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.

What goes around comes around

“When morning came it was Leah.” Gen. 29:25

“Jacob who deceived his father who had ‘weak eyes,’ now discovers that his new wife has weak eyes. The deceiver has been deceived, and that by the same trick he had used on his father. Jacob had pretended to be his older brother Esau, and the deception worked because Isaac was blind and drank wine (Gen. 27:25). Now Leah has pretended to be her younger sister Rachel, and the deception worked because Jacob was blind in the dark night and drank wine.”

Sidney Greidanus
Preaching Christ From Genesis

Jacob’s whole life is characterized by deception. From his deception of Esau, to his deception of Isaac, to his deception by Laban and of Laban, to Rachel’s deception of Laban in reference to the household idols, to the deception by his sons regarding the death of Joseph, to the deception of his sons upon the Shechemites in the Dinah incident, all of Jacob’s life is characterized by deception. Even at the end of his life when Jacob blesses the sons of Joseph there is the air of deception as, at the last second, he crosses his arms and blesses Joseph’s sons in reverse of their age.

In the end we see that Jacob’s life is a testimony of God’s grace. From beginning to end it is only sinners that God saves.

Dueling Church Signs In Charlotte

As a general rule I hate Church signs. Not because I have some strange phobia regarding signs but rather because Church signs suffer the inevitable consequences of people reducing truths that are extraordinarily profound to something that is catchy and cute. More often than not Church signs trivialize truth. It’s like the Elementary orchestra trying to do justice to Beethoven’s fifth symphony. It’s like Barney Frank being cast as Gen. George Patton in a Movie production. It’s like attending a Detroit Tigers Baseball game and finding me starting at short-stop. No sane person can take any of it seriously. The fact that people can’t take serious anything that is on a Church sign is reason enough to not try and use Church signs for anything but announcements of things like the Lady’s Easter Tea.

However, I noticed that in Charlotte, my home, there is currently a Church sign battle going on which makes church signs even more interesting than usual.

Over at the Plymouth Brethren Church we read,

Sometimes in order to make us
God must break us

Apparently this beautiful poetry was to much for the Episcopal Church, which is just a few blocks down from the Plymouth Brethren Church for they had to offer, on their Church sign, a rebuttal in poetry that was just as arresting,

God does not break us down
Or make us frown

Now, I suppose this makes for high Theological debate in Charlotte. I’ve even thought about entering into the fray with a sign of my own that says,

Do not drink the swill
Offered up by Church Episcopal

However, I do not think the citizens of Charlotte can take three doses of such heavy poetic culture and be able to survive. As such, I am not going to compete in this theological sign derby.

I would note however that the Episcopal Church here in town is led by a woman (at least I assume she is a woman — I’ve not the courage to assume that it is a man who is cross dressing — though given that we are speaking of an Episcopalian Church here I grant you that one must be careful with their assumptions.)

On the other hand, attendance at the Plymouth Brethren church will have you hearing about Red Heifer’s in Israel and the coming re-building of the temple and projected dates for Christ return.

You picks your poison … you takes your chances.

However, touching the point on which sign warfare is closer to accuracy, I offer these scriptures. I hope the truth of these things will not make our Episcopal friends frown to much.

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”(Deut. 32:39)

“The LORD brings death and makes alive;
he brings down to the grave and raises up.” (I Samuel 2:6)

“For he wounds, but he also binds up;
he injures, but his hands also heal.” (Job 5:18)

“Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.” (Hosea 6:1)

“The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.” (Isaiah 30:26)

Open Letter Pertaining To The Flavel Quote

Dear Brother Hillary,

Here is an article that has had a significant influence on my thinking in the area of covenant children. Maybe you will find it profitable as well.

http://www.faithtacoma.org/doctrine/covenant.aspx

I’ve also read Lewis Bevins Schenk’s book, The Presbyterian Doctrine of children in the covenant, which has had a profound impact on me.

I only mention these in order to let you know what has shaped my thinking on the post on “Parents & Children — Cause and Effect.”

In order to support the overall contention of Flavel I would appeal to Ex. 20 when it clearly states that

I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Both God’s condemnation and his salvation tend to run generationally … and yet not without exception. Praise God!

Now certainly Acts reminds us that this covenantal arrangement en-grafts those who had been strangers and aliens to the covenant when it teaches, “And the promise is for you and for your children, AND AS MANY AS ARE AFAR OFF THAT THE LORD OUR GOD SHALL CALL.” Praise God that in this age of grace many, like myself, who were afar off, the Lord our God called, calls and continues to call.

Also the NT teaches that the nations will come in and swell the Church. However, I honestly believe that the norm was to be that they would come in by nations and not so much that we would pick off people one by one in a kind of individualistic approach to Evangelism that is current today.

However, having gladly rejoiced in the certainty that God will save the nations, I wonder how long that will happen in our lifetimes as the church continues to lose her covenant seed at the rapid rate that is happening? Will God save the nations as He loses His own covenant seed? How long can faithful evangelism so that the Nations might be saved happen if the Church continues to redefine the Gospel in order to accommodate those unfaithful covenant families in their midst with a message of “peace peace, when judgment and discipline is swirling around us?”

I guess I find my optimistic theology in the hope that those few that God snatches will be obedient and be ones who will be fruitful and multiply to the point that greater are their numbers than the numbers of those, and their seed, who will make a covenant with death by turning aside from Christ. My hope lies in the reality that those who God does snatch will become a people who will raise up large families in the way of God’s covenant promises. My hope also lies in the realization that no pagan people can prosper long and avoid destruction who try to build personal lives and culture apart from Christ and the real reality that only Christianity reflects. After all, Babel still speaks. Babel will continue to fall with the result that Christianity will always flourish again.

