultural Babylon and its many gods.

There are also scammers and criminals looking like they also direly need help after all. We know this. Mercy without discernment about them leads to one’s own destruction. If we are not screening people groups by number, faith, and culture, and we are neglecting that we still have priorities that obviously include safety and preservation of our own communities, we end up increasingly weakened and spread too thinly. We will soon be incapable of expressing true love because we are unable to help anyone who do need our assistance, especially those who belong to our own families and tribes.