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.
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The man who very concretely connected ancient Babylon and modern Western globalism was Alexander the Great. He is prominent in the prophecies of Daniel, and with providential symbolism, he died in Babylon himself, in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_the_Great
“According to a Babylonian astronomical diary, Alexander died in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon between the evening of 10 June and the evening of 11 June 323 BC,[1] at the age of 32.”
Alexander’s conquests brought Europe and Asia together, and created the universalistic Hellenistic “world culture”, developed further by the Romans. And as Gary North observed, it was under these new conditions that systematic pagan “natural law” ideology developed:
http://garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/html/gnbd/appendix_e.htm
“This later Hellenistic intellectual development was Stoic natural law philosophy, which was the product of the collapse of the Greek city-states, not the foundation of Athenian democratic politics. Stoic natural law theory was used to justify the new world empires of Macedonia and Rome.”
The Stoics indeed became like semi-official “court philosophers” of ancient universal empires (like neocon intellectuals are court philosophers of the American Empire), providing them with philosophical justification.
And neo-Stoic ideas (together with neo-Epicurean ideas) went on to play a very significant part in the 18th century Enlightenment. This was the “secular”, or non-Christian source of the Enlightenment universalist ideology:
https://books.google.fi/books?id=tLLx3hfc6UYC&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PA251#v=onepage&q&f=false
“One was through a strong sense of the powers of disengaged instrumental reason, whose dispassionate impersonality was taken as sufficient for universal beneficence. This is where modern humanism shows its roots in neo-Stoicism; except, of course, that what has been lost is the idea of a providential course of things, designed by a beneficent God, which the wise person must learn to accept and endorse.”
The ancient Greco-Roman world culture reached its height when in the reign of despotic Roman emperor Caracalla, the early 3rd century AD, all free men (and women) of the vast Roman Empire were made equal citizens. A modern liberal academic writes:
https://books.google.fi/books?id=x795CgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PT470#v=onepage&q&f=false
“In 212 CE the emperor Caracalla decreed that all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire, wherever they lived, from Scotland to Syria, were Roman citizens. It was a revolutionary decision, which removed at a stroke the legal difference between the rulers and the ruled, and the culmination of a process that had been going on for almost a millennium. More than 30 million provincials became legally Roman overnight. This was one of the biggest single grants of citizenship – if not THE biggest – in the history of the world.”
There have been many who thought that even though Alexander the Great was born as a Macedonian country boy, he ended up dying as a neo-Babylonian despot:
https://archive.org/details/cu31924029750225/page/n259/mode/2up?view=theater
“One fine morning this Achilles became Asiatic, and turned his back to Homer and Greece. Babylon, the great mistress in monarchical prostitutions, accomplished in one day upon Alexander those effects which it required a hundred years to produce on the Persians. Shameful and unforeseen spectacle! The conquered found themselves to be the vanquishers. Asia, that was at that moment worn out, stained, and in the cadaverous condition of Chaldean rottenness,—old Asia obtained her master for her lover. A gilded sepulchre, the sink of love, through which the world had passed, such was the passion of Alexander the Great. Modern writers, when they see in all this an admirable political sagacity, are insane. If the Greeks had to contract a little of the Asiatic manners and thinking, this certainly was not the way to do it.”
In other words, Alexander was conquered by the sinister charms of Babylon – which was just the fate that Moses and other prophets warned their people not to succumb! (That is why the Canaanites were ordered to be destroyed, so that they would not seduce Israelites from true faith.)
Jeremiah 51:7:
“Babylon was a gold cup in the hand of the LORD, making the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore the nations have gone mad.”
“Anti- Christian Nationalism
Is the “Kingdom of the Jew.”
Does it occur to you that maybe the reason the Jews are so hostile to Christian nationalism (and so supportive of things you hate like religious pluralism, equality, and globalism) is that many centuries of Christian nationalism gave them pogroms, expulsions, inquisitions, and the Holocaust? Maybe if, instead of Jews, Christians had been on the receiving end of that, you might see the wisdom in tolerance and pluralism too?
If you’re going to persecute people, they’re going to fight back, so in that sense Christian nationalism is simply reaping what it sowed.
