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.

Converting By The Sword?

“You cannot FORCE someone to be a Christian. If you think you can force a nation to be a Christian Nation Then you are far more like Islam than Christianity.”

Mr. Blake Allen
X Post

I pause to deal with this because this kind of thing gets said repeatedly. Mr. Allen is just a mouthpiece here for an idea that is widely accepted.

However, I challenge the verity of this denial. I do think you can force a people/nation to be Christian. Of course it all depends on what one means by “be a Christian.” One certainly can force a people or nation to be Christian in the sense of forcing upon them Christian standards, law, and morals. Just as Communism was forced upon Europe in the 20th Century so Christianity could be forced upon people today. Another example is how Islam was forced on Christian peoples in the 8th century forward as it converted by the sword as it swept across formerly Christian lands. Eventually, most of those people as individuals gave up their Christianity in order to conform to the “Islam at the point of the sword” reality. Another example is how the Transcendentalist Yankees during the War of Northern Aggression forced their damnable religion on the South successfully during the era or Reconstruction and beyond. Examples abound of religion being successfully forced upon peoples.

Thus there is no reason to think that Christianity, in its objective sense, could not be forced on a people. Charlemagne accomplished this with pagan tribes in his time. Oliver Cromwell did it for a season in England.

Now, if one means by the above quote that one can’t force people into a living vital union with Christ… well, that is certainly true. However, it often is the case that the living vital union with Christ will follow a forced subjection of a people — even if that requires a couple generations. With the forced subjection to Christianity the ground is cleared of pagan religion resistance against Christianity being given a hearing by the former peoples, who, as a people, condemned Christ and Christianity.

So, it is true that one cannot force individuals to have vital and living union with Christ but it is decidedly not true that Christianity cannot be forced upon a people / nation by means of conquest.

The Religious Interrelationship Between Church, State, & Family In Every Social Order / Culture

“The magistrate promotes true religion even when the church is ‘silent.'”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

This should be true, however if the Church remains silent for very long eventually the magistrate will not promote true religion. Equally, if magistrates do not promote true religion over a sustained period of time eventually neither will the Church.

The Church and State (and family) are three distinct but interdependent co-ordinate agencies and are the Jurisdictional authority centers in any given culture / social order. (Think three legged stool.) If any of these three institutions goes belly up and if the other two will not course correct for the third one that has gone bad, then the consequence will be that eventually all will go bad.

No culture /social order can last long that is divided against itself. Jesus Himself said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” As such a culture /social order, except in times of decided turmoil, will always be uniformly religious in their civil social life, their family life, and their church life. Apart from this reality the culture / social order will be in friction and turmoil.

Take these united States right now. Right now we are, speaking in general and not universal terms, a humanist people and that humanism is present in all of our civil Institutions, including and especially the Christian church. (Remember, exceptions exist.) Biblical Christian folks will not rise very high in our current Institutions because our current Institutions are agreed that Biblical Christianity cannot be allowed to rise to challenges the current Institutional non-Christian realities. If Biblical Christians do manage to climb somewhat in our current humanist Institutions they will reach a point where they will be silenced, or they will silence themselves realizing how dangerous it would be to speak out as a Biblical Christian.

I had this last point above brought out to me recently when attending an event with a large number of Christian clergy present. One of those clergy members who belonged to a Reformed “conservative” denominational structure pulled me aside and said quite encouragingly, “Don’t be discouraged. You’re not alone. There are many people out here who agree with you. You’re merely saying the things out loud that the rest of us are saying quietly.” Well, why are these chaps in the position of only being able to say what I say, “out loud” quietly? It is clearly because they know if they say what I say out loud they are going to be descended upon and be silenced by their “Reformed” “Conservative” denomination. So, they silently, from a distance cheer me on but dare not cheer too loudly or join in the contest too directly knowing the penalty that will be paid if they speak their mind without horns or teeth. Let me be clear here. As I said above, I found the chap who pulled me aside to be encouraging. I understand perfectly why he and many like him can only speak “quietly” what I am speaking loudly. I understand that people (clergy) have wives and children who are dependent upon them. I understand that people (clergy) may well decide that the cost is too high and it is better to wait a more opportune time to speak more loudly. I wish they would speak out with me but I understand why they don’t believe they can.

Cultures / Social Orders rise and fall together religiously. No culture / social order will last long divided against itself.

Addendum

By the way, this explains the whole R2K phenomenon. R2K realizes the above is true and so, seeking to operate in (and also perpetuate) the current humanist culture / social order it silences the voice of Christianity in the pulpit on matters that the prevailing humanist religion is insistent about. In such a way “Reformed” and “Conservative” Christianity can retain its form without having to stand for Christ. It can tell itself that it really is “Christian,” when in point of fact it is merely emptying historic Reformed and conservative Christianity of its content as the Dangeld payment given up in order to be allowed to function in a humanist culture.

