I am ashamed to admit that just today I caught the divine irony of the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea. Years prior to that Red Sea event Egypt sought to eliminate God’s host by having them cast into the river upon birth. So, many years later, God returns the favor and casts the Egyptian hosts into the waters. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
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.
Government Education & The Disappearance of .400 Baseball Averages
“California Teachers Association President Lois Tinson had a simple answer for why test scores remain stagnant despite ever increasing public resources devoted to education. ‘Today’s low scores’ she explained, ‘are evidence of the high quality of today’s system.’
Tinson compared the disappearance of high test scores to the disappearance of the ….400 hitter in baseball. ‘The so-called decline in test scores is just the opposite. Instead of an elite five percent scoring 1100 , we have 50% or more scoring 900. And that is not decline, that is a spread of excellence. Further, just as the extinction of the .400 hitter reflects greater excellence in other aspects of the game of baseball, current test scores reflect the greater excellence of public education.'”
Cited in Peter Brimelow’s “The Worm In The Apple”
Out of their own mouths, advertised with a positive spin, we see what socialism always does. Socialism is a system that reduces everybody to lowest common denominator misery. In this case, socialism as applied to education, contrives to make all the students equally stupid. Now the genius in this is that the educational establishment has, for years, been lowering the bar on standardized testing so that lower scores are masked by dumbing down the tests. So a test, that has been dumbed down, finds more children being equally stupid but it is spun as fewer children being elite so that more children can be above average.
This kind of reasoning makes my head hurt.
Vanilla Confesionalism
“4.) Distinguish betwixt the moral, and ceremonial, and judicial law; the first concern manners, and the right ordering of godly conversation: and because these things are of perpetual equity and rectitude, the obligation of this law, as to that, is perpetual; and therefore in expounding of it, these two terms, moral, and of perpetual authority, are all one, and to be taken so. 2.) The judicial law is for regulating outward society, and for government, and doth generally (excepting what was peculiar to the people of Israel) agree with moral law; this, as given to them, is not perpetual, their policy being at an end. 3.) The ceremonial law is in ceremonies, types, and shadows, pointing at a Saviour to come; this is also abrogate, the substance being come; But their is this difference, that the judicial law is but mortua, dead; and may, where it is thought fit, with the foregoing caution, be used under the New Testament; but the ceremonial law is mortifera, deadly, and cannot, without falling from grace, Gal. V. 2, 4 be revived.”
James Durham – 1622-1658
Westminster Divine
The Law Unsealed; or, A Practical Exposition Of The Ten Commandments
Note, in Durham’s #2 that what we have here is the basic theonomic explanation of “general equity.” Durham, as a Westminster Divine, would have had no tuck with the idea that the Mosaic judicials were simply to be considered “expired.” This will be seen over the next few days as we continue to post quotes from this Westminster divine on the subject of the application of the OT judicials.
Vanilla Confessionalism
“…And this generall Rule give me leave to assert and commend to your most serious considerations and consciences. That whatsoever Law of God, or Command of His, we find recorded in the Law-booke, in either of the Volumnes of GOD’S Statute, the N.T. or the Old, Remaines obligatory to us, unless we can prove it to be expired, or repealed. So it is with the Statute-Law of this Nation, or any Nation.”
Herbert Palmer – 1601-1647
English Puritan
Sermon before Parliament — August 13, 1644
Calvin On The Abiding Validity Of The General Equity Of The Mosaic Judicials — Contra Anabaptists
“And for proof thereof, what is the cause that the heathen are so hardened in their own dotages? It is for that they never knew God’s Law, and therefore they never compared the truth with the untruth. But when God’s law come in place, then doth it appear that all the rest is but smoke insomuch that they which took themselves to be marvelous witty, are found to have been no better than besotted in their own beastliness. This is apparent. Wherefore let us mark well, that to discern that there is nothing but vanity in all worldly devices, we must know the Laws and ordinances of God. But if we rest upon men’s laws, surely it is not possible for us to judge rightly. Then must we need to first go to God’s school, and that will show us that when we have once profited under Him, it will be enough. That is all our perfection. And on the other side, we may despise all that is ever invented by man, seeing there is nothing but *fondness and uncertainty in them. And that is the cause why Moses terms them rightful ordinances. As if he should say, it is true indeed that other people have store of Laws: but there is no right at all in them, all is awry, all is crooked.”
* fondness = foolishness, weakness, want of sense and judgment
John Calvin
Sermons on Deuteronomy, sermon 21 on Deut. 4:6-9
“Then let us not think that this Law is a special Law for the Jews; but let us understand that God intended to deliver us a general rule, to which we must yield ourselves … Since, it is so, it is to be concluded, not only that it is lawful for all kings and magistrates, to punish heretics and such as have perverted the pure truth; but also that they be bound to do it, and that they misbehave themselves towards God, if they suffer errors to rest without redress, and employ not their whole power to shew greater zeal in their behalf than in all other things.”
John Calvin, Sermon on Deuteronomy, sermon 87 on Deuteronomy 13:5
In a treatise against pacifistic Anabaptists who maintained a doctrine of the spirituality of the Church which abrogated the binding authority of the case law Calvin wrote,
“They (the Anabaptists) will reply, possibly, that the civil government of the people of Israel was a figure of the spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ and lasted only until his coming, I will admit to them that in part, it was a figure, but I deny that it was nothing more than this, and not without reason. For in itself it was a political government, which is a requirement among all people. That such is the case, it is written of the Levitical priesthood that it had to come to an end and be abolished at the coming of our Lord Jesus (Heb. 7:12ff) Where is it written that the same is true of the external order? It is true that the scepter and government were to come from the tribe of Judah and the house of David, but that the government was to cease is manifestly contrary to Scripture.”
John Calvin
Treatise against the Anabaptists and against the Libertines, pp. 78-79
“But it is questioned whether the law pertains to the kingdom of Christ, which is spiritual and distinct from all earthly dominion; and there are some men, not otherwise ill-disposed, to whom it appears that our condition under the Gospel is different from that of the ancient people under the law; not only because the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but because Christ was unwilling that the beginnings of His kingdom should be aided by the sword. But, when human judges consecrate their work to the promotion of Christ’s kingdom, I deny that on that account its nature is changed. For, although it was Christ’s will that His Gospel should be proclaimed by His disciples in opposition to the power of the whole world, and He exposed them armed with the Word alone like sheep amongst the wolves, He did not impose on Himself an eternal law that He should never bring kings under His subjection, nor tame their violence, nor change them from being cruel persecutors into the patrons and guardians of His Church.”
John Calvin
Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses — p. 77.