Author: jetbrane

We are going to be using, quite a bit, the phrase “Tyrant-State,” and “God-State,” this morning. So that we can know exactly what we are speaking of, allow me to provide a definition at the outset so we can all be on the same page.

The Tyrant-State or God-State is defined as fallen man’s temporarily successful attempt, via his collective identity as expressed in the State, to take to himself the prerogatives of God. When fallen man successfully takes to himself the prerogatives of God in a social order as expressed in the individual the result is social anarchy. When fallen man successfully takes to himself the prerogatives of God as expressed in and through the State the result is the Tyrant-State or the God-State.

The whole premise here is if fallen man will not have God as God then he will take himself as God, either in his individual expression or in his collective expression as incarnation in and through the State.

This premise is supported from Scripture in Genesis when we see the Serpent telling our first parents that if they would only disobey God, they would be as gods, determining good from evil.

Throughout history Calvinists of multiple stripes have hated tyranny and have historically been at the forefront of resisting tyranny. This is not a controversial statement. Tyrants throughout the centuries have hated the Reformed faith and the adherents thereof.

English Historian Henry Hallam confirms this when he wrote,

“Not merely in their representative assemblies, but in their pulpits, they perpetually remonstrated in no guarded language against the misgovernment of the court and even the personal indiscretions of the King.”

Perpetually… perpetually. If a Calvinist clergy member remonstrates in no guarded language once a decade from the pulpit as against wayward magistrates it is a blue banner day.

Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry, detested presbytery, because it held principles inconsistent with allegiance to her crown.

In 1670 court Historian Peter Heylin could write in summation regarding Calvinists in his “Aerius Redivivus,”

“Thus we have seen the dangerous doctrines and positions, the secret plots and open practices, the sacrileges, spoils and rapines, the tumults, murders and seditions, the horrid treasons and rebellions, which have been raised by Presbyterians in most parts of Christendom for one hundred years upward.”

Just try and imagine any living historian today characterizing Calvinists as the Church’s Bad boys.

Mr. Wm. B. Reed of Philadelphia, himself an Episcopalian wrote after the war of American Independence,

“The debt of gratitude which Independent America owes to the dissenting clergy and laity can never be repaid.”

Those dissenting clergy and laity, in the main were Calvinists.

Looking back on all this 19^th century George Bancroft could write, “Calvinism was Revolutionary.”

Can you imagine any historian today writing such words regarding Calvinists?

Something has changed.

Why were Calvinists once such champions of liberty that they were once remembered as we have briefly cited?

Calvinists were merely being consistent Christians. Here we have men who have taken the God of the Bible as their authority and have submitted to the Lordship of their great Liege-Lord Jesus Christ. Being in His service, they were first and foremost His men and the men of no-one else.

As such as being consistent Christians and belonging to one only Lord they refused to tolerate nor countenance any rule of any King, Magistrate, or Sovereign who ruled in defiance of the one only God.

And this is what the Tyrant State always seeks to be. It seeks to raise itself above God and to dictate to God’s people what their portion and lot shall be. The Tyrant State seeks to de-god God and en-God itself.

This is what we see in Exodus 5

2 And Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.”

Keep in mind as we noted before that Pharaoh stands before God’s people here as the incarnation of Genesis 3:15 as God speaks to the Serpent – the eternal enemy of God’s people,

“And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”

There stands Pharaoh, the embodiment of the Tyrant State as the minister of the Serpent of Gen. 3:15. Moses and Aaron in being face to face with the Tyrant State are face to face with their ancient enemy. As the God of the Bible, through them, makes demands of Pharaoh they are face to face with a man wearing a crown that has crafted into it The mythical Uraeus-cobra was worn by gods and kings both in Egypt and later by Quetzaicoatl – ruler of the Aztecs. The serpent & vulture in Egypt communicated the divinity of Pharaoh. Naturally, enough the Tyrant-State having overthrown God has taken itself as God and in Egyptian Pharaoh’s case they have taken the serpent as their insignia.