A Brief Description of The Holodomor & The Resolve To “Never Again”

“Here I saw people dying in solitude by slow degrees, dying hideously, without the excuse of sacrifice for a cause. They had been trapped and left to starve, each in his home, by a political decision made in a far-off capital around conference and banquet tables. There was not even the consolation of inevitability to relieve the horror.

The most terrifying sights were the little children with skeleton limbs dangling from their balloon-like abdomens. Starvation had wiped every trace of youth from their faces, turning them into tortured gargoyles; only in their eyes still lingered the reminder of childhood. Everywhere we found men and women lying prone, their faces and bellies bloated, their eyes utterly expressionless.”

Victor Kravchenko
“I Chose Freedom” – p. 118
Communist Party Activist
Assigned to the Ukraine
Later repudiated Communism

Warren H. Carroll goes on to write;

“Those not quite so nearly dead, following the most elemental human instinct in such a situation, tried desperately to flee, to go from a place where there was no food at all to a place where there might be some. The full might of the Soviet state was massed to stop them. Travel by farmers was prohibited without special individual permission, rarely given. Railway men were instructed to keep the starving fugitives off trains. Nevertheless, they gathered around almost every railway station, seeking someone who give them a crust of bread, or to get on a train unobserved. Many died along the tracks, and were buried in ditches nearby. Others walked towards the cities, avoiding roadblocks by crawling through swamps and staggering through forests. The few who reached the cities would stand in quarter-mile lines before bread stores, often holding the belt of the man in front of them to stay erect. Old men and children would crawl on their hand and knees on the city streets, begging. There were so many of them that most people’s charity was numbed; and even in the cities of Ukraine the people had little more than enough food to survive. In Kharkov on May 27, police arrested several thousand starving peasants who had joined city bread lines, took them in wagons to a large pit, and literally dumped them in, where most of them, not strong enough to get up and get out of the pit, died in it. At Novovoznesenske in Mikolaiv province, starving peasants tried to get into a government grain dump where grain was rotting; the OPGU (Cheka) guards opened fire on them with machine-guns. At Sahaydak in Poltava province in May, starving peasants succeeded in storming a grain warehouse; many of them were too weak to carry the grain home, and most of them were arrested the next day and shot or sent to labor camps (where it is most unlikely they labored very long.”

Warren H. Carroll
The Rise and Fall of Communist Revolutions – p. 226-227
Describing the Holodomor

All of this has always been consistent with the  rise of Communist Revolution. Whether you read about it starting in France in 1787 or if you read about it in Bolshevik Russia from 1917 to its fall, or if you read about it in Bella Kuhn’s brief Hungary stint, or if you read about it’s flare up in the Spanish Revolution, of if you read about it in the Paris Commune of 1871 or if you read about it in Mao’s China with its Cultural Revolution and its Great Leap Forward, of if you read about it in Castro’s Cuba, or if you read about it Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam, of if you read about it in Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, what you always, without fail read, is long chronicles of the dead and dying, and the tortured and the mindlessly inflicted suffering. You read of the brutality of the Marxists against not just their enemies, but against civilian non-combatant populations. What you read is one long description of Hell on earth. Just read what the Soviet Communist troops did to the innocent and women as they traveled across Europe to destroy Germany. Read about the suffering in the Gulag-Archipelago. Read about the treatment of those forcefully repatriated by the Allies back to Russia with the close of World War II. Many of those repatriated had not lived in the USSR since 1917 (Operation Keelhaul). Read about how the Red Army in its warfare against the White Army during the Russian Civil War treated the civilian populations that sheltered White Armies once the White Armies had to evacuate. It’s all there to be found and I’ve read a good deal of it. It is absolutely Satanic.

So, because I know all this I am rabid against any scent of Communist doctrine (Cultural Marxism) emanating from any orifice of any talking ass clergy. These “men” have no idea where the arc of their “theology” is going to end. All this egalitarian skubala, all this shaming of the white race alone, all this watering down of patriarchy, and all this apologizing for muscular Christianity is all going to end, if we don’t put a cork in it, to the very things described above.

It is because some of us have the ability to connect the dots from stupid Cultural Marxist things being said today to struggle sessions, cancel culture, and eventually Gulags that we are so sharp when engaging with the legion of useful idiots that fill professional positions in numerous different fields today.

McAtee Contra Dr. W. Robert Godfrey On Egalitarianism

America Christianity has had a long run of strength in our culture…. We were traveling and I found a book in a book store titled “The End of White Christian America,” and it’s not as analytical as I had hoped it would be but it is full of statistics in an interesting way showing how America is changing and the role of Christian values in America is changing dramatically and I thought; ‘How do we react to that? How do we feel about that?’ Well, some American Christians (and of course there ought to be an end to white America. America ought to be a multiracial country where everyone is equal) But how do we feel as Christians that it ought to be the end of a Christian America? And you know I think there are two basic reactions to that. One reaction that we see too often is a angry reaction. ‘I’m mad that we’re losing our prerogatives. I’m mad that we’re losing our influence.’ I’m mad that these people have changed my country.’

