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.

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.

Children In The Covenant

“Yes, they’re infants, but they are his members. They’re infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves.”

~Augustine,

On infant communion

“The NT’s restatement of the Fifth Commandment to honor parents (Eph. 6:2) assumes that children are born as covenant members, and thus parents are bound to to train their children in Christ (Eph. 6:4). When the law was first given to Israel (Ex. 20:12), children were included in the covenant (Gen. 17), and there is no indication that the law can be given to such children if they are not in the covenant. Paedobaptism teaches that Christian parents are bound by covenant to train their children in the faith…”

Rev. Zach Garris

1.) It is true that there is no indication that the law can be given to such children except that they are in the covenant. However, it is also true that children not in the covenant are responsible to God’s law. Pagan children cannot say, “because I am not a covenant child therefore God’s requirement that I obey my parents does not apply to me.” However, heathen children need to see that they cannot obey their parents unless they are in Christ.

2.) And since Rev. Garris’ statement above is true covenant parents extend to their covenant children the judgment of charity and so extend to their covenant children from the tenderest of ages the privilege of coming to the Lord’s Table to commune. Baptized children of covenant parents have full membership in Christ’s church and so receive Word and Sacrament in both kinds. Rev. Garris properly here appeals to the OT structure to support the contention that children are in the covenant. However that same OT structure that Rev. Garris appeals to found the covenant children receiving the sign of the covenant (which Rev. Garris agrees should continue) and participating in the covenant meal (which Rev. Garris does not agree should continue).

This is called “Covenantus Interruptus.”

The Common Ground Between R2K & Doctrinaire Communism

“The (Russian) Orthodox Church already had martyrs to Communism: but Patriarch Tikhon (1865 – 1925), for all his earlier courage, was not to be among them. In June, the Communists broke him. He signed a statement declaring that his treatment had been justified because of his anti-Soviet attitudes, and that he had not suffered in confinement. He made this formal avowal of surrender: ‘I have completely adopted the Soviet platform, and consider that the Church must be non-political.’

But the blood of Orthodox Archbishop Benjamin and Catholic Msgr. Budkiewicz cried out from the ground against that.”

Warren H. Carroll
The Rise & Fall of Communist Revolutions – p. 164

What is interesting in this quote is that the Russian Communists, after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 were insisting that the Churches in Russia must be, by way of doctrinal commitment, be non-political — that is to say they must not be involved in speaking to state policy.

In turn, the interest in that is found in the fact that such a Communist policy is the same policy that the R2K chaps from Escondido (Westminster West) and elsewhere in the Reformed denominational world insist must be the policy of the Reformed church. So, both the Communists and the Radical Two Kingdom “theologians” like David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, Michael Horton, J. V. Fesko, D. G. Hart, Chris Gordon, T. David Gordon, Kevin DeYoung, ad infinitum, each agree that the Church must be non-political. (Never mind the consideration that if the church is non-political it is at that point following a extraordinarily political path.)

The Communists tortured Patriarch Tikhon in order to get his mind right on the subject of the “non-political nature of the church” and R2K does all it can to close the door against those who defy their Communist skubala that insists that the Church is necessarily obligated to be “non-political.”

Ecclesiastical Condemnation On The Sin of Noticing

Something interesting happened this past season of Reformed denominational confabs. The something interesting is the ruling by the RPCNA, the ARP, and the PCA, together agreeing to issue forth an anathema against the sin of noticing. Each of them put their stamp approval of the following statement;

That the 221st General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church do on this solemn day condemn without distinction any theological or political teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristics and does on this solemn evening call to repentance any who would promote or associate themselves with such teaching, either by commission or omission.

Leave it to the Reformed to try and sweep back the incoming tidal wave of racial realism with a document inspired by the Cultural Marxism of the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. This riff of midwittery above was put forth by one Rev. Benjamin Glaser though there is rumor that the palsied hand of Rev. Andy Webb was involved as well. Any party to the creation of this document as well as any party who voted for this to be accepted deserves to have a pointy dunce hat put on them and be consigned to some ecclesiastical corner to mull over the error of their ways.

Below I provide a brief analysis of this Tom Foolery;

1.) What is not condemned here is any sociological or cultural anthropological teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity. Apparently, if one casts their teaching in sociological or cultural anthropological terms one is safe from this foolhardy Presbyterian condemnation.

