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.

God Is Not Mocked

Text — II Kings 2
Subject — The Character of God
Theme — The character of God as seen in the mauling bear’s incident of II Kings 2
Proposition — …. should remind us of the Holy God we serve

Today is “Sanctity of Life” Sunday. The one day that is set aside yearly to specifically confess this great sin of which we all are partakers and to pray that God might grant us repentance from our wickedness. Of course Abortion, in our time, has served as one of the great markers of the culture wars that is raging in the West.

We should not think however that culture wars are unique to us. Whenever you have people belonging to the same nation who have given their allegiances to different gods there you will find culture wars.

We see some of that in Israel during the times of the post-Davidic Kings. We all remember a high expression of those Culture wars as they raged on Mt. Carmel in I Kings 18 where the solitary Man of God does battle with the 850 representatives of Baal and Asherah. That passage comes to us far more squarely as a Worldview conflict with life and death implications.

However this passage that we are looking at today, I believe continues to give us insights into the worldview conflicts / culture wars during those times in Ancient Israel. I believe an examination of this passage, concentrating especially on the mauling of the youths, will reveal to us that this is not the case of a capricious God who has anger management issues but rather it is a case of a Holy God doing the very same thing He did on Mt. Carmel when He upheld the character of His name for all to see.

We must remember that the character of the times which we are looking at are revealed to us in II Chronicles 36

15 The LORD, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy

So in order to set the table here we must keep in mind that all of this is happens among God’s covenant people. Israel has been set apart, by God, to be a witness and priest to the nations. In the immediate time frame Israel has miserably disobeyed God and has been dishonored among His people and so among the Nations as well. Israel had been promised great blessings if she would be obedient but similarly great curses if she were disobedient to her calling (Cmp. Dt. 28, Lv. 26:21-22.).

Israel should have already learned that they were uniquely accountable to God as His people. When God’s people rebel, their sin is high-handed because they have more to rebel against. And what we find in this passage is God’s people rebelling.

Secondly, after the showdown between Ahab and Jezebel’s Baalism, and Elijah, (I Ki. 18) Ahab still did not repent. Elijah became a new Moses. He did not run away as many suppose, but walked straight to the same mountain, the same cave, where Moses saw the glory of God. Elijah became the Moses of a new interim covenant with a remnant of believers. That is why, in the passage in question, there are two ‘water crossings’. Elijah as the new Moses has a water crossing that symbolizes Exodus out of Egypt and into the Wilderness. Elisha is with Elijah representing the remnant who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Later, Elisha as the new Joshua, after seeing Elijah ascend as kind of a first-fruits of all that will follow, has a water crossing symbolizing entry into the new covenant land that is to be conquered.

Like Moses whose grave could not be found, Elijah can not be found after his ascension and so Elisha is established as the Elijah’s Joshua who is given a pentecostal type double blessing upon all his work. To change the metaphor slightly Elijah is the Christ who goes ahead and Elisha is the Church who remains behind to do the King’s work and who is doubly blessed to do the work that must be done.

Elisha is working in terms of a covenant already established. This covenant promises blessings for obedience. And Elisha, as God’s conquering representative, is used to bless a place (Jericho — vs. 18) that had formerly known only curse.

Joshua 6:26

“At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath: “Cursed before the LORD is the one who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho”

Elisha requests a new bowl possibly because a new bowl would not be unclean and he asks for salt. Salt is often associated with the OT sacrifices and so is associated with the cleansing that comes by way of sacrifice. And that is what we find here that the salt provides — A cleansing of the waters and so the land. This becomes a sort of Atonement for the land.

As we noted earlier though, the Covenant promises not only blessings but cursing as well. And it is interesting that we find God’s representative as the one who brings both blessing and cursing.

Here we see Elisha as a Christ figure. Either we will petition him for atonement for the springs out of which our life proceeds or we will be cursed for our mocking behavior. The passage before us reminds us that there is no “third way” with God. Either we will be atoned for or we will be suffer the curse of the covenant.

Now a word or two concerning vs. 23-25

First, remember that all of this is happening in the context of idolatrous Israel. Israel is whoring after other gods. That this is so is seen in the previous chapter where the King of Israel desires advice from the Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron whether he will live or not from a fall he had. God is none to pleased with this and inserts himself to give counsel to this King that he is going to die.

The land is rife with idolatry. This must be kept in mind to understand this passage.