2 And Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.”


Thus speaks always the Tyrant State. It does not recognize God, neither does it have any intent to hearken unto his voice. In the Scripture we hear the voice of the Tyrant State over and over again demanding that it be acquiesced to. In Daniel the friends of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah refused the demands of the Tyrant state and were reported,

13 Then Nebuchadnezzar, in rage and fury, gave the command to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. So they brought these men before the king. 14 Nebuchadnezzar spoke, saying to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the gold image which I have set up? 15 Now if you are ready at the time you hear the sound of the horn, flute, harp, lyre, and psaltery, in symphony with all kinds of music, and you fall down and worship the image which I have made, good! But if you do not worship, you shall be cast immediately into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you from my hands?”

16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. 18 But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.

This is what the Tyrant State always desires. It desires to be Worshiped. It is what Pharaoh demanded as a living God and it is what Nebuchadnezzar demanded. It’s fake word is the final word in their world. The tyrant-state desires to be bowed down to and be served. And every time we submit to the tyrant State in its anti-Biblical fiat law-word we own another God who is no God.

And here you find why Calvinists are Calvinists. They have no God but God. They do not obey the false fiat law-word of the Tyrant God-State. God’s people have always refused to submit to the Tyrant-State.

That is the record of Scripture. God’s people do not submit to the Tyrant-State.

9 Now Haman went forth that day pleased and very much encouraged. But when Haman saw Mordecai at the king’s gate, and he did not rise or tremble in his presence, Haman was filled with rage toward Mordecai.

Remember Haman is a representative of the Tyrant state. He is a Magistrate and his rage burns towards Mordecai because Mordecai, being a member of God’s people refused to offer obeisance.

Whether it is Moses and Aaron facing Pharaoh, whether it is Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah with Nebuchadnezzar, whether it is Mordecai with Haman, God’s people do not countenance the Tyrant God-state and that because they do honor and pay homage to the God of the Bible and His Christ.

The God-State … The God-State ever aspiring to be the voice of God and eventually, like Herod in Acts 12, being slain by God for thinking he was the voice of God. The Tyrant-State from Pharaoh in Exodus to Nero in the book of Revelation ever determined to eliminate the people of God who will have no God but God.

Our Calvinist fathers understood all this. It was second nature to them. Americans were a people crafted and shaped by the Biblical Christianity of Calvin. Indeed, this is so much that Historian Geroge Bancroft could write that “Calvin was the Grandfather of America.”

This basic understanding that fallen man can both in his individual expression and his collective expression as Tyrant-State will arise to cast off God and en-god himself is a staple of Calvinism. It is Calvinism 101. And the resistance to that in the social order is Calvinism 101a.

Our American Fathers were far from perfect but they sought to war against the possible rise of the Tyrant-State by creating a bill of rights which had the very Calvinist intent of tying the Federal Government down with the chains of the Constitution.

But our Federal State, being a Tyrant-State has long ago broken those chains and says to itself,

“I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” Isaiah 14:14

And this all Biblical Christians must oppose.

Very well, then how is it that our Tyrant-State reveals its intent to be God?

H. L. Mencken points the way in answering that question when clear back in 1926 he observed,

“It (the State) has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs are in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

— Henry L. Mencken, 1926.”

What Mencken is describing is a State that takes itself as the god in whom its citizenry live and moves and has its being. The State expands its duties and responsibilities so that we live in light of the State’s providence and predestination. It’s where the phrase “womb to the tomb” came from. It’s where the policy of “from school to work” comes from.

In that vein listen to this radio spot and tell me who it comes from?

We are there, Day one with baby names and a gift that lasts a lifetime. (SS card #)

We are there as you grow protecting you and those you love.

We are there when you get your first job. Helping you to save for the future. (SS deduction)

We are there when you marry your sweetheart, to help secure your new life together.

We are there if the unexpected happens to help you see life from a new perspective.

We are there when you start your next chapter to make sure you get off to a great start.

And we are there when you lose your soulmate, to help make sure you will be alright.

