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.

Ehud & Bret Tag Team On Kinism

“Even if imperfectly conceived under the various schools of paganism, race consciousness, nationalism, segregation, and anti-miscegenation laws were normative in the ancient world. And the exceptions wherein integration was promoted were invariably in terms of the most aggressive anti-Christ imperial orders such as Babylon, Assyria, Babel, the Soviet Union, and the UN.”

Ehud Would
Faith and Heritage — pg. 327

I think we have to add the US, Europe, Australia, and South Africa to that list now.

God’s revelation teaches us that Nationalism is the Biblical social order and Nationalism by definition means a people descending from a common ancestor. Now, certainly Kinists understand that the pursuit of “one drop” rules is nonsense and so intuit that nations can exist while having within their borders those who do not belong to the core people group, but the fact that exceptions might exist doesn’t change the rule.

Also, it should be said here that Kinists pursue these truths out of love for God and love for others. It is not love to kith and kin to allow the social order to become mamzer. Indeed to be party to such is to hate God, our children, and our neighbor.

However, now we must realize that we have lived 60 years in the mad pursuit of a social order that is essentially a disintegration into the void. Our identity is increasingly become one of non-identity — a nihilistic approach if one ever existed.

Such a program, unless arrested, will end in blood and chaos. Empires always eventually fly apart. We have seen this in our lifetimes with the evaporation of the former USSR.

And whose purpose does this mass integration serve? It serves the goals and designs of Marxism, which is itself the theology of Hell. The end goal is the elimination of peoples, places, and family. If all are kin then nobody is kin.
Of course all this is driven by the desire to destroy the Creator-Creature distinction. If no horizontal distinctions exist as between peoples than the final assault on destroying the distinction between God and man is more easily achieved. Or, if one prefers, the destruction of horizontal distinctions is birthed by the present reality that the distinction between God and man has been blotted out. However, one argues this, the loss of peoples, places, and families is intended to pull Christ off His throne and destroy the faith once forever delivered to the Saints.

If we lose here we lose everything.

And that is why we will not lose. God will no more be mocked in 2024 in His world than He would not be mocked at the tower of Babel.

Those who fight against Christian Nationalism/Kinism/Ethno-Nationalism war against heaven. In this warfare against God Christians are especially going to be sorrowful and sorry for ever calling righteousness wickedness.

In my world, such people if  upon being instructed in the Christian faith on this matter continue to insist on “cosmopolitanism,” “Liberalism” and “Alienism,” are outside the faith.

Joseph Spurgeon; Statement On Natural Affections — A Kinder & Gentler Antioch Declaration

So, Rev. Joseph Spurgeon has taken it upon himself to ink a new declaration for everyone to sign touching the issue of race, and WW II. It seems that in the Evangelical/Reformed world you just can’t be somebody unless you’re writing a new declaration.

I’ll be glad to admit that this one is superior to its previous bastard statement (Antioch Declaration) but this one still demonstrates that neither Joseph nor its signers realize what time it is.

I see this document as a “Kinder and Gentler” version of the Antioch declaration. George H. W. Bush would be proud.

Below are some of the highlights (lowlights?) of the new document being offered. It is hilarious that Doug Wilson and Uri Brito have signed this thing. Spurgeon expects anybody to sign a document on this subject who have repeatedly been given the mailed glove by these black knights?

Behold the document;

“I affirm that while the Allied powers rightly opposed the evils of Nazis, that some of their actions violated Christian principles of justice and morality.”

Joseph Spurgeon
Statement On Natural Affections
A Kinder and Gentler Antioch Declaration

Bret responds,

Some of the actions?

Some of the actions?

You mean like lying about the Bagel death totals, the lampshades made of human skin, bars of soap made out of Bagel fat, knowingly allowing the bombing of Pearl Harbor in order to have casus belli, like Operation Keel Haul, you mean like the post-war German death camps where over a million surrendering Germans died and where the Geneva convention was operated around by labeling POWs as “disarmed enemy forces,” you mean like dropping the Atomic bomb when the peace settlement that was accepted after the dropping of the bombs was the same that had been agreed to 6 months prior to the dropping of the bombs, you mean like getting in bed with Joe Stalin, you mean like giving Stalin all of Eastern Europe?

I could go on and on but to suggest that “some of their actions violated Christian principles of justice and morality,” is like saying that some of Charlie Manson’s groupies could sometimes go a little overboard.

In the end the Nazis were no more evil than the Allies in that conflict and likely even less so. One could even just as accurately write that “while the Nazi powers rightly opposed the evils of the Allies some of their actions violated Christian principles of justice and morality.”

 

Additionally, I reject the egalitarian ideologies of communism and secular liberalism promoted by some Allied powers, as these are contrary to biblical truth

Joseph Spurgeon
Statement On Natural Affections
A Kinder and Gentler Antioch Declaration

Bret responds, 

Some Allied powers?

Which Allied powers didn’t promote Communism?