2.) Here we find a condemnation approved by a Church body and yet this condemnation is not based upon any notification of which sin has been committed so has to have this condemnation uttered. Presumably, this condemnation is due to the fact that someone somewhere has violated at least one of the ten commandments. Yet, nowhere above to we find the sin committed that has earned this condemnation.

3.) In point of fact what this “church” condemnation abominates is the sin of noticing. In point of fact it might be the highest point yet for inveighing against the sin of noticing ever issued by a church body.

4.) One thing we can be thankful for with this Church condemnation is the fact that it is apparently the case now that race and ethnicity are being acknowledged as real realities and not merely social constructs. I mean this is an improvement on what we have previously gotten from Doug Wilson and Voddie Baucham on the issue of race. Wilson wants to insist that race is a social construct and Voddie wants to say that race is merely about melanin levels. At least the three NAPARC denominations are granting that race and ethnicity are real.

5.) If there can be no superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristic then by necessity there can be no inferiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristic. This means that when it comes to immutable human characteristics these conservative denominations are 100% egalitarian. It is not possible, per these esteemed clergy, that God has created the different races / ethnicities of men to be differentiated in their varying expressions of humanity.

6.) What would happen if someone arose within these NAPARC denominations insisted that while average Australian Aboriginal intelligence is inferior when compared to average East Asian intelligence but insisted this while admitting all this may be mutable over enough time? Would anyone in the NAPARC denominations even care? Would they care if the same person said at the same time that the average white European intelligence is, on average, two standard deviation points higher than sub-Saharan Blacks in the US as long as the person saying this conceded that it might not be immutable and that 1000 years later this might not be true? Would such a person who believed this not be condemned by these ultracrepidarian Presbyterians?

7.) If these chaps are serious about condemning someone who holds these views how is it, if they can’t substantiate from Scripture why it is necessary to agree with them, that they have not added to what it means to obey the Gospel? How have they not added to the Gospel and in so doing anathematized themselves by doing so?

8.) Think about the numerous church fathers from church history these clowns have condemned. Off the top of my head these clowns have condemned Calvin, Kuyper, Hodge, Dabney, Schaff, Solzhenitsyn, Francis Nigel Lee, John Edwards Richards, etc. It really is monstrous when one realizes the level of avarice to the end of popularity involved in this pronouncement.

9.) This whole thing is perfectly ended with the stated need for repentance on the part of anybody who would associate with the teaching – either by omission or commission – that is condemned. Presumably, this would mean that if someone attends a church who themselves are unsure on the ideas condemned and found themselves friends or associates of someone who does believe these condemned ideas said person would have to repent just for associating with these sinners.

10.) This official condemnation also gives tyrant Pastors the ability to just remove membership of a member of their church if that member was to say, for example, something like, “Well, I think that Michael Hunter has some interesting points to consider in his article on Natural vs. non-Natural communities.” Such a person would be required to repent and if they refused, per this anathema, they would have to be cast out of the body should these nekulturny clergy be consistent with their words.

Predestination & It’s Implications

Isaiah 46:9 Remember the former things of old,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like Me,

10 Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure,’

11 Calling a bird of prey from the east,
The man who executes My counsel, from a far country.
Indeed I have spoken it;
I will also bring it to pass.
I have purposed it;
I will also do it.

Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He [a]made us accepted in the Beloved.

7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and [b]prudence, 9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 10 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, [c]both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. 11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, 12 that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.

13 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who[d] is the ]guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

We are saying a few words about Predestination this morning. Before we get too lost in the subject we should provide a simple definition. We see from these texts and all of Scripture that Biblical Predestination is that doctrine that sets forth the truth that all that comes to pass… all that happens, happens because the good God of the Bible determined from the foundations of time and of the world that such a happening, or event, or situation would come about. We see this articulated in the Isaiah passage. God declares through the prophet that that which makes Him unique is this reality we call “Predestination.” (Read vs. 10 again).

There in this Ephesians 1 passage we see Predestination referred to in vs. 1. Paul says he is an apostle by the will of God … that will we are going to learn in what follows is a will that was present from eternity.

vs. 4 – once vs. 5 – twice vs 9 – once vs. 11 – once

In Ephesians 1 Predestination is the eternal context, or background, against which all salvation happens. In Isaiah 46 Predestination is the eternal context, or background against which all of human history happens. There is no understanding life, no understanding the Christian faith, no understanding God without embracing this teaching of Predestination. It is, we could the central reality against which all other realities alone make sense. This is so true that we would have to say those who deny Biblical Predestination deny the Christian faith, and really except for felicitous inconsistency are not men to be listened to in the least.