Second, note that Elisha is headed towards Bethel (23). Keep in mind that Bethel is the hub of this idolatry. Remember your OT History. King Jeroboam, years prior to this, had instituted his own system of worship by setting up two idolatrous shrines with golden calf images when he broke from Judah (See 1 Kings 12.). One shrine was established at Dan, in the far north of the kingdom, and the other was strategically located at Bethel, on the border with the southern kingdom of Judah. Jeroboam also made up his own priesthood from among his own people. All of this Baal paganism in the Northern Kingdom can be traced back to Bethel. Elisha was headed into enemy territory when he was headed for Bethel.

Now between these two facts,

1.) The land is rife w/ idolatry

2.) Bethel is the hub of that idolatry

And between the reality that Elisha is God’s Joshua re-conquering the land visiting covenatal blessings and cursing upon God’s covenant people I don’t think it is a stretch at all to premise that what Elisha runs into is a pack of pagan Seminarians who are mocking God’s covenantal spokesman. What we have here, I would contend, is not a bunch of three year olds teasing a Prophet about his baldness, but rather what we have is a bunch of young adults testing the living God.

The word “youth” in the passage is used to designate people elsewhere in the OT of the ages of anywhere from twelve to thirty years old. These youths … these priests of Baal in training are mocking God’s prophet. To mock God’s spokesman is to mock God. Their mocks come to us as “baldness,” but such a mocking may have had to do with

1) natural loss of hair;
2) a shaved head denoting his separation to the prophetic office; or more likely,
3) an epithet of scorn and contempt accusing Elisha of being a Leper since Lepers had to shave their heads

Suffice it to say that insult ‘baldhead’ was one of “contempt in the East, applied to a person even with a bushy head of hair.”

Their cat-cries to “go up” doubtless refers to their desire to for Elisha to go away the same way that Elijah had “gone up to heaven.” They wanted to be rid of God’s spokesman.

So here we have the ideological kin of the 850 that Elijah executed at Mt. Carmel. You would have thought that they had learned their lesson.

We should note that the bears mauled 42 of the youths which indicates that Elisha was likely facing many more detractors then the 42 who were cursed.

We should also note that being mauled by wild beasts was a sign of covenant curse.

Lev 26:21 “Then if you walk contrary to me and will not listen to me, I will continue striking you, sevenfold for your sins. 22And I will let loose the wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number, so that your roads shall be deserted.

So, being torn in two by scavenging birds and wild beasts was a curse of the Covenant that is often repeated throughout the Bible. We see it beginning with the raven sent out by Noah, that fed on the floating bodies until the waters went down. If you remember, Jezebel was eaten by dogs, Saul’s sons were hung high but one of their mothers chased the birds away. Abraham chased the birds away from the divided animals that purified the Land, etc. There are many more examples.

These youths were violating the covenant by mocking God and God, who is patient and long-suffering gave them what He promised. Like those who Elijah dismissed after Carmel, these are dismissed by God. Jezebel’s children shall not stand in the company of the righteous.

Now, today what we get are people running to this passage complaining about a capricious God with anger management problems. But the thing we need to keep in mind is not that the action of God here is surprising but rather that this doesn’t happen all the time is what is surprising. Each of us deserves our own personalized female bear.

But God is gracious and has provided for people a covering in Jesus Christ who took our mauling for us. Christ bore the covenant curses that we might know the covenant blessings and that we might walk in the ways of the covenant in order to glorify Him.

You can be sure of this that God will cut off the wicked completely and finally. They will not stand w/ the righteous. The fact that we still have our own culture wars is indicative of God’s patience and the day of grace that we live in. However, you can be sure that if we will not repent of our wickedness a day is coming when the judgment of God will come upon fall upon the wickedness of our land just as it fell upon the wickedness of the land of Israel.

Free At Last

If you abide in my word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

A.) Set Free From Sin’s Dominion

The promise here by Jesus is that if they will abide in His word they will be set free. Christians have been set free from sin’s dominion. They are no longer a slave to sin (8:34). Upon being set free they are now alive to what they were once dead to and are dieing to what they were once alive to. Because of this their desire is to live for God and not unto self. Because they are no longer under Sin’s dominion — which manifested itself in the disregard for God’s Character and moral law — and are now under Christ’s dominion they have a desire to search out and walk in terms of a Spirit animated exaltation in God’s Law-Word

“But with the gospel and in Christ, united to him by faith, the law is no longer my enemy but my friend. Why? Because now God is no longer my enemy but my friend, and the law, his will, the law in its moral core, as reflective of his character and of concerns eternally inherent in his own person and so of what pleases him, is now my friendly guide for life in fellowship with God” ~ Dr. Richard Gaffin

B.) Set Free From Humanist Notions of Freedom

Liberation theology emphasizes the need to free the oppressed, the minority, and the victim from the social structures that are used by the majority ideological and moneyed interests that are advantaged by oppression. Liberation theology is animated and defined by the idea of class and culture struggle having as its goal the achievement of a social justice that would flatten all biblical hierarchical relational structures and would result in the equalizing of all men and women.

