Sundry Observations on the French Revolution

I.)”By the time I got through with my research and I was ready to write this book I felt anyone who understands the French Revolution will understand all left-wing revolutions. And anyone who doesn’t understand the French Revolution will… is going to be doomed to be victimized by a left-wing revolution.”

 

Otto Scott

Lecture — French Revolution and Its Influences

Pocket College

This quote teaches us that Clergy who are unfamiliar with the French Revolution should get out of the pulpit until they familiarize themselves with the French Revolution because what is happening in the West is that Christianity is being reinterpreted through the grid of the French Revolution and the ignorant Clergy is complicit because they don’t know better, and in not knowing better they don’t understand the urgency of the times to bring God’s Word to bear. God’s Word teaches that revolution begins in the desire to revolt against God’s authority. Because of this Scripture is anti-Revolutionary.

II.) Robespierre was the head of the “Committee of Public Safety.” This is a perfect example of Statist euphemisms. “The Committee of Public Safety?”

LOL — This Committee of Public safety was that Statist agency that was responsible for the flow of public blood in the streets compliments of Madame La Guillotine.

This is the way humanist Government always works. Whatever title they put on something you can be damn sure that something will be doing just the exact opposite of whatever title they stick on it.

Obama Healthcare anyone?

III.) “What Marx was to the Russian Revolution of 1917, Rousseau was to the French Revolution of the 1790’s. Like Marx, he was a parasite who never worked an honest day in his life. He was an expert at leeching off his aristocratic buddies, and wrote a series of treatises which blamed the evils of property and civilisation for the corruption of man. He wrote these while living in the lap of luxury with the aristocratic women he seduced.”

Moses Apostaticus

 

IV.) The cry of the French Revolution was Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

It was all a lie.

As long as Equality is pursued neither Liberty nor Fraternity is possible. Equality negates Liberty because Liberty creates unequal stations, accentuates different abilities, and creates classes as some men use Liberty to excel while other men use Liberty to stagnate. Equality negates Fraternity because Equality breeds envy against those who have used Liberty to excel and envy always destroys Fraternity.

You can have Equality or you can have Liberty and Fraternity but you can not have all three together and the choosing of equality is the choosing of a mechanism, usually the state, as the means my which equality will be monitored and forced.

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.

10 thoughts on “Sundry Observations on the French Revolution”

  1. The misuse of liberty also undermines fraternity. Antinomian, selfish freedom alienates the person from his brethren and turns him into a deracinated, atomistic individual.

    I have given some thought as to where this unholy trinity of Jacobinism comes from, and discovered the following sources:

    Liberty: from ancient Greece, where haughty pagan republicanism taught the proud “non serviam” ethos according to which all those who submitted to the rule of kings were SLAVES. (Meanwhile, the proud aristocrats who thought this way felt perfectly free to abuse their own slaves.) This sort of aristocratic republicanism was revived in the early modern era, and made more democratic – “every man will be king.” This uppity neo-Korahite ethos would sooner or later clash with the Biblical patriarchal-monarchical ethos, and then God would be attacked along with earthly kings and fathers.

    Equality: from ancient Rome, where the concept of equality was created in a quite concrete, brutal sense of “All men are equal in the sight of CAESAR.” In other words, the omnipotent centralizing state ultimately renders all its subjects more or less equal, from senator to serf. (The same imperial Roman system that persecuted Christians in the days of Nero also persecuted those Roman aristocrats who dared to show any lingering sense of republican defiance.) Equality in servitude. The memory of equalizing Roman state machine remained alive in Western consciousness due to the prevalence of Roman civil law (made by pagan jurists), just like Greek philosophy kept alive the memory of the libertarian ideal of autonomous man.

    Fraternity: now, of these three notions this one was most probably cribbed or plagiarized from Christianity – the notion of universal or international brotherhood. Freemasonry already tried to create an international “brotherhood of reason” that did not rely of Christ. Julian the Apostate already was forced to imitate Christian charity in his attempt to fight against it, so modern infidels likewise were compelled to imitate some parts of Christian worldview, that they otherwise detested, to be able to compete with churches among the masses – giving the plebs earthly bread so that they would no longer need heavenly bread.

  2. Cornelius Van Til taught that “rationality and irrationality have a secret treaty against God.” In the same way, in the French Revolution, the concepts of liberty and equality, or anarchic individualism and tyrannical collectivism, that normally were opponents, shook hands in mutual conspiracy against the rule of Christ. For the overthrow of “Christian privilege,” or demolishing Christianity as state religion, was the deepest spiritual aspiration in the hearts of revolutionaries. Their attempt to cancel the very concept of Christian time testifies to that:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

    “That day Herod and Pilate became friends; before this time they had been enemies.” Hatred of God can make strange bedfellows, or as this old Bible commentary puts it:

    https://biblehub.com/commentaries/luke/23-12.htm

    “How often has the strange sad scene been reproduced in the world’s story since! Worldly men apparently irreconcilable meet together in friendship when opportunity offers itself for wounding Christ!”

