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I can’t help but wonder if intelligent Russians in the run-up to Lenin’s take over felt like they were living in a Salvador Dali painting. Did our Russian Brothers and Sisters in Christ in the years leading to 1918 see things getting odder and more strange?

Now they tell me that the Russian has a morose soul that can endure a lot of suffering so maybe they reacted to the run-up to their Marxist take-over differently than I am reacting.

All I can do is laugh at the absolute bizarre nature of it all. I had another epistemologically self-conscious Christian friend call today and all we did on the phone for the first 3 minutes is giggle like Jr. High girls. I mean … how can you not laugh? Even if you know all the terror that Marxism historically has brought to any people afflicted with it, how can one not laugh at the absolute bizzaro character of it all?

It’s like watching a bunch of midgets playing professional basketball while everyone in the stands takes it all very seriously. The 3 foot 7 midget is the center and everyone remarks what a giant he is.

It’s like being attacked by a horde of butterflies who are really convinced that they are going to bring you down.

It’s like having a conversation with your cat about how bothersome fur-balls are.

I mean… all I can do is laugh despite knowing that I may well be lamenting soon enough.

Biden names as the head of his civil-rights division in the DoJ someone who really believes that the blacker the brain the smarter the person?

Congress and Senate seriously desire to impeach and convict a sitting President in 7 days and that because that President won’t be there on the 8th day. Who, besides a certified lunatic seriously entertains impeaching and convicting a sitting President in 8 days?

Hearing stories of people calling on the phone other people — people they normally hate — and needing to be calmed down by the person they normally hate — that the world is not coming to an end.

Learning that the only people who have heard of a plot to rally at all 50 states in order to engage in riot and mayhem are FBI personal.

People who justified violence and rioting all ruddy summer long are now tearing their hair out because 70 people were invited into the Capitol Building and told to act like they were seriously rioting?

Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Fatty Arbuckle combined couldn’t top this for pure gold comedy.

In God’s providence, I just received a phone call while writing this that left me cracking up. A friend in the New England area in a Reformed Church is in hot water with his Church because he attended Church without permission. Yep, you read that right. It seems that other folks in the congregation are scared they will get the ChiCom virus because my friend’s family and a couple of other families gathered together at the Church to view the sermon together which was being broadcast online and then enjoyed a fellowship meal together. It seems, per the Pastor, it is unseemly for Christians to attend Church and have a fellowship meal together because ChiCom cooties could get everywhere and permission to worship wasn’t secured first. What can one do except but to exhale a might guffaw that a Reformed friend calls to complain because they are in dutch for attending Church?

Look … I have to laugh because if I don’t laugh I’ll be in tears.

And I fear there is enough time in the near future for tears.

Until then it is more laughter than I can handle.

“To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today: You did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people’s house.”

Mike Pence
Vice President

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Thomas Jefferson
3rd President

“In the end political violence doesn’t work.”

Tucker Carlson
Talking Head
FOX NWO Network

“The statements by Pence and Carlson and several others I’ve heard today are magnificently stupid statements because political violence routinely works. It worked for the Jacobins in the French Revolution. It worked for the Yankees and Abolitionists in the America’s version of the French Revolution. It worked for the Bolsheviks against the Czar. Political violence routinely works. In point of fact political violence has [worked] and is working for BLM, Antifa and the rest of the Cultural Marxist left.

Of course the reason that violence is being denounced today is that people are trying to hold the social order together. However, clearly the social order is already in an increasingly bubbling civil war. In this context the Christian has to realize that God does not hate violence in the pursuit of His justice or in protection of life. To automatically think that God hates violence is to confess one’s self an Anabaptist. To say that violence doesn’t work is to confess one is an idiot.

I am not advocating violence at this point of the social order meltdown. I’m only communicating that Christians have never believed that God hates violence as pursued consistent with Christian just war theory and Christians with half a brain in their head have never said that “violence never wins.”

I am advocating that as Christians we begin to learn about Christian thinking on Just war theory as articulated by faithful Christian men through the ages because we may well be on the cusp of having to know these things in order to determine our actions going forward.

Personally, I am thankful for the successful violence used by the Christian crusaders, for the successful violence in throwing the Moors out of Spain, for the successful violence of Sobieski at Vienna and Don Juan at Lepanto, for the successful violence of Cromwell against Charles I, the successful violence of Cortez against the Aztecs and countless other successful outbursts of violence as pursued by Christian men against wicked. Further, I regret where Christian violence failed with the consequence that evil men and causes triumphed.

Don’t you believe that “violence never wins.” If anything is attested as true throughout history it is that violence often wins.