Now there is some legitimacy to anger in politics but fundamentally Christians aren’t called to be angry, and I think that we as Christians need to say at this moment, ‘Alright, if we’re going to be weaker then let’s pray to the Lord that that will actually be an occasion for us to be strong and lets act in love.”

Dr. W. Robert Godfrey
Westminster Seminary California
President Emeritus
Ligonier Ministries Teaching fellow
Samson Series, Lecture 10, 11

I don’t know what year this was given but that hardly matters.

1.) Note the almost casual way in which the most offending part is given. It is said as if “well, it is obvious that there ought to be an end to America as a white nation and of course America ought to be multiracial where everyone is equal.” It is said as if multiculturalism and egalitarianism are the most obvious truths in the world. It almost is so obvious that it hardly even needs to be noted.

2.) Look again at the two “ought” statements. By what moral constraint and standard are these ought statements leveraged? Who says; “there ought to be an end to white America? America ought to be a multiracial country where everyone is equal?” If the egalitarianism of Cultural Marxism is the moral standard then we understand where all this “oughtness” is coming from as emanating from Dr. Godfrey. However, where do we find in Scripture the idea that nations ought to be egalitarian?

3.) And what of this idea of “equal” that Dr. Godfrey invokes? He even says everyone should be equal. As children are part of everyone should it be the case that children are equal to parents? In a Biblical worldview are men and women equal? Whence this idea that all peoples, regardless or their race or gender are equal? Yes, we agree that all men are equally responsible to God’s law as in their station and calling. Yes, we agree that all men outside of Christ are equally subject to God’s wrath (though they are not even all equally fallen as the depths of some people’s fallenness is more depraved than others depths of fallenness). Equality is a mathematical term. Two 2 x 4’s are equal. Two quarts are equal. However as people are not mathematical equations two people are never ever equal. This statement of Godfrey’s is horrid and is the product not of Christianity but of Marxism.

4.) Scripture does at times call for anger. Scripture teaches “Be angry, and sin not (Psalm 4:4, Ephesians 4:26). Scripture also counsels repeatedly that we should be slow to anger. However, there comes a time when a lack of anger is not Christ honoring. Christians ought to be angry when God’s glory is diminished or cast away. That our homeland was founded by Christian god-fearing men who had a vision of Christ’s dominion in the new world that has since been cast aside for the sake of tolerating sin and making room for the alien, stranger and foreigner who seized it from citizens who were taught the importance of a ‘anti-christ’ tolerance should make us angry. In light of that reality, for Dr. Godfrey to say “well Christians shouldn’t be angry” is enough to make someone properly angry.

4.) Christians ought to be mad that Christianity is losing (has lost) its prerogatives and influence. Why would any Christian be  neutral or happy  that the prerogatives and influence of other alien anti-Christ religions have flourished above the Christ honoring prerogatives and influence of Christ? If Christians are to have “no other God’s before God,” then should they not be saddened, disappointed and, yes, even angry, that other gods are now before God in the public square?

5.) Note in all this Dr. Godfrey seems to see no correlation between the decline of Christianity in America and the decline of White America.

6.) That last sentence above from Dr. Godfrey is a whole semester of Jesus Juking in just one sentence.

7.) Yes, of course, we are to act in love. Just as I’m sure Samson was acting in love when he pushed out the pillars on the Philistines in his final loving act and just as David was acting in love when he loaded up that slingshot and just as Jesus was acting in love when He called the Pharisees “white washed tombs full of dead men’s bones,” and just as Elijah was acting in love when he partied with the prophets of Baal in the Kishon valley and just as Paul was acting in love when he told the Judaizers that he wished that they would go all the way and emasculate themselves.

8.) Paul’s discovery that “when I am weak, then I am strong,” was not an injunction to search out weakness and embrace it. It was an observation that when visited with weakness by God’s providence we can discover grace that works to make us strong.

9.) All that Dr. Godfrey says above is consistent with the R2K that the Seminary he was President of has pushed for decades now.

The Bolshevik Communist Attitude Towards Family & Children

Recently, we had a chap on Iron Ink pressing for the legitimacy of Government schools. He even raised the issue of proper socialization that homeschooled children suffered from. Today, in my reading, I came across a quote that exposes the silliness of that position he was advancing;

“The Communists did not even intend to stop with this totalitarian political power; they aimed to destroy the family as the last possible bulwark against their mind control. By 1921, they were specifically planning to take children away from their parents at the age of four and place them in Communist boarding schools where they would be properly ‘socialized.’

Zlata Zinoviev, wife of the President of the Comintern, declared that year:
‘Is not parental love to a large extent harmful to the child? … The family is individualistic and egoistic and the child raised by it is, for the most part, anti-social, filled with egoistic strivings. … Raising children is not the private task of parents, but the task of society.’

Warren H. Carroll
The Rise and Fall of Communist Revolution – p. 147

1.) Parents, note that if you send your children to government schools you are indeed exposing them to statist mind control.

2.) Note that the goal of the Communist “schools” was to properly socialize the Soviet children. This remains the goal of the Government schools.

3.) There are very few legitimate reasons to put Christian children in the schools that belong to Baal.