    1. Viisaus,

      Van Til used to use the analogy of the two wash women taking in each other’s laundry. Pagan collectivism takes in the laundry for pagan individualism and pagan individualism takes in the laundry for pagan collectivism.

      They each in turn become limiting concepts.

      1. So one could say that Jacobin “fraternity” was ultimately fraternal union against GOD, or Christ. Mankind united against Lord and His Anointed! (Psalms 2:2) That is, the radicals could disagree amongst themselves (and disagree even very violently, with heads literally rolling) whether anarchic liberty or levelling equality should be given precedence, but for all that, they agreed with the ultimate goal that Christian theocracy, or the rule of Christ, had to be overthrown. “We will not have this man to reign over us.” (Luke 19:14)

        A concrete example of this kind of “brotherhood” could be seen when Jacobin ideology spread over Europe in the 19th century, and many newly emancipated Jews (like Karl Marx) joined the ranks of the radicals, it was seen that even though many gentile radicals, like the French Utopian Socialists for example, had quite pronounced anti-Semitic views, they somehow got along with these Jewish newcomers to the radical scene, because they still had common enemy in Christian conservatism. Their common hatred of traditional Christian society was enough to smooth over their differences. (But Julian the Apostate had already allied himself with Talmudic Jews in his crusade against Christ.)

  3. I have long believed that all Christians, and even more so, all pastors, would be well served by closing their Bible periodically and reading/studying history. No man that is not a serious student of history should ever be considered to fill a pulpit. Of course you have to be wary of what historical sources you read, since we as Americans have been so relentlessly propagandized for at least 100 years now. Most everything we have been taught about history did not happen as they say it did. That is why I always try to obtain and read original source material.

    1. Mark,

      Good advice.

      Of course if one develops their Christian Worldview that will given them the ability to smell out good historiography from bad historiography.

  4. “I have long believed that all Christians, and even more so, all pastors, would be well served by closing their Bible periodically and reading/studying history. No man that is not a serious student of history should ever be considered to fill a pulpit”

    Sometimes sacred history and secular history INTERSECT. To give a concrete example; the prophecies of Daniel about the conquests of Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors. Now, this period is when liberal internationalism was born, for Alexander’s work meant the breakdown of the small-scale tribalistic Greek polis-culture, and the birth of new, Babylonian-style globalism (Alexander died in Babylon, in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar – how’s that for prophetic symbolism?) – but this time in Greek costume.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_the_Great

    Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the forerunner and prefiguration of Antichrist, tried to force faithful Jews into participating in this proto-globalist system, which led to the Maccabean revolt:

    http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=0&b=45

    1 Maccabees 1:43-6

    “And king Antiochus wrote to all his kingdom, that all the people should be one: [ut esset omnis populus unus] and every one should leave his own law. And all nations consented, according to the word of king Antiochus. And many of Israel consented to his service, and they sacrificed to idols, and profaned the sabbath. And the king sent letters by the hands of messengers to Jerusalem, and to all the cities of Juda; that they should follow the law of the nations of the earth.”

    Friedrich Nietzsche himself (who knew ancient Greek history very well) believed this, that Alexander’s conquests, and the consequent birth of Hellenistic world-culture, were a decisive turning-point in world history, thus ironically agreeing with prophet Daniel:

    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner_in_Bayreuth#Chapter_IV.

    “The history of the development of culture since the time of the Greeks is short enough, when we take into consideration the actual ground it covers, and ignore the periods during which man stood still, went backwards, hesitated or strayed. The Hellenising of the world—and to make this possible, the Orientalising of Hellenism—that double mission of Alexander the Great, still remains the most important event: the old question whether a foreign civilisation may be transplanted is still the problem that the peoples of modern times are vainly endeavouring to solve. The rhythmic play of those two factors against each other is the force that has determined the course of history heretofore.”

  5. Really, what king Antiochus Epiphanes tried to do to Jews in the Maccabean era, FORCING them to share their culture with pagans, was literally like an early form of president Eisenhower forcefully integrating the South at the point of bayonets. When you think about it, there is something inherently phony, even Antichrist-like, about “forced integration” – universal brotherhood supported by violent means, fraternity with clenched teeth.

    Communism of course is just a logical continuation of this antichrist principle – FORCED sharing of goods, forced fraternal communion.

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