(1) On 9-11 we learned our Government can’t provide its own air defense around the Capital. On 1-06 we learned that our Government can’t provide defense of its own buildings.

(2) Lance Armstrong was stripped of repeated Tour de France titles for blood doping. Olympic Athletes are stripped of their medals when caught cheating with steroids. Championship baseball teams who win titles have coaches fired and teams fined millions of dollars. But let a man cheat his way to the Presidency by vote tampering and vote altering and that man is considered to big to fail and he is rewarded the Presidency. I don’t want to ever hear another politician complain about anything not being “fair.”

(3) People who vote are the problem because they really believe that voting matters. We need more people who realize that voting doesn’t matter and so we need fewer people voting. What is wrong with us now cannot be solved by the ballot box because those in power will now allow the ballot box to really matter. Change is needed, but it will not come via ballots.

(4) On 9-11-2001 we learned our Government can’t provide its own air defense around the Capital. On 1-06-2021 we learned that our Government can’t provide defense of its own buildings.Why are we paying confiscatory taxes to an organization that can’t even defend itself?

(5) If we had had a Calvinist clergy corps for the last 70 years we wouldn’t be where we are today with our Political class. Read “Calvinism in History,” by McFetridge.

(6) Americans are hopelessly naive. Did they really think they could rally in such numbers without agents provocateur being salted among them?

(7) The difference between a modern US Politician and a modern US Clergy member? The Politician says stupid things and he knows he is saying stupid things. The Clergy says stupid things and he thinks the stupid things he says are really true and he personally believes them and will threaten to put you under church discipline if you refuse to believe the stupid things he believes.

(8) Now Pelosi is saying she is going to Impeach Trump again if his cabinet does not invoke the 25th amendment in order to cast Trump out of office. What is the threat of Donald Trump that Pelosi wants him out when he only has 13 days in office.

(9) You’re sure to soon hear from your Reformed and Evangelical ministers how wicked people are for what happened in Washington DC. I can only advice you to publicly ask such ministers why the Boston Tea Party was so sinful.

(10) As I listen to the National News I have to believe that I am living in the same country that had other News Agencies titled Tass and Izvestia. The propaganda is stunning. These news reports (I listen to AM Radio) are chock full of leftist editorial content passing as “news.”

Obedience to civil and political authority is now extended only because it is in our interest to obey. We do not obey because our current civil and political authority has any legitimacy. We obey only because we understand that at a particular point it is better to obey than to be shot or experience cancel culture via doxxing. However, when it becomes the case that we can “disobey” without being shot or canceled or doxxed coupled with “disobedience” being in our interest we should “disobey” and that at every turn. The US magistrates have lost all authority and are now anti-magistrates. I owe no more obedience to US magistrates than I owe to Canadian magistrates. I still might render “obedience” but it will only because in the short term it serves my interest. If the US Magistrates will not submit to law and will be anti-law and anti-Christ then out of obedience to God I “disobey” the Christ-hating magistrates.

If respect is required for those in lawful authority then disrespect is required for those who claim lawful authority but are illicit and illegitimate because they themselves violate and flout the law. I am compelled by fidelity to God and His Christ to disrespect those who disrespect the law. It is not honoring to God to hold in esteem those who serve to support illicit and illegal institutions.

Have you had enough with this political charade Americans? Only a determined denseness could keep you from seeing what is happening.

After a summer of watching the authorities stand by to allow our cities burn last night we were treated to the high dudgeon of the foulest politicians decrying American protests in DC. We heard the soaring tunes of self-righteousness coming from Democrats and Republicans alike during the debate over Electoral votes. They said things like,

“You did not win. This remains the people’s House.” (Pence)
“Today we experienced another Pearl Harbor.” (Schumer)
“Self-government requires a shared commitment to truth and shared respect for the ground rules of our system.” (McConnell)

This is all pure bull fecal matter.

The people have not had a house for decades. These lizard people have been serving their own interests for decades and decades.

Yesterday 1 person died. On Pearl Harbor day 2400 people died. To compare the two events as if they have something in common is the reasoning of a lunatic.

Mitch McConnell with his China-doll wife with ChiCom shipping connections wouldn’t know truth if it bit him on the back of his front.

The tyranny we are living under was ratcheted a couple levels yesterday. It has been made clear that neither the voices of the people nor the votes of the people are worth snake poop. These people we call our representatives are bought and owned by foreign interests and as such they are committed to representing those interests. Americans have no representatives in “the peoples House,” and as such what the people get is tyranny and totalitarianism.