Yes, it occurred to me. Then I went and did my research and realized that it was really the case that the reason Christians are so hostile to Jews is that for many centuries the Jewish impulse and goal as been to destroy Christianity. The things you claim about above either were defensive measures on the part of Christians, or as myths that Jews have made up to smear Christianity.
This clip demonstrates the view of many of the Jewish people (practicing or not) against Christ and Christianity;
For example … the whole myth about the Inquisition is ably dismissed by Rodney Stark in his book, “Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.” For example, the Holocaust numbers and methods are themselves largely debatable. See the literature that came out of the Ernst Zundel trial in Canada. Even Auschwitz in 1992 reduced by 2million the number of people who died there from the original accounts. The Jewish Bolsheviks in the USSR easily killed as many Christian Ukrainians in the Holodomor as died @ Aushwitz. Sorry, Kathleen, I just don’t agree with your interpretation of history.
You might find these books helpful:
The Bible — Keep an eye on all the persecutions of Christians by Jews in the book of Acts
The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit — E. Michael Jones
The Holocaust Narrative — E. Michael Jones
Bearing False Wittness — Rodney Stark (Stark also has a chapter where he discusses the myth that Pope Pius was against German Jews)
The Jewish Threat — Joseph Bendersky
The Plot Against the Church — Maurice Pinay
Ron Unz (Himself Jewish) writes a lot of great stuff on this issue. See His “Understanding World War II: Essays on the Shaping Event of Our Modern World”
On the issue of so many many expulsions from European nations (Ulysses S. Grant even expelled them from the US South during the Civil War for awhile because they were being such a menace) have you ever asked yourself “what did the Jewish people do wherein they found themselves expelled over and over and over again from Christian Nations?” I mean is it even possible that they brought it upon themselves by their behavior?
Finally, in terms of pluralism… well, pluralism is a myth. As we are seeing pluralism is just a backdoor method to dilute Christian influence so that Jewish influence can be inordinately high.
Here is what the Presbyterian minister D. James Kennedy said about tolerance;
“Tolerance is the last “virtue” of a depraved society. When you have an immoral society that has blatantly, proudly, violated all of the commandments of God, there is one last “virtue” that they insist upon: tolerance for their immorality.” Dr. D. James Kennedy
I have many more book recommendations I could offer if you are interested. I just didn’t want to overwhelm you. I have read tons of the literature written by Jewish authors surrounding the Holocaust. Indeed, I have a nice little library. I also took a whole semester class in Undergrad on “The Holocaust,” where we were taught all the usual tropes. I merely believe that one has to look at this issue with a wide angle lens considering centuries of history and not merely 12 or so years in Germany.
Thanks for stopping by at Iron Ink Kathleen. We try to give air time to all kinds of opinions here.
You will always, within any given group, find extremists who want to eradicate others who aren’t like them — Christianity has those too — but I very much doubt most Jews, at least today, care about Christianity except to the extent of wanting it to leave them alone. But suppose I’m wrong about that. What then?
In that case Judaism would be no different from either Christianity or Islam, each of which seeks to bring about “peace” by killing off, converting (forcibly if necessary), or intimidating into silence all non-conformers. I’ve read enough of your Christian nationalism to know that that’s essentially your end game, even if you might quibble with how I just described it. I’ve read enough world history to know that that’s pretty much what Christian nationalism looked like when it had power (the Inca, Celtic pagans and Native Americans would like a word). So why are you criticizing the Jews for doing the same thing? Other, I mean, than the bald, naked and unsupported assertion that you’re right and they’re wrong.
And here, ultimately, is the societal choice that needs to be made: There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching as the result.
As for your claims about the inquisition and the holocaust, and the books you recommend, I was raised by anti-Semites so I’m already familiar with them. An elder in the church I grew up in once said, in a sermon, that his only real objection to the holocaust was that it wasn’t 100% successful in destroying all Jews. Having been raised in that, I’ve already heard your arguments, and they’re garbage. There really was a holocaust, it really did try to kill off Europe’s Jewish population, and it really was a continuation of the inquisition under a different name, even though Catholics weren’t the only ones involved. If you want to buy into historical revisionism, that’s your right, but that’s what it is.