Inasmuch as all the Allied powers got in bed with the Christ hating Reds in that much they all promoted communism.

What Revisionist WW II History have you read? Any?

I affirm that marriage can lawfully occur between people of different ethnicities and races, as there is no biblical prohibition against such unions…

Joseph Spurgeon
Statement On Natural Affections

A Kinder and Gentler Antioch Declaration

Bret responds,

In our current climate this is an example of egalitarianism — a doctrine that another statement in this document said was not Christian. See below.

I affirm that children of mixed race are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, possessing equal dignity, value, and worth as any other human…

Joseph Spurgeon
Statement On Natural Affections
A Kinder and Gentler Antioch Declaration

Just exactly who denies this? This implies that there are people out there in the Church who deny this… who are these people? Names please.

Still, I’ll stick with Dr. John Edwards Richards statement who as recent as 50 years ago could write these words explaining the Causes of Separation in 1973 where the PCA separated from the liberal PCUS.

(We are separating from;)

The Socialist, who declares all men are equal. Therefore there must be a great leveling of humanity and oneness of privilege and possession.

The Racial Amalgamationist, who preaches that the various races should be merged into one race and differences erased in oneness.

The Communist, who would have one mass of humanity coerced into oneness by a totalitarian state and guided exclusively by Marxist philosophy.

The Internationalist, who insists on co-existence between all peoples and nations that they be as one regardless of ideology or history.

John Edwards Richards
One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

“No human can measure the anguish of personality that goes on within the children of miscegenation… Let those who would erase the racial diversity of God’s creation beware lest the consequence of their evil be visited upon their children.”

John Edwards Richards

One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)

Look, we are in a position where the White race in general and the Christian White people in particular are fighting for their very existence. This document does not yet realize the peril we currently are in. Instead, it treats the wound of our situation lightly. This document, while an improvement over the Antioch Declaration will not provide a safe space for Christian White people in the Church or in this nation. What is required is a flame-thrower (Doug will like that reference) and all we are offered here is a glowstick.

Eschatology Matters

“Between the resurrection and the parousia, the church has the task of making the nations obedient disciples (Mt. 28:18-20; I Cor. 15:20-26; II Cor. 10:1-5), thus subjecting all things to Christ (Ps. 110:1-4; I Cor. 15:20-27; II Cor. 10:3-6; Eph. 1:21-23. The present age and the world to come overlap (Heb. 2:5-9); Vos stresses that that in Paul the future thrusts itself into the present, the Spirit being ‘the circumambient atmosphere in which we live and move. Suffering and expectation, mission and social action go together.”

Robert Letham

Systematic Theology — p. 820

Tolkien in his trilogy caught some of what Letham gets at here. Tolkien’s High Elves lived in two worlds at the same time. Remember Glorfindel at Fords of Bruinen who accosted the Nine Riders as exhibiting his powers in the other realm. So, the Christian today walks in two realms at the same time. We live in this present wicked age but at the same time we belong to it as empowered by the Spirit and as citizens already in the age to come. The future Kingdom come has found its home in God’s people and we live NOW in that future while at the same time in the context of this present wicked age.

As people who belong to the age to come we are tasked with bringing the age to come to be present in this present wicked age. We are God’s eschatological people tasked with bringing the age to come to bear. We are God’s means of immanentizing the eschaton.

Because of this we suffer because of the resistance this present wicked age brings to bear on the agents of the age to come. This is why, in this life we “suffer with Christ.” We suffer with Christ because we are seeking to be the overcomers that we have been birthed from above to be — birthed by the Spirit so to be translated NOW into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son, whom He loves.

This accounts for our postmillennial hope. God has tasked His people to have dominion. He will triumph in and through them. Their great liege Lord Jesus Christ is currently their great King leading them on to contend for His crown rights.

Any eschatology that insists that the Church is defeated in this age is an accommodation to the enemy and so is anti-Christ. The Church is set apart to attack the gates of Hell and is to pray “thy Kingdom come.” Do we dare believe those gates will be successful against the assault of Heaven’s Battalions?

There is no defeat in Christianity. No despair. No loss. The fight is ours because we are the “age to come” people. The enemy see us and fear because we are adorned in the battle array of the Great and Mighty King and we have heard His call to fight no matter the temporal odds.

Reading List On Christian Political Theory

Rev. Bret L. McAtee,

I did a quick perusal on your blog but didn’t see anything, do you have anywhere a reading list for Christian political theory?

Dear Casey,

Here are a few books I’ve read that come immediately to mind;

Institutes of Biblical Law –Rushdoony
Law & Revolution (Two Volumes) — Harold Berman
Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger & the Covenantal Tradition – McCoy/Baker
Lex Rex — Samuel Rutherford
The Law — Frederic Bastiat
The Hebrew Republic: The Matrix for America’s Civil Government — E. C. Wines
Reflections on the Revolution in France – Edmund Burke
Democracy in America — Alexis de Tocqueville
The One & The Many — Rushdoony
The One, the Three and the Many — Colin Gunton
Considerations on France — Joseph de Maistre
The Dispossessed Majority — Wilmot Robertson
Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning & Destiny of Liberalism — James Burnham

Leviathan & It’s Enemies — Samuel T. Francis
Christianity & Civilization (III Volumes) — James Jordan / Gary North
Millennialism and Social Theory — Dr. Gary North

I would also add something on how Bagels are a canker that eat away at Christian political order.

