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.

Chekist Letter

Dear Slugbottom,

Sulfurious greetings from the pleasant realm of the damned. I am taking a break from my usual “work” of wreaking emotional torture and enlarging eternal regret upon the formerly living meat that now inhabit our fair land. I often find it incredible that they pay me to do what I love.

However, I have also to attend to the responsibility of being your guide in matters concerning affairs of state. The chain of command has a push on right now for the claiming of meat and should I, through my various underlings, reach and exceed the goals set for me at the beginning of this meat cycle, I shall hit a multiplier that will result in a promotion for me.

As such, I want to write you with some contrary advice that has been received by those I am competing with for this promotion. That blistering Screwtape has written his nephew Wormwood advising that he keep his college charges out of church. You can find his advice here,

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2010/08/25/a-lost-letter-to-wormwood/

This advice is good for me but bad for the company. It is good for me because such advice is sure to insure that I get that promotion over Screwtape. It is bad for the company because it is more likely that his assigned meat will be won over by our enemy in heaven should they stay out of church.

You see, dear Slugbottom, what Screwtape has failed to take into account is that we now own the Churches in the West. Oh, yes … there are a few here or there who are holdouts against our affections but by and large the Church in Lansing Michigan, and throughout the West is ours. As such, the thing I want you most to do is to make sure your East Lansing University Charges end up in Church. By all that is hot and horrid I charge you, upon threat of loss of your recently gained position, to do all you can to get our meat to Church on Sundays.

We have little fear of those few remaining Churches that are faithful for they are typically so few in number and so opposed to the culture that we have breathed to life that we are confident that any young person concerned about making their way in the world, as a success, will not have anything to do with these churches. What 18-25 year old desires to be counter cultural to the point of being socially ostracized?

No, Church is where we want our meat, for in Church they will typically receive just enough of a bastardized version of the enemies message to insure that they will be inoculated against the real thing. Also, by being in Church they will receive the baptized version of King Lucifer’s thinking. We have so infiltrated the Churches near University campuses that they no longer oppose those things that would be real trouble for us. They no longer officially oppose our schools that we run. They no longer officially oppose the notion that King Lucifer’s Marxism is inconsistent with our enemies theology. They no longer officially oppose evolution, choosing to baptize it as “theistic.” The examples that could be brought forward Slugbottom are endless.

This plan, to infiltrate the Churches and to force them to chocolate coat King Lucifer’s thinking with the title of Christianity, was developed by our Father below and has been pursued for years, and through this plan we have taken the fairest of things, like abortion, homosexuality, government schools, hatred of one’s own people, and have persuaded the Church to likewise count them as fair things and to call these things “Christian.”

Now, there are certain dangers to this advice, as their are dangers present everywhere in guiding meat to hell. There will be times, when, even in our Churches, that hateful theme of the Cross will arise. At such times the best thing to do is make sure your meat is thinking that the Cross only has the effect that the meat gives to it. As long as the meat believes that he makes our enemies work effectual he will never be in danger of abandoning our cause. Whatever you do, make sure that the meat does not start thinking that the mountebank enemy of ours is the one who determines the effectiveness of the Cross. Thoughts, on the part of your meat, that tend in that direction will find you under my discipline and the thoughts of the last time that happened should be enough to motivate you.

So, once again my charge to you is to get the meat in Church. If done artfully and successfully it will anesthetize the meat by making them think well of themselves when in fact they are being put in the chute to our tropical regions.

More might be said Slugbottom, but this is enough for your limited capacity. I expect a report on your progress with your assigned College Meat four weeks into the fall semester.

I will be watching,

Chekist

Gramsci & Cultural Marxism

“Far from being content with a mere uprising, therefore, Gramsci believed that it was necessary first to delegitimize the dominant belief systems of the predominant groups and to create a “counter-hegemony” (i.e., a new system of values for the subordinate groups) before the marginalized could be empowered. Moreover, because hegemonic values permeate all spheres of civil society — schools, churches, the media, voluntary associations — civil society itself, he argued, is the great battleground in the struggle for hegemony, the “war of position.” From this point, too, followed a corollary for which Gramsci should be known (and which is echoed in the feminist slogan) — that all life is “political.” Thus, private life, the work place, religion, philosophy, art, and literature, and civil society, in general, are contested battlegrounds in the struggle to achieve societal transformation.”

John Fonte
Why There Is A Culture War
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/7809

Practical outworking

Cultural Marxism, following Gramsci pursued,

1.) Christianity as a worldview must be subverted

2.) A worldview in antithesis to Christianity must be developed

3.) That alternate worldview had to be embraced and advanced by those marginalized by the Christian worldview

4.) In Cultural Marxism those who were chosen to overturn the Christian worldview were the disaffected and minorities. The promise held out to women (feminism), minorities, disabled, sexually perverted was that they would be the newly empowered ruling class.

5.) In order for Gramsci Cultural Marxism to work what was required was conflict in every cultural institution and in every personal relationship. The conflict was always pursued with the end of challenging and overturning the accepted status of the Christian worldview.

6.) One method that was developed to advance this agenda was called “Critical theory.” Critical theory is simply the methodology that challenges the influence of Biblical Christianity in everything from law to literature. It has been a deconstruction tool in the arsenal of Cultural Marxism and has been used in order to expose putative oppression in different disciplines.