We are with you through life’s journey.

It is this kind of mindset that explains why politicians can say things like,

As John Kasich, a former Republican governor of Ohio, put it, “When you’re governor, you realize you’re really the father or mother of the people inside of your state. You’re right there. You live with them. You see them. You hear from them.”

If one listens to that commercial and that statement from Kasich from a Christian perspective one hears the God-State saying, “I am with you always even unto the end of the age,” or, “I will never leave your nor forsake you,” or, “Fear not little children.”

The comfort we are supposed to take from that is that the Tyrant-State is looking after us womb to tomb.

All of this is why Jose Ortega y Gasset in 1922 could warn

“This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention, the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State; that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long-run sustains, nourishes and impels human destinies.”

The State takes our children to “educate” them with a humanist catechism so that our children can function in keeping with the designs of the Tyrant-State. The State w/ the recent passage of 2.2 trillion “relief” bill inches towards providing a universal basic income so that we can all be well kept and provided for by the state. The State demands accreditation according to its standards in order for Universities and Colleges to be seen as legitimate. The State requires that our young people come to it in order to get permission to marry (Marriage License). The State demands of God’s people to live according to its humanist law which is becoming increasingly lunatic. The State burdens our small businesses with regulation and taxation which clearly communicates that small businesses exist in order to provide for the state. The state upon our death takes the double portion that was intended for the eldest son and so works to the end of insuring that families never gain enough strength to be a challenge to the state.

The Churches we attend are merely extensions of the State and if you EVER find one that bites the hand of the State in a sermon you should mark it on the Calendar. We pledge allegiance to the symbol of the State and we get misty eyed when we sing the Star Spangled banner and we get angry if anyone dare to not stand for these State rituals.

The State chooses our morality. If the State says abortion is fine, then despite what the Christian God might say abortion is fine. If the State says sodomites can marry then we will redefine marriage despite what the Christian God might say. If the State says you must be under house arrest because “it just knows better,” than we believe the State and stay put. Society has been swallowed by the State and that so much so that if anybody says “bugger the God-State” they are considered unchristian or extreme or unstable, and yet that is exactly what needs to be said again just as was said by the Covenanters to King Charles I, just as was said by the Huguenots to the Louis XIV. Just as the Dutch Christians said to the Spanish crown when they sought to bring those Dutch Calvinists under the thumb of the Roman Church and Spanish rule, just as The Calvinist Scott-Presbyterians said to the English Parliament in 1776 and just as the Calvinist Southerners Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee said to the Jacobin invaders in 1861. To be a Calvinist means to be one who resists the God state when the God state, in a long train of unrepentant abuses clearly has the agenda of being God walking on the earth.

For my part we are at that point in time again when obedience to tyrants is disobedience to God.

[the State]

“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs, you say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, nothing, nothing.” They have no clue, they don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.” That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost. It’s all turning, think of it, think of it. And this (Coronavirus) is their new hoax.”

—

Trump was in error here. The Coronavirus was not a hoax, though Trump was certainly right when he said the Democrats were politicizing the Wuhan Virus. Both can be true. It can be true that Trump thought the Wuhan virus was a hoax as pushed by his political enemies and it can be true that Trump’s political enemies politicized the Wuhan virus to seek to topple Trump via the virus and that by making of it more then it actually was. So, Trump failed by not taking the Wuhan virus seriously enough and his political enemies failed by seeking to panic the American people from coast to coast by over-exaggerating the virulence of the Wuhan virus.

And this is our political class right now. They are so interested in defeating one another that the American citizenry is caught in the middle of their utter foolishness. We are in the position we are in because the political class on both sides as well as the propaganda arm of the Democrats (the Major Media) were more interested in scoring political points off this pestilence than they were in arriving at a level headed solution that could have begun as early as January.