Liberation theology offers a liberation from oppressive institutional structures and as such when you read the Liberation Theologians you get the sense that they believe that the Gospel goes forward not by means of individuals being set free by Christ but rather you get the sense that individuals are set free only as political or social environments are set free.

Because of this you hear quite a bit of language from Liberation Theologians about institutional oppression, or corporate cultural wide structural sins, or oppressive cultural attitudes. You see it is whole cultures that are indicted and not individuals that make up the culture. The goal then is to change the culture from the top down by long marches through the cultural institutions where such oppression, structural sins, and victimizing attitudes supposedly come from.

Now in order for this to work the Liberation Theologians have to create a large class of people who feel victimized, and so to that end grievance, real and imagined, are drug up and used to convince people they are oppressed. Wives are putatively oppressed by their husbands and children and must be liberated from this bondage. Minorities are putatively oppressed by Majorities and the culture must be liberated from this bondage. Children are putatively oppressed by their parents and so the culture must be liberated from this bondage. Sexual deviants are putatively oppressed by Christian understandings of marriage and family and so culture must be liberated from this bondage. The poor are putatively oppressed by the Rich and so cultures must be liberated from this bondage. The West is oppressed by apparitions of a vengeful deity, with his bloody Son, who has a law word that must be esteemed and so the West must be liberated from this bondage.

And the Liberation that the Liberation Theologian offers up is a Top Down Liberation that is achieved by revolution and results in bondage that is, on the whole, more severe than any real bondage that existed prior to the successful Liberation.

The Liberation that Jesus promises in his promise to set people free is not social-institutional until it is first individual and personal. Jesus Liberates a person not primarily from their social oppressions — as real as those may very well be. Jesus Liberates a person from their own spiritual slavery to the Devil. Jesus Liberates not primarily from the sin of corporate structural sins but primarily from the sin of loving self above God. The promise of Jesus for Liberation is the liberation from the work of making the world revolve around me. Jesus will free the sin saturated heart not by calls for Revolution by the reality of regeneration.

Do you see the difference here between what the Liberation Theologian as Humanist offers and the Liberation that Jesus promises? The Liberation Theologians believes that people can only be set free as cultural institutions are changed and as the environment is redeemed in the direction of Marxist – Feminist definitions of social justice. The Christian believes that people can only be set free as individuals are regenerated. The Liberation Theologian teaches people that cultural conflict is the only way to be set free. Jesus teaches people that only an abiding in His word can set people Free. In the
end what the Liberation Theologian gives to people is only more bondage. What our Lord Christ gives is genuine freedom.

It is true that injustices abound in this world but the answer to curing the injustices of the world is not by pursuing a Liberation that is forcefully seized. The answer to injustices of the world is by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit upon individuals who build unjust cultures. When the Spirit moves to set people free … and when those people abide in the Word … then those freed people will build just cultures.

In short the primary problem is never political, social, or cultural. The primary problem is that people are dead in their sins and trespasses — he Liberation Theologian as much as anybody. It is not to much to say, I think, that people who advocate for various stripes of Liberation Theology Freedom, from socialism, to feminism, to the cultural Marxist, to environmentalism to code Pink do not know what it means to be free indeed.

Observations On Obama’s Tuscon Memorial Speech

1.) Having been part of my share of Memorial services it was kind of weird to see somebody speaking at a Memorial service to be cheered like they were being introduced on the “American Idol.”

2.) Brilliant political move by Obama to introduce his quoting of the Bible by saying …” Scripture tells us …” This repeated naked appeal to Scripture, politically speaking, helps Obama get away from the wide American suspicion that he is Muslim. I seriously doubt that Obama himself believes that Scripture is unique in its authority and yet the way he quotes it, it allows himself to represent himself as a “true believer.”