Worldview & Advent; Epistemology And The Nativity

Matthew 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. 19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. 20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. 21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. 22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: 25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.

We seldom pause to consider the Worldview implications during the Advent season. A Worldview consists of a series of sundry givens or presuppositions or starting points that all men use to access in order to interpret their world and the nature of reality. Those sundry givens or presuppositions or starting points vary from man to man and peoples to peoples depending on their a-priori allegiances touching their view of God and religion.

The Christmas nativity narrative asks us not only to believe a certain account but it demands that we embrace its Worldview in order to understand that account.

The first thing it asks of us is to take its account of the birth of Christ as authoritative. The inspired narrative requires the reader to ask the question; “How do I know that I know that this account is true.” This is the epistemological question that all men must answer, whether self-consciously or not. The answer that the narrative requires in order to answer that question is; “Because God’s revelation tells me.” If Joseph and Mary had owned a worldview that answered the question, “How do I know what I know,” (epistemology) with some version of autonomous right reason, or by mystical intuition, they may well have disbelieved what was reported to them by way of revelation.

As it were we see from the text above that what happened was a test for their epistemology. Mary initially questioned God’s revelation and Joseph reasoned that “women don’t get pregnant without intimacy with a man and as Mary and I have not come together, it is impossible that Mary should be pregnant except that she has been intimate with someone else.” Joseph’s initial epistemology lives on today. There are many who come to the Scriptures with a worldview that does not allow for supernatural revelation. Indeed, their worldview presupposes that the supernatural can’t happen and with that epistemology in place they reinterpret the above passage in such ways as to lock out a supernatural revelation epistemology explanation for the virgin birth. Some will insist that the passage does not teach “a virgin shall be with child,” but rather only that “a maiden shall be with child” thus eliminating the supernatural revelation epistemology that the Advent narrative requires. Others will sidestep the issue by saying something clever like, “The virgin birth is what the early Church believed and so that is the record that we are left with.” Such reasoning veils the fact that the person giving this clever answer himself does not believe the revelation that bespeaks the supernatural surrounding the virgin conception.  The really bold ones like Nels F. S. Ferre (Once Professor of Theology at Andover-Newton Theological School), will just come out and deny the virgin conception by saying that the father of Jesus was a German soldier in the Roman army. Finally there are those who will embrace the virgin conception on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while denying it on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays — splitting Sundays down the middle.

So what the Advent narrative gives us by way of revelational epistemology is the requirement that he who reads the text must believe in the Supernatural. If one brings to the text above a Worldview that premises that the Supernatural is impossible one will not and can not believe this account and they will seek to twist it so as to make it fit into their anti-supernatural worldview.

So this Advent narrative not only requires us to believe the immediate text it requires us to have a worldview where we answer the epistemological question, “How to we know what we know” with the rousing answer of “only by way of Revelation and any good and necessary consequences arising from the text.”

Unless we own that epistemology we will not only not believe the virgin conception but we also will not believe six days creation, resurrection, atonement for sin, resurrection, ascension, floating axe-heads, Jesus walking on water, healing the sick, and raising the dead.

Joseph and Mary believed the Revelation. In this context it is also interesting that Matthew and Luke will repeatedly cite earlier revelation to support this fulfillment of revelation. For example Matthew above in vs. 23 cites Isaiah 7:14 to prove the epistemological legitimacy of all that happened.

During this Advent season may we be reminded that our authority for knowing what we know and how we know must be anchored in Scripture. Certainly, Scripture doesn’t answer in detail all the particulars of life’s questions but Scripture does provides the necessary precondition of intelligibility in order to arrive at any true truth. Because Scripture is God’s Word we can trust the nativity record. Because Scripture is God’s Word we have a sure and certain answer to the question of “how to we know what we know.”

In a postmodern world do not underestimate the importance of a Christian worldview and a revelational epistemology.

Prayer:

Benevolent and Sovereign God,

We bless your name for the coming of the Lord Christ and we bless your name that we have a firm foundation for our faith as anchored in your Revelation. Deliver us from all false epistemologies that will not presuppose either the reality of the supernatural nor the certainty of your revelation. Grant us grace to see how a Christian epistemology is wrapped up with our believing the virgin conception and the coming of Christ. Grant us your favor to continue to be sanctified in our thinking so that we have a Worldview that is pleasing to you in every way. Thank you for the godly examples of Father Joseph and Mother Mary. Grant unto us a faith that resembles theirs. 

In Christ’s name alone we beseech thee

Amen