The final gasps that are left of the Republic that we were bequeathed by our forefathers is on the edge of being finally exhaled with this criminal 2.2 trillion “relief package,” and our P. T. Barnum 4th rate grand-standing President Donald J. Trump, decides to go on the warpath against the one and only guy who wants to follow the Constitution and not allow this monstrosity to be passed without a quorum so that people by name and vote are associated with the passage of this grotesquerie. President Trump, showing once again his Democratic Party credentials, is irate with Rep. Massie insisting that the Constitution is followed.

I’ve said this before, but I will repeat it again, Donald J. Trump is a charlatan and a mountebank. The man was never a Republican before 2016 and he continues to have nothing to do with what Republican had once meant, never mind what Conservative has always meant historically. Trump is about to sign a bill which, if Obama or any previous Democrat had signed, Republicans would have howled a howl that would have been heard around the world. Trump, by signing this bill, is the Tweedle-stupid to Bernie Sander’s Tweedle-Dumb.

Now, combine this reality with the fact that once again our immature, torpid and worthless Congress-people are passing a bill of behemoth proportion who have never read the bill. If you recall this was last done when the dementia addled, and Botox inhalent, Nancy Pelosi told us that “we have to pass the bill in order to see what is in the bill.” Rep. Thomas Massie alone stood against this constitutional malfeasance and for that his reward was to be slandered by President Doofus as a third-rate Grand-stander. Keep in mind that all Massie was asking was for people to put their name next to their vote and that request (later denied) as turned Massie into the Red-headed step-child of the Republican party. We will never know who voted for and against this constitutional suicide relief bill.

Trump is a fourth-rate grand-stander, and yet even at 4th rate he likely is a rate or more higher than most of the other grifters who surround President Grifter. There he is in his press conferences speaking on things he has absolutely no knowledge. What sane person trusts Trump on the possible success of hydroxychloroquine? What sane person trusts Trump on his ability to discern the math of the Wuhan? What sane person trusts Trump, with his limited vocabulary, to be able to finish a crossword puzzle without cheating?

I say all this as one who has defended Trump as the symbol he has been taken to be by so many on the right. Many on the right are so desperate for hope that they have turned Donald J. Trump into the symbolic embodiment of their hope. I have consistently said that ought to be respected and Trump ought to be defended at least on that level. However, when this vaunted symbol continues to act contrary to what numerous hopeful people have taken him to symbolically be then a time needs come when the spokesman of the sane turns to the symbol mongers and say … “This isn’t what you were hoping for. He is not the symbol that you take him to be and any further investing of him as a symbol reflects badly on your ability to sort reality from illusion.”

The problem though, as said earlier, is that there is nobody else surrounding Trump who isn’t on the grift any less than the Big Orange is. We are being led by a murder of clowns…. no, — wait — that is being unfair to clowns. How about we are being led by a pod of nincompoops? Still, too hard on nincompoops.

If a people are known by their leadership than there can be no doubt that our Republic deserves to die.

In the previous post I wrote about the fracturing of the social trust in our society. In this post I want to look at one effect of that fracturing of social trust.

Because social trust is in eclipse any crisis, or any significant news event, whether in a localized setting, or as on a larger stage, results in a rush to the microphones. When social trust is in arrears the goal becomes to set the narrative and that is often done by being the first one to get their story out on the largest platform possible. When “news” breaks, the lack of inherent social trust requires the participants in the potentially different shaping of the news to be the first ones to the microphone, the first one’s to the press, the first ones to social media. This becomes a information age version of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s motto as applied to military engagement with the enemy, “Be the first with the most.”

This Wuhan “crisis” has indelibly stamped upon my mind how important it is to be the first person to the microphone. Whoever can be the first at successfully implanting any narrative into the public consciousness via the media organs, that narrative, no matter how ridiculous and unrelated to reality, becomes the reality that now every other competing narrative must overthrow. Indeed, competing narratives of the first officially established narrative begin to quickly be known as “conspiracy theories,” and that no matter how much more rooted in reality those now “alternative” explanations are.