3.) I must admit that I don’t understand the National Catharsis that these types of things represent. I acknowledge that this likely speaks to something deficient in my character. It seems for many people this kind of event heals something in their souls. All I see is the unseemly parading of people’s grief by the people who are both grieving and parading. Perhaps it is because, as a Minister, I see a Memorial service as being a sending off ceremony, where that which is spoken of is the God who gave and the God who takes as well as a word regarding the person who had been given and was most recently taken. The Memorial service is not about those grieving, except to offer them comfort.

4.) Another shrewd Obama move to mention the medical community. Obama has been seen, with the whole Health Care debate, to be a man who repeatedly attacked the Medical community. By directly mentioning the medical community he subtly heals those old wounds.

5.) I don’t agree with the premise that is automatically assumed by everybody now that the National discourse is any more ragged than it has ever been. I’m old enough to remember the 60’s and the Vietnam protests. I’m old enough to remember the 70’s and the Watergate Scandals. I’m here to tell you that political discourse doesn’t get any rougher than that era. I am familiar enough with history to know of the jagged political discourse that existed during our founding. (Take a look at the history surrounding the Alien and Sedition acts.) I am familiar with the history of political discourse in the 1850’s – 1870’s. I remember the political discourse of Ted Kennedy when Robert Bork was appointed to the Supreme Court. I remember the political discourse surrounding the Clarence Thomas hearings. Bottom line …. American political discourse has always been rugged and it is no more rugged now then it has ever been.

When Obama calls for “speaking to each other in ways the heal and not wound,” he is giving sanction to the left’s unfounded insistence that the National discourse has somehow gone off the rails. It just is not true.

Now, having said all that, I am glad to embrace the ideal of dispassionate rhetoric while at the same time being realistic enough in my understanding of human nature to know that just isn’t going to happen.

6.) There was a brief reference to “being willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospect of such violence in the future.” To my ears this sounds like a tee up to more legislative assaults on the second amendment.

7.) After the damage being done of several days of the mainstream media turning on Americans, Obama gets the credit for calling on Americans to not allow this event to cause us to turn on one another. That is pretty convenient and once again it is good politics. After his shock troops have done all the pillorying the President gets to look like the reasonable peacemaker in his plea for empathy and understanding.

8.) After his peacemaker routine Obama went into a extended Hallmark spiel. Be nice to your loved ones. In the end life is about how well we have loved and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better. (I must admit that it is difficult to take this seriously given that I know how large a part Obama has played in making people’s lives worse.)

9.) Obama sought to cast a vision of America as one big family. A tip of the hat to this effort.

10.) Obama admits that a lack of civility did not cause the shooting incident but insists that we should be civil in our conversation in order to make the dead people proud. If the shooting didn’t cause the incident how does civility make the dead people proud? “Look Gabe, we died, and isn’t it wonderful, and can’t we be proud of how civil they are to one another in their conversation?”

11.) Obama ends the speech by calling Americans to be a good Democracy the way the 9 year old who died would have imagined it. The country must live up to our children’s expectations. Doing it for the “children” is pretty standard political fare, right up there with kissing babies.

12.) The final close is with Obama connecting the patriotism that was hoped for, for the child as expressed in signatures surrounding her birth photos with the necessity for American patriotism, even gesturing with his hand over his heart. REMEMBER, that this also has been an issue for Obama. Remember the photos from the campaign days where he is the only person on the dais without his hand over his heart during the Star Spangled banner. This closing and the gesture accompanying it helps to erase those concerns that have showed up in polling data.

It was a very clever speech for Obama, subtly addressing some key concerns that polling data reveals is on American minds. The speech helps erase the questions about his “Christianity.” The speech helps erase the questions about his patriotism. The speech shows him compassionate towards health professionals that have questioned that compassion. He wraps it all loosely around the deceased and tightly around the deceased nine year old. The door is left open for efforts on more gun control. He gets to take the high road on the outrageous slander that has come from his ideological compatriots while at the same time subtly affirming that the current political discourse is a problem.

Clever, clever, clever.

The Nature Of Humanism

Two of the central fundamental beliefs of all humanistic worldviews (i.e. — socialism, progressivism, marxism, fascism, corportism, etc.) are the inherent goodness of man and the inevitability of progress. When humanists control the levers of power they trust in their own goodness to help along, through social engineering, the inevitable progress to which they are so thoroughly committed. Humanists pursue their belief that given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This pursuit, through legislation is supposedly the path to progress.

All of this also explain why there is an immediate reflex, among the practitioners of humanism, to instantly blame those who resist the humanist vision of the perfectibility of man when the lack of perfection appears in a cataclysmic fashion in society. Humanists reason that the reason or cause for the lack of perfection, as seen in whatever cataclysmic event is being analyzed, must be because non-humanists get in the way of humanism (progressive) vision.