The doctrine of Predestination of course makes a God-oriented people. Without this Biblical concept of Predestination we become humanists of one stripe or another. We no longer run life according to a vertical axis but we run and live life according to a horizontal axis. Non Reformed or Biblical doctrines of Predestination put the God of the Bible in a humanist jail, constraining His authority and sovereignty over His world.

And this explains why this doctrine is so despised and attacked. One example of which is given to us by Gordon H. Clark in his book “Predestination,”

Toward the end of the service (there in Indianapolis), Billy Graham asked people to come forward and a crowd came. With them before him evangelist Graham addressed the large audience still in their seats and delivered a five or ten-minute diatribe against Presbyterianism. “Don’t pray for these people who have come forward,” he said. ‘You may have prayed for them before, and that is good. You can pray for them later on, and that will be good too. But right now prayer is useless, for not even God can help them. They must accept Christ of their own free will, all by themselves, and God has no power over the will of man.”

Gordon H. Clark
Predestination

Fallen men and confused Christians do not desire this kind of sovereign God ruling the world and the affairs of men. Small men desire a world where God is limited so that they can have the final measure of control and authority. This kind of denial of revealed Predestination is everywhere seen in the Church. Indeed, the only place one finds it is in some Reformed Churches and it is our embrace of Biblical Predestination that really is our reason for existence.

Note here in this passages in Ephesians 1. Paul is writing here about the graciousness of grace found in our deliverance from sin. In doing so Paul starts not with God’s saving work in time, but He starts w/ God’s saving work in Eternity. What happens in time… in history … happens because of what God had ordained from eternity. Between Is. 46 and Eph. 1 we learn that all of life … all of redemption is a living out of what God determined / predestined from eternity. These passages teach us that we do not live in a time + chance + circumstance world. This is our Father’s world and though the wrong oft seem so strong, God is the ruler yet.

In relation to Predestination we note in Eph. 1 the tight and unbreakable connection between redemption and predestination. All of our redemption is anchored in Predestination and this is so because it is impossible to have an elect people to be redeemed if that elect people are not protected from all possible contingencies. If a man is set aside to be redeemed than there can be nothing that can come into the life of that man that will stop him from having that set aside redemption applied to Him and then nothing that can happen afterwards that will stop God from fulfilling His purposes for the redeemed. What God has spoken for any of us He will bring to pass and having purposed whatever He purposes for His people He will do.

We see then that there is no Biblical doctrine of Redemption without a Biblical doctrine of Predestination. The two are hopelessly intertwined so that when Calvinistic doctrines of Predestination are denied, there Biblical doctrines of redemption are also denied. Of course, not overtly. Many are those who want their doctrine of gracious redemption who want nothing to do with Predestination and yet that is just not possible and those who pursue that are living in contradiction-ville. We have established then that the savior in any system of thought or any religion will always be the predestinator.

As we briefly consider this truth of Predestination we need to understand that while only Christians believe in Biblical Predestination all men, without exception, live life in terms of some kind of Predestination. What we are suggesting here is that the denial of the doctrine by fallen or confused men does not make the doctrine of Predestination go away. All men believe in predestination. It is never a matter of “if predestination,” it is only a matter of “which predestination.” You see the only option to a world that is not predestinated by some predestinating agent is a world completely operating by random and absolute chance. Predestination and chance are the alternatives. Either all things are planned by a Predestinator or all things happen randomly by chance. And living in a universe governed completely by time + chance + circumstance is untenable. Without a Uni in the Universe there can be no rationality in the Universe. Without a Uni in the Universe there can be no order. Without a Predestinator in the Universe resulting in a total chance Universe one day gravity could be true and the next it wouldn’t be. Without a Predestinator in the world your next birthday could mean your 10 years younger instead of 1 year older. Without a Predestinator in the world at birth gender wouldn’t be constant and one could invent as many different genders as there are baskin-robbins ice cream flavor. No one who is sane really believes in a totally random world not governed by some principle of predestination found somewhere. As all things reveal order and design all things reveal a Predestinator that has planned all things so that in all this diversity there is a unity that is headed towards a particular end.

So.. Predestination is an inescapable concept for rational man. We see this overtly stated in some places. In the Buddhist / Hindu religion there is Predestination in the idea of Karma which teaches that the Predestinator is man’s mind;

Both external events and our experiences of them are created by our own minds, mainly through the process of karma. The Buddha talks about this in the first two verses of the Dhammapada

Mind is the forerunner of all states;
Mind is chief, mind-made are they.
If one speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows,
Like the wheel that follows the cart-pulling ox.