The hypocrisy of these people is off the charts. Last summer statues were overturned and destroyed and our Politicians offered, “well, they are only statues. Nothing to overwrought about.” Yet, yesterday when anti-fa, dressed up as Trump supporters, stormed the Capital we never heard, “well, these are only buildings.” Instead we heard that because the Capital was stormed by a few anti-fa mental patients it was “one of the darkest days in American history.”

We are now clearly living under Sam Francis turn of phrase, “Anarcho-tyranny.” Anarcho-tyranny finds an inverse relation between the freedom given to the criminal class and the screw tightening that occurs on the law abiding citizen class. Last summer we saw the burning of America with nary a consequence upon the criminals guilty of the chaos and mayhem. After March this havoc and mayhem has been coupled with the ongoing destruction by the FEDS of the American middle class via the ChiCom scamdemic. How much more clearly can the contrast be made that demonstrates how the Magistrates are actively supporting the criminal class while at the same time penalizing the law-abiding class? This anarcho-tyranny was demonstrated again by the recent stimulus-budget bill that was passed. Criminal states are given millions and billions of dollars while the American citizen is given a two cent tip. People we are at this very moment living under totalistic tyranny.

The sooner we admit this the better off we will be in dealing with it. And we need to be able to deal with it because with the incoming Harris administration we are going to be looking at daily greater muscular advances of tyranny.

What have we learned in our 4 messages in this series as we have considered how the OT develops this theme of the Deliverer.

1.) We have learned he is of the seed of the woman
2.) We have learned that he is a man of violence
3.) We have learned that he will be a descendant of Abraham
4.) We have learned that he will bless the nations
5.) We have learned that he will come from the tribe of Judah
6.) We have learned that he he will come from the family of David
7.) We have learned that he will be a King occupying David’s throne
8.) We have learned that he will be a Prophet
9.)We have learned that he will be a Priest

And the uniqueness of one person holding all three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King.

10.) We have learned that he will be born of a virgin
11.) We have learned that he will be born in the least of all cities of Judah
12.) We have learned that this virgin born child will be very God of very God

Along the way we mentioned that one implication of all this is a postmillennial optimitic eschatology. The Deliverer will be a blessing to the nations. This theme is articulated repeatedly in Isaiah;

Isaiah 19:24 In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria—a blessing in the midst of the land, 25 whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”

Isaiah is looking to forward to the day of the Deliverer … the Messiah and he sees that day as one where former enemies are gathered with Israel and characterized as His people.. the work of His hands. Isaiah screams this truth in the book by his name.

Isaiah 42:6
“I, the LORD, have called you for a righteous purpose, and I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and appoint you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the nations,

Isaiah 42:10
Sing to the LORD a new song, His praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, you islands, and all who dwell there.

Isaiah 45:22
Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.

Isaiah 49:6

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

Loud and clear with resonance and timber Isaiah along with the rest of the Scriptures proclaim Messiah will be the Deliverer of the Nations. He is a great Liege Lord known for the vast numbers and nations that are caught up in His victory train.

Micah 4 picks up this theme of the great Deliverer gathering the nations,

1 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days
That the mountain of the Lord’s house
Shall be established on the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And peoples shall flow to it.
2 Many nations shall come and say,
“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths.”
For out of Zion the law shall go forth,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

This great King who will never be more of a King then He is right now will gather the Nations. And just as His great and awful humiliation occurred in space and time history so His great exaltation will occur in space and time. The Deliverer will make His blessings flow far as the curse is found. The sons of Allah will sue for clemency from our great Messiah. The Talmudic Jews will beg and find mercy from Jesus the Christ who they cursed. The Atheist will cry out in that day, “I believe, forgive my former stubborn unbelief.” That Nations will, in space and time History taste and see that the Lord is good thus demonstrating the greatness of our Great High King.

This truth from the Scriptures has been neglected and opposed for too long. Let us no longer deny the Deliverer’s coming glory. This optimistic eschatology was characteristic of Reformed theology until the center of Reformed theology shifted as Westminster was established as the main training center. We need to return to the eschatology of Edwards, the Hodges, Thornwell Boettner, Warfield, Kik, and Rushdoony. It seems a reasonable thing to do given that is the eschatology of the Bible.

Well, what else do we learn from this prophet about the coming Deliverer?

Isaiah puts emphasis on the fact that the Deliverer will be empowered by the Spirit of the living God. Is. 11:2

The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.

Isaiah 42:1
Here is My Servant, whom I uphold, My Chosen One, in whom My soul delights. I will put My Spirit on Him, and He will bring justice to the nations.