Kathleen,
All that you’ve sent me is hot garbage stew. You keep pining for Pluralism/multiculturalism without realizing that is a religious conviction that requires a monotheism that says … “No God can be uniquely worshiped in a social order except for the God that requires no other singular God.” Sorry… that’s why I said pluralism is a myth. You want to force that monotheistic religion… you want to force your God upon me. Not happening.
And of course you are wrong about Jewish people wanting to just live and let live. Jewish people HATE Biblical Christianity because a social order governed by Biblical Christianity would not allow porn … would not allow anti-Christ films being made in Hollywood, would not allow the attempt to marginalize Christianity as the Jewish faith of multiculturalism/pluralism has successfully done. Pluralism = Jewish Nationalism.
If you look and learn your history you will see that Christianity did not seek to kill the Jewish people. By way of official Church policy Roman Catholic teaching early in the Church, w/ its policy of “Sicut Judaeis Non,” taught a doctrine that stated no one had the right to harm the Jew, but at the same time, the Jews were — like Christians and Jews living under Islam — required to accept second class status and refrain from undermining the Christian cultures in which they lived. This is hardly a doctrine that encouraged the killing of Jews as you so wrongly think. Again, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. God has provided you the opportunity to learn aright. Will you not take it? And before we leave this you might want to read a Jewish author named Ariel Toaff who wrote; “Passovers of Blood: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders.” This book has the potential of cleansing your cheery view of what happens when Christians allow pluralism in their midst.
Your grasp on World history is what I might expect from someone who has read only the court historians with their official anti-Christian narrative. Have you never learned that the official history is written by the winners? Wise up and realize that it typically only in revisionist history where the truth is buried waiting to be discovered. Again, I recommend Rodney Stark’s “Bearing False Witness,” as an antidote for your gross misunderstanding of history. Another that would help you see straight again is Wm. T. Cavanaugh’s “”The Myth of Religious Violence.”
Next we speak briefly to your laughable appeal to “Incas, Native Americans, and Celtic Pagans.” The peoples under the thumb of the Incas and Aztecs praised God for the work of Cortez. You are absolutely clueless when you suggest sympathy for these murderous people. The Native Americans were so busy killing one another, that I’m surprised they noticed when the white man begin to kill them as a defensive measure to stop their raping, murdering, and pillaging.
Next, my conviction that I am right and they are wrong are not in the least bald or naked. I have God’s own Word to substantiate all of my claims about Christianity being the truth. All you have is the bald, naked, unsupported, assertion that Christianity is not true and that because Christianity is not true therefore everything else is true.
Then you write the hilarious bit that is worthy of stand up comic routine;
“There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching (sic) as the result.”
1.) There are so many worldviews therefore there must be no true worldview?
2.) Really, there are, in the end, only two Worldviews. Christianity or Humanism. It’s not that hard.
3.) Or, there is another option, and that is nations recognize that religio-ethno states are inevitable. This is what you are arguing for Kathleen. You are arguing that America should be a religio-ethno state that is a place where all colors bleed into one and where the religion that rules is the religion that allows no other singular religion or God than the religion of all religions and all gods. However, where all religions are allowed than the God is really the state (man in his corporate expression — Humanism) so that the God-state can dictate to all the other gods how far they are allowed to go in the public square. You are not a pluralist Kathleen. You are a raging monotheist who desires that this social-order outlaw people like me who desires a different god besides your multiculturalism god to rule over the social order. Can you not see this?
I could care less about the de-churching of the church if that is happening because people don’t want a clear alternative between your god and the God of the Bible. Elijah was alone on Mt. Carmel. I’ve no problem standing alone.
I quite agree that the Jewish people suffered greatly during WW II. But as Jewish people were understood as being the ideological champions of Communism, then we understand why many people in Europe were concerned about the enemy in their midst. That it went badly for too many rank and file Jewish people I weep over. It is one reason I am so adamantly opposed to war when not waged on a Christian basis.
Please repent Kathleen. Your understanding of History has been fed to you by Dr. Mephistopheles and his imp culinary school of chefs. Christ will receive you and teach you a better way … a way not characterized by your bitterness and hate against Him.