Mind is the forerunner of all states;|
Mind is chief, mind-made are they.
If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows,
Like one’s shadow that never leaves.

Note here that we see here a Predestinator. The Predestinator is the mind. And we, as Christians would agree with that but the difference is that the predestinating mind in Karma is man’s mind whereas in Christianity it is the mind of the God of the Bible.

If you turn to Marxism there you will find a doctrine of Predestination. Marxism with its Scientific Socialism of all varieties teaches predestination. The scientific socialist believes that it is predestined that Feudalism gives way to Capitalism gives way to socialism gives way to communism. This is inevitable. The Scientific Socialist therefore determines to help this process along by pursuing revolution via his Hegelian dialectic. He sees himself thus as an agent of the impersonal process that will bring about what can’t help but be brought about. Because of this he crafts what we might call a humanist predestination. Predestination thus has not gone away in the Worldview of the Marxist. It merely has been transferred to a new and different God … to wit; MAN. Man now, collectively considered in the State, will do the predestinating work that the Christian believes belongs to God. Man, collectively considered in the Sate, will be the predestinator of man.

Because all this is so, the man who is in Christ and embraces God’s predestination will be at war with any state that rises up to seize God’s predestination prerogatives. The Christian will be at war with the State understanding that the State has violated his 1st commandment. The Biblical Christian thus will wage un-remiting warfare against the Predestinating state.

By thowing off the God of the Bible man does not rid himself of ancient notions of predestination. He merely transfers it to another location and that new location of Predestinator will be the new location of man’s savior as Predestination and salvation are inextricably intertwined as we see in Ephesians 1.

We see then, that Predestination is an inescapable concept. All men believe in Predestination though few men believe that the God of the Bible predestinates the way we see here in Isaiah and Ephesians. For the Christian the God of the Bible who predestines is a Transcendent God who because of His transcendence is able to see the end from the beginning and so can bring to pass all He decides. This transcendent predestination includes the predestination of secondary causes. God plans all things but His predestination includes the predestinating of creaturely freedom – a freedom that operates within the context of God’s unhindered and unchallenged freedom.

Humanistic predestination to the contrary are imminent predestinations. That is to say that they are predestinating agents who are predestinating as working within the world and this means an overt command and control system. Imminent predestination, such as we are living in now, seeks to constrain all things as within the world. Imminent predestination plans sees man as mold-able and will use force to the end of molding men to fit the imminent predestination. God’s transcendent predestination to the contrary is, we might say, un-observable. Man feels no constraint in God’s transcendent predestination. There is no sense of force being used against him. In God’s transcendent predestination man acts as God determines but without the whip and the cudgel.

We see this in the Isaiah passage. God raises up a bird of prey from the East – the man who will execute God’s counsel. This is a reference to the God hating Cyrus of Persia who God uses to liberate His people from their Babylonian captivity. Cyrus has no personal interest in being God’s tool. He is not being forced by whips and chains to be God’s instrument. He rises up because that is Cyrus’ wicked desire. But what Cyrus intends for evil God intends for good. Here we see God’s transcendent predestination guiding the behavior of nations and leaders in an un-observable way. (Jer. 25:9)

When this kind of predestination is denied what we get then always is imminent predestination. A predestination as I said that seeks to take away the secondary freedom belonging to creatures. This then entails the use of observable force to social engineer men to operate in the desired terms of the imminent predestinator. This can be done by hammer, such as Mao’s cultural Revolution or it can be done by the silk of propaganda as recently explained by Brett Pike. (Explain SEL)

In the time we have had this morning we have seen that Scripture teaches from Genesis to Revelation the Biblical doctrine – the Reformed doctrine of Predestination. We have seen that there is no gracious Redemption apart from a totatlistic Predestination. In any system of thought once the Savior is located the Predestinator has also been located. We have seen that Predestination is an inescapable concept – all men believe in Predestination whether they are epistemologically self-conscious of that or not. We have seen the difference between Transcendent Biblical Predestination and Imminent Humanistic predestination. We have seen that most of the Church today hates Predestination.

If we, as God’s people, desire Reformation, we must return to this teaching of Predestination. There will be no stopping the tyrant Predestinating State if we do not become convinced again that God predestines all.