Because there is very little social trust the goal is to overwhelm people as fast as possible with a majority narrative that becomes the established narrative. If social trust was vibrant and healthy there would be more of a willingness to examine competing narrative claims but because social trust has become a causality of our social balkanization the only response left is be the first to the microphone with the most.

We have seen this repeatedly in our lifetimes. From the bombing of the Murrah building in 1995 which ridiculously claimed that a fertilizer truck bomb blew off the front face of a building, to the bombing of Centennial park in 1996 which found judicially innocent Richard Jewell tried and convicted in the Press as aided by a corrupt FBI (forgive my tautology), to the downing of the New York City Towers in 2001, to the recent Russia-gate spectacle wherein the media and the Democratic party together with the deep state tried to impeach Trump, to the current Wuhan crisis what we have consistently seen is a rush to the microphone so as to be the first with the most thus setting the majority report narrative that all other competing narratives must contend with.

And while the issue of “social trust” is not the only issue driving this it is certainly in the mix. A lack of social trust demands giving the varied plebes an immediate narrative so that there can be some kind of societal harmony.

As such, there is a race to the microphones to establish a majority narrative.

Social trust is the residual leftover in any given culture as existing from the general good will that exists among the citizenry. Such good will and the consequent social trust is built up by the commonalities that exist among any given people group. For example, people with a shared culture, shared ethnicity, shared history, shared language, shared religion, and shared worldview have a higher social trust quotient than exists among people groups who are culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and historical diverse. This is a theme that was addressed by Robert Putnam in his landmark book, “Bowling Alone.”

“Immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to `hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”

Robert Putnam
E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century
The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture

What Putnam is describing here is the disappearance of social trust.

Now, combine the reality of the diminution of social trust as combined with some kind of societal or cultural crisis and the result is “each man teaches and each man believes what is right in his own eyes,” which in turns results in there being no possibility of social stability in light of whatever crisis is at hand.

Take the current Wuhan crisis. Because social trust has been so damaged in our culture with the multi-versity of epistemologies, historiographies, cultures, ideologies, theologies, and worldviews and the result is that there is no way that any macro account of the Wuhan crisis can be accepted on a societal wide basis. The social trust that might lend credence to such a macro account is exhausted. Given our Government track record for over a century of lying, given the clear cultural Marxist agenda that all major media outlets have, given the fact that science and scientists are as unreliable as a castrated rooster, given that Churches and denominations are led by the most dimwitted and tunneled vision among us, given our businessmen and corporate heads excel only at being shysters, given that there is very little social glue that holds our multicultural society together the result is that social trust is non-existent. I know I don’t trust what the President is telling me about Wuhan. I don’t trust the Media’s lies. I don’t trust self-serving politicians (excuse the tautology). I don’t trust the clergy because they are routinely a stupid stupid class of people. And you know what? I’m not unusual when it comes to my lack of social trust.

So, what Wuhan has uncovered again is that getting cheap goods at Wal-Marx alone cannot be the basis upon which a society can adhere. Cheap goods in the Market place does not lend itself to social trust. Social trust can only be recovered by building anew the mystic chords of memory which are passed on from every generation to every consequent generation of a particular ethnic people who own a shared belief-system. Social trust can only be regained when the theo-cultural strands that bind us are woven anew. Social trust can only be regained when lying no longer is considered a virtue that can build political consensus.

When social trust evaporates completely then all that is left as a tie to bind strangers together sharing the same geographical space is naked force. At some point harangues from America’s pulpits on the necessity to just “love” everybody, lectures from “intellectuals” on how “diversity is our strength,” will not be able to bridge the gap between strangers who have next to nothing in common. Not even a shared fear as manipulated by the Feds or the Media will serve as the coin of social trust for very long.

Our dangers as a country are far deeper than the Wuhan virus, far greater than an economy on the lip of the abyss, and far more serious than the loss of liberties Americans have always owned as our birthright. Our penultimate problem is the evaporation of social trust.

Our ultimate problem is that we have rebelled against Christ and His Word.

That ultimate problem always, without fail, leads to the dissipation and finally elimination of social trust.