Humanism, believing that their presuppositions could never be in error, always see the explanation for social failure in their opponents, even when the social failure is clearly the consequence of pursuing their humanist social engineering dreams. And quite in keeping with this mental disease, the answer that humanists always answer for the failures of their humanism is more humanism. So, for example, when after decades of humanist social engineering in government schools we have seen disastrous results after disastrous results, the progressive concludes the failure in government schools is due to some remnant of Christianity that has not yet been cleansed from the template being used in the government schools. The new social engineering plan developed to address government school failures includes another large dose of the humanism that has created the problem to begin with.

Another tendency of Humanism is to attribute all behavior that is deemed as wicked or unacceptable to environmental causes. Since Humanism believes that all that is, is matter in motion, there can be no explanation for ill behavior except for environment. Because Humanism (i.e. — Liberals, progressives, socialists, etc.) believe this their every answer to every problem is to improve the environment that was responsible for the unacceptable behavior. We are seeing all of this coming to light in the Tuscon shootings. As one watches the news and reads the analysis one is brought face to face with the constant insistence that this shooting was caused by the negative environment. I’ve read very little analysis that is concerned with holding the shooter responsible and no analysis that attributes the cause, not to environment, but to sin. Instead what I am reading almost everywhere are explanations anchored in non Christian humanist reasoning where the view of the shooter is one where he is totally conditioned by his environment. A Christian looks at this and says, “Loughner is responsible for his sin.” A pagan looks at this and says, “Loughner’s actions have to be explained by his environment. The reasoning goes on to insist that if we change the environment, we no longer will have this kind of behavior. It is Humanism all the way down.

A Few Observations On The Arizona Shooting

Aren’t you tired of being dragged around by the cultural elites like a Raggedy Ann doll between the teeth of a bit bull? The cultural elites, to change the metaphor already, are playing “Simon” says to the American electorate. Simon says, “wring your hands,” and in good Lemming like fashion the nation wrings its hands. The cultural elite says, “Simon says don’t weep for the unborn,” and like the clones we are we dehumanize the unborn and do not weep for their political assassination.

I’m tired of being told what I must care about and what I must not care about. People are grieving for this killed 9 year old that is anonymous to most of them the way a pervert is horny for an anonymous woman he doesn’t even know who is gracing the pages of his magazine centerfold. This pornography of compassion and suffering, like the pornography of lust, is not about the object upon which their feeling is being poured out upon but is rather all about people making themselves feel good because they have the good housekeeping seal of approved societal feelings.

Of course any normal person is saddened for the families involved. The loss is catastrophic to those families, but having conceded that it is still a more than legitimate observation that the cultural elites have manufactured grief, in order to advance their agenda, for unknown persons. This grief can’t be anything more than superficial because the intimacy connection between the deceased and the 99% of the population is far to distant and removed to be anything more than a superficial. And yet the cultural elites will try to use this manufactured grief in order to force their vision upon the citizenry.

The Cultural elites, creating this pornography of compassion and suffering will use this to continue to limit the liberty of the American citizenry. In selling this cheap grief they will sell with it the approved antidote to make our cheap grief go away. They will guilt the electorate into assuaging their grief at the price of accepting more tyranny, more usurpation and more control. Already, the wheels are spinning in Washington DC for more attacks on the 2nd amendment. Already preparations are being made to push legislation that will make elected official “holy personages” who, will not be allowed to be touched in an unwarranted fashion. If the cultural elites didn’t false flag the incident they certainly are making it serve the advance of their liberty killing agenda.

I can confidently speak this way, concerning the artificiality of it all, because we are currently living in a daily National tragedy of epic proportions. Every day 3000 people are brutally tortured and murdered inside their mother’s wombs. For this daily National tragedy there is no pornography of compassion because the cultural elites are not telling Americans to grieve. And yet with over 50 million dead and buried between 1973 and today the odds that we might know some of the family members of the deceased personally are astronomically higher than the odds that any of us know any of the deceased family members in Arizona.

A Congress-woman was shot in Arizona. She and many other Congressmen who are living have, by their votes, been the trigger for this National Tragedy that occurs daily. Every day the unborn are targeted. Every day there is a bulls eye on the pregnant womb. Everyday the vitriolic language of depersonalization is used upon the unborn.

You want something to go all sackcloth and ashes over? Then weep and wail for the unborn.