Isaiah 48:16
Come near to Me and listen to this: “From the beginning I have not spoken in secret; from the time it took place, I was there.” And now the Lord GOD has sent me, accompanied by His Spirit.

Isaiah 59:21
“As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” says the LORD. “My Spirit who is on you, and My words that I have put in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth, from the mouths of your children, or from the mouths of your children’s children, from now on and forevermore,” says the LORD.

Isaiah 61:1
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release from darkness to the prisoners,

The careful readers of the Gospel then realize that it is not for no reason that the writers of the Gospel go out of their way to mention how Jesus the Christ was anointed with the Spirit. Spirit empowerment was a sin-qua-non of the Deliverer and so we are told that,

Matthew 3:16
As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on Him.

Luke 4:16 He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. 17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me [i]to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are [j]oppressed;
19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

20 Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. 21 And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
We remember also it was the Spirit that drove the Deliverer into the Wilderness to be tempted

All of this has implications for the Trinity that time does not allow us to delve into.

It was necessary for the Holy Spirit to inspire the authors of the Gospel to record the intimate relationship between the work of the Deliverer and the presence of the Spirit at every step.

Now we turn to the Spirit inspired prophet to see what he has to say about the Deliverer in His humiliation. Of course we refer to those chapters that cause the religious Jews to gnash their teeth and that is Isaiah 52-53. Here the humiliation of the Deliverer comes singing through and we are reminded in that first gospel of Gen. 3:15 that the Messiah would not complete His work without being wounded in His own right. Yes, the Deliverer would crush the serpent’s head but not without having his own heel struck. This is a metaphor for the reality that the head crushing would not be done without suffering and injury.

And Oh what injury.

He is despised and [d]rejected by men,
A Man of [e]sorrows and acquainted with [f]grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

4 Surely He has borne our [g]griefs
And carried our [h]sorrows;
Yet we [i]esteemed Him stricken,
[j]Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded[k] for our transgressions,
He was [l]bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes[m] we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord [n]has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from [o]prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
9 And [p]they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

10 Yet it pleased the Lord to [q]bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 [r]He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the [s]spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

Here we learn there is not theology of glory without their first being a theology of the Cross. No victory without suffering. No triumph apart from a prior wilderness. No shout of joy apart from a prior tear of agony.

The exalted King will suffer humiliation. This is where the Jews stumbled. They could not fathom an exalted King who would also be characterized by the deepest humiliation. And yet this is what our Deliverer knew and that as from the Father’s hand.

And why? Why this humiliation?

Because as man sinned so man must pay for that sin. The problem here is that no mere man could withstand the just payment for sin that God’s law required. And so, God added the human nature in the coming of the 2^nd person of the trinity in order to be one who could both make the just payment for sin that God’s law required as the Divine nature supported His human nature in the Divine bruising and yet have within Himself because of His divine nature the ability to live again.

The Deliverer would be a bloody warrior and the blood of this warrior would be His own – His own spilled that those He came to rescue would have no need to have their own blood spilled in what at best would be vain and silly attempts at self-salvation.

Here is the Gospel… narrowly considered. Here are the themes of redemption and ransom. Here are the themes of reconciliation and adoption. Here we learn that the great High Priest is offering up Himself as the only sacrifice that the Father finds eternally pleasing. Here is propitiation, expiation, objective justification, passive obedience, and substitution. All those themes that can instantly reduce both the least and most sanctified believer to tears. All those themes that the poets and hymn writers have exhausted themselves trying to capture.

And as the OT record unfolds these are just some of leitmotifs that express themselves. These motifs are wrapped up in the Deliverer for which they were looking. Well, now we might understand better the aged Anna and Simeon exultations about the privilege of laying their eyes on Messiah. Why Herod had such concern that he would slaughter the innocent in order to get this one challenger to the throne.
Conclusion;

Let us give just two observations in closing by way of implication.

The Scripture of the Old Covenant were unmistakably reliable. Line upon line and precept upon precept they paint a portrait of the coming deliverer and in every verbal stroke of the paint brush what they painted is the completed portrait we find in the New Testament. What this tells us is that God’s Word is reliable. As such we should seek to live our lives in light of its truth from Genesis to Revelation. We should live not only in terms of a continuing return to the Gospel but also in terms of a proper estimation of the third use of the Law. We should return to the Scriptures constantly to have answered again for us two questions

1.) Where can I find a merciful God?
2.) How shall we then live?

Secondly, when we read the Scriptures we are to read them Christologically and Christocentrically.