7.) Cultural Marxism works change at a grass roots level.

8.) Cultural Marxism has always worked at both a religious and ethnic level. The reason this is so is that Christianity as a faith system that must be subverted has always been predominantly, in terms of sheer numbers, the faith of the descendants of Europeans. Therefore, in order for Gramscian Cultural Marxism to succeed it had to pull down both Christianity and the white man as the majority ethnic carrier of the Christian faith. Cultural Marxism developed a new faith and that new faith was the faith embraced by the majority of minorities, a strong contingent of women (feminism), and the pervert class. This class of people, having embraced the faith of cultural Marxism, would be and remain the shock troops seeking to overcome the Christian faith of European Americans.

Beck Defines His American Civil Religion

Glenn Beck quoting Benjamin Franklin in order to support his (Beck’s) thesis of what the American Religion is

Benjamin Franklin writing Yale President Ezra Stiles,

“You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few Words to gratify it. Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet with them.”

Beck stops with this segment of Franklin’s quote without giving what Franklin immediately wrote in the next sentence,

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity: tho’ it is a Question I do not dogmatise upon, having never studied it…

Beck, then summarizing Franklin, says on his national television show that the American religion that he is all about can be reduced to these four Franklin inspired points,

1.) There is a God
2.) God is going to judge us
3.) We should be good to each other
4.) Cause Daddy is going to be pissed in the end if we are not (good to each other)

Beck goes on to say that the reason that he had all faiths (Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons) represented on stage at his Rorschach Rally on 8/28 is that they can all agree on these four big principles.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/glenn_beck/

Start at about the 5 minute mark.

So, there you have it.

Of course this is utter nonsense that any Historic Protestant Christian would find reprehensible. God is going to judge us but if any of those who are going to be judged really believe that the success of passing that judgment is dependent upon our being good to each other then they are certain to be forever damned. Glen Beck will be forever damned if he thinks that his eternal judgment is based on his four principles.

It is precisely what Beck left out of Franklin’s quote that is the core of the matter. If man does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ he is lost because a non-divine Christ can not save anyone from their sins. Notice in those four principles there is no mention of Jesus Christ. Yet, any Historic Protestant Christian would tell you that without Christ there is no other name under heaven by which men must be saved. If Evangelicals, in advance, knew that these four principles were supposed to be some kind of common ground on which all faiths in America can stand and hold hands on then they never should have participated in this blasphemous Rorschach rally.

Historic Protestant Christians you need to run away from Glen Beck and his syncretizing efforts.

How God Changes The World

“Paul begins his letter to the church at Corinth by reminding them of this same truth. Here was a group of believers caught up in worldliness. They were prideful, arrogant. They were powerful. But Paul, before explaining their poverty and nakedness explains how God works- “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence” (I Corinthians 1:26-27). That’s how God changes the world. Not by a long march through the institutions, not by preparing ourselves for positions of power and influence. Not by raising up children to seize the institutions of higher learning. Instead He uses those who beat their worthless breast, crying out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

We have a world to conquer. We are to be about the business of being a help to our Husband as He brings all things under subjection. The first thing we must conquer is our own foolish pride. The first things we have to consign to the flames of hell is our strategies. And then, let us be followers, walking in His footsteps who set aside His glory for us.”

Observation by Bret

1.) Yes, God’s strategy begins and even continues with people crying out “God be merciful to me a sinner,” but then what? Does this reality that people must see their sin negate that upon seeing their sin God will require of His people to do their own long march through the institutions? Does the reality that we must constantly face our own sinfulness negate the necessity to be Sons of Issachar who know the times and what must be done? Is not the knowing of our times and what must be done naught but a preparing of ourselves for whatever position and influence God might grant us? Should the reality of rightly assessing that we are nothing but sinners keep us from raising our children to seek to extend the crown rights of King Jesus over every area of life?

Look, I agree that part of the problem of the Church is that it hasn’t come to grips with its sin but should it ever come to grips with its sin, it won’t be wrong to engage in a long march through the institutions, or to prepare ourselves for positions of influence and power or to raise a postmillennial seed. I agree that we have tried to do the latter (i.e. — long marches, carnal power, looking for success from un-catechized seed) apart from doing the former (being aware that we are sinners) but if, by God’s grace, we ever do the former we will still have to do the latter. God’s Kingdom will not be extended by a pietistic people who only beat their breasts and cry out “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

2.) If the first things we have to consign to the flames of hell is our strategies should not the strategy of the writer above be consigned to hell? I mean, all that is being done here is giving us a more superior strategy. Truth be told, I agree with him, but for him to suggest that strategies are in themselves wrong is for him to affirm a self defeating proposition.

For example, what if a person wanted to start a Church in rural Wyoming where people could come and live a life that is uncomplicated, distinct, and well thought out. Would it be wrong to strategize in such a way so that community would become a reality or should such a person’s strategy only be to cry out, “God me merciful to me a sinner?”

I agree that God only uses those who beat their worthless breast, crying out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner,” but as they are beating their worthless breasts He uses them to do long marches through the institutions, and He uses them by preparing them, much like He did Daniel, for positions of power and influence, and He uses them by their raising up children to seize the institutions of higher learning.

Naturally, a sense of God’s grandeur and our sinfulness is the perquisite for any Kingdom use. I thoroughly agree that there