Given your admonition I will write something soon that supports evangelism and great expectations of God’s harvesting those fields that remain white unto harvest. I do believe that God can send and has sent seasons of Reformation and Awakening, but, I think this must be a “both and” matter. We must have our families and Churches thinking covenantally again and we must continue to say to those outside the covenant, “Be ye Reconciled to God.” It strikes me if we fail at one we will fail at both. I don’t need to tell you that our families in our Churches are very spiritually sick. Is it possible to proclaim a covenantal gospel when there are so few covenantally minded Churches that remain so that we can fold those who come to Christ into a place where they will receive covenantal nurture?

With God all things are possible.

I’m sorry if I communicated despair. That wasn’t my intention, although I must admit there are times I wonder if we should be like Jeremiah and just proclaim the judgment that is upon the visible church in the West and is coming upon the visible church in the West with the reminder that once we pass through judgment (and discipline for the invisible Church) there will be times of refreshing ahead. The Church in the West seems so utterly past reclamation and the culture is in a state of trauma because of it. Yet I know that the Omnipotnent Lord Christ is greater than my sinful, and often repented of, despondency. Forgive me brother when by despondency shows more than my repentance. I do believe the Church’s best times are yet ahead of it! Just maybe not in my lifetime.

I know, that there have been periods in history where the Church was supernaturally shaken from her spiritual lethargy to be about obeying both the great commission and the cultural mandate. In light of that I pray daily that God will, in Wrath, remember mercy. I so love the Church in the West. Though never all that she might have been she has been mighty in the things of God over the centuries. My heart breaks at her loss of her first love.

Thank you for your admonition and your reminder that God has every intent of building up the fallen tent of David by bringing in the Nations so that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

My love to you and your lovely bride,

Bret

Weymouth Child Development Center

Recently one of the State Elementary Schools in Charlotte Mi. (Weymouth Elementary) was recently retired from housing Elementary school students and will now be used to run a Government school daycare center. Families who have young children where both parents work will drop their children off for the day while the parents go off to work.

Recently I was driving by Weymouth and I noticed that they put themselves up a brand new sign. And it is the sign that finds me writing a blog post.

The sign read,

“Weymouth Child Development Center”

My first instinct was to think, “Wow, I’m amazed that they are being so honest about it.”

Here we have a setting where parents will drop their children off for the day and while they are at work they can have the satisfaction of knowing that a bunch of strangers are developing their children for them. How will their children be developed? The parents won’t know. What will they teach the little children? The parents don’t know. But what they do know is that their children are being developed and they know that they get to pay those people good money for the privilege of having those strangers develop their children for them.

As I thought about it I thought the new sign said it all. All schools, whether schools that happen in the home, or private schools or state schools should be thought of as “child development centers.” Children, who are not yet shaped in their thinking, enter into these locales and are shaped and massaged in their thinking and character in a particular direction.

From Garden, To Tabernacle, To Temple To New Covenant Restoration

When we read of the Garden description in Genesis and then compare it to some of the descriptions of the Tabernacle and Temple in the Old Testament we find some interesting parallels.

1.) The Lord God walks in Eden as he later does in the Tabernacle (3:8 cf. Lev. 26:12).

2.) Eden and the later sanctuaries are entered from the East (Ezek. 41:1) and guarded by Cherubim (Gen. 3:24, Ex. 25:18-22, 26:31, I Ki. 6:23-29).

As a slight rabbit trail, throughout Scripture a literary technique is often used equating man moving East with man moving away from God. Adam and Eve were drove out of Eden moving East. Cain dwelt in the land of Nod, East of Eden. In Genesis 11 the men who will build Babel in defiance of God, are noted as “moving East.” In the New Testament there is a opposite movement of man to God as the Wise Men (representative of the Gentile nations who will come to Christ) move from East to West to come to Christ.

3.) The pair of Hebrew verbs in God’s command to the man to ‘work it (the garden) and take care of it (2:15) are only used in combination elsewhere in the Pentateuch of the duties of the Levites in the Sanctuary (cf. Numbers 3:7-8, 8:26, 18:5-6).

In light of this the garden tended by Adam and Eve should be thought of as a Temple Sanctuary. As in all environments where God and Man dwell together, what made the Garden the Garden was the presence of God and the intimacy known between God and His people. This presence was muted, or perhaps better put, constrained after the fall as God’s presence had to be mediated by the priesthood. But with the death of Christ the great symbol that communicated that restricted presence of God — the curtain — was rent in twain and once again God’s people could walk with God and enjoy His presence through the mediatorial work of Christ as brought by the Spirit. With the work of Christ men who trust in Christ are once again put in the garden that they were removed from in the fall and forbidden from in the shadow covenant.

Now, naturally there is a “not yetness” to this present re-establishment of God’s garden Kingdom dwelling but we should be mindful that Scripture teaches that we have been translated from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom (garden) of God’s dear Son. Further Scripture teaches, in the book of Revelation, of the time when all the “not yetness” of the present now Kingdom garden is removed and when there will be no need for the sun for the Glory of God will be the light of God’s people.

** (1) (2) (3) are taken from Sidney Greidanus’ “Preaching Christ From Genesis.”