In Chapters IV and V Dr. Schlebusch in his book “Assailing the Gates of Hell” gives a brief primer on how the current crisis came to be and then wraps up with giving some of a game plan on how Christians and the Church can go about making war on the gates of hell.
Dr. Schlebusch insists that we are in the current crisis we are in because the Church has gone into a Babylonian captivity. It’s pulpits are given over to the enemy with the result that what is ringing from God’s pulpits across the West is a neo-Gnosticism covered in a slimy coat of “Christianity,” or failing that, the completely innovative “Christianity” called “Radical Two Kingdom Theology.”
Dr. Schlebusch’s theory on neo-Gnosticism is that it shares with ancient Gnosticism a despising of the corporeal realm as combined with a reliance on a esoteric human knowledge that is disconnected from God’s revelation. This results not only in materialism but it also yields a dramatic antinomianism. The materialism in the Church is seen in the attempt to marry theistic-evolution to Christianity such is found in such leftist “Christian” homeschooling companies like “Biologos,” as well as the denial of the visible resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead as found in your garden variety mainline liberal “church.” The antinomianism can be found in the Church by the Dispensational idiotic misinterpretation that “we are no longer under law but under grace,” so that the grace blanket can be pulled over our heads to keep us safe from any threatening reality of the ongoing validity of God’s law. Neo-Gnosticism is basically a peeling away of a new innovative “Christianity” from Christianity so that man remains sovereign on the question of “How Shall We Now Live.”
Schlebusch then spends some time on the curious avowed reality that the materialism of Cultural Marxism is running cheek by jowl with the spiritualism (anti-materialism) of Neo-Gnosticism. Dr. Schlebusch takes a stab at how these two opposite realities can be in league together against the Church. After all, these two are supposed to be mutually exclusive. His answer is to insist that a irrational dualism has entered the Church whereupon opposites kiss in their project to destroy the Church. I think we need here to invoke Dr. Cornelius Van Til’s illustration of the two washwomen who take in each other’s laundry. The anti-materialistic Neo-Gnosticism in the Church serves as a limiting concept washwoman who is checking the limiting concept materialistic washwoman of Cultural Marxism, and vice-versus. In order to have one of these irrationalities in the Church both irrationalities are required to get the Christ denying project off the ground. As such the irrationality of anti-materialistic Neo-Gnosticism is being given life by the irrationality of materialistic Cultural Marxism with the opposite being true as well.
Dr. Schlebusch then goes on to insist that this has paved the way for the entry of Radical Two Kingdom theology into the Church. I think this is one place that I would disagree with Dr. Schlebusch. I would insist that R2K is a form of Anabaptist Neo-Gnosticism and that R2K, along with German Pietism of the last 200 plus years have been the main carriers of Neo-Gnosticism in the modern Church.
Dr. Schlebush goes on to describe R2K with its inherent hard dualism between the grace realm and the common realm. He insists that R2K fails at the doctrine of man’s total depravity as seen on its complete reliance on fallen man’s ability to build social order based on a muscular pagan Natural law theory. Dr. Schlebusch rightly indicts the R2K lobby with being practitioners of a sub-Christianity. (And I think sub-Christianity is being generous.)
Dr. Schlebusch ends this chapter by giving a rousing endorsement to the fact that all of life is underneath the authority of God’s revelation. He also mentions the great hope of the Christian faith that all of life will be redeemed precisely because it is being redeemed. This is nothing but the Reformed maxim that grace restores nature — a maxim that R2K denies with its insistence that nature by definition can’t be restored since it is and always will remain “common.”
I pause here to ask once again … “When will the Reformed denominations route R2K out of their presence?” “When will Reformed Pastors grab a Jesuit trained Seminary Doctor and throw him out on his keister along with the rag tag doctorate groupies who have attached themselves to his star?”
In the last chapter Dr. Schlebusch gives us the roadmap to recovery. First, Dr. Schlebusch insists that we need to give up with the idea that because Christians emphasize the “spiritual” therefore we are not to dirty our hands with the “flesh and blood” things of life. Dr. Schlebusch explodes this false dichotomy explaining that “spiritual” does not mean “ethereal,” or “abstract,” or “physically non-existent.” Dr. Schlebusch rips the entrails out of Dr. Mike Horton’s insistence that spiritual means that there is no such thing as a “Christian nation.” (See earlier discussion on R2K and neo-Gnosticism above.) Removing the idea from Christianity that because we are spiritually renewed and that because we walk in the spirit that therefore means we don’t dirty our hands with the corporeal that God has given us is one way wherein Christians once again bring the aroma of Christ to all reality.
Dr. Schlebush then turns to the Scripture to give a rousing defense to why the Church has been called to be a storming army attacking the very gates of Hell. This was a section I was absolutely delighted with as Dr. Schlebusch examines the passage where Jesus promise that the “gates of Hell shall not prevail.” Dr. Schlebusch takes the position that the geographic reality of where the encounter took place is the key to understanding the passage.
Dr. Schlebusch ends by saying our current responsibility in the battle royal set before the Church is to attack, siege, and conquer. He offers the following advice,
1.) Keep your children … prioritize the family (This means homeschooling.)
2.) Stop engaging in commerce with the enemy
3.) Buy land and books
4.) If at all possible start your own business
5.) If there are no Biblical Churches in your area start one
I want to speak to this one briefly. Starting a Church (we actually need whole new denominations) is something that will require self sacrifice in time and money. If Christians are really going to do such a thing then they need to be prepared to start something like a circuit rider dynamic once again. Christians over vast geographic areas who are seeking to start Churches might pool their money to hire someone who would travel among the varied churches to minister to them. This will not be easy but starting denominations from scratch never are easy.
6.) Be familiar with the martial arts
7.) Try to engage the community in order to gather like-minded indviduals
8.) Be done with the long standing “College” model
I might add here that from the moment our children are born we need to be thinking about how to find godly spouses for them. Too many good children raised in good homes are limited by the marriages they end up contracting. Of course all of this must be given over to God in prayer.
Dr. Schlebusch would have the Church once again be an armory as well as a hospital and gymnasium. The Church must see and understand itself as a conquering army. It needs to quit with the quivering cowardly mindset that sees it’s self as a victim locked up here with the Christian devouring world. It needs to own the mindset that pities the world because they are locked up in this world with us. It is the pagan and Christ-hater who is to be pitied.
It is our enemies who will be assimilated and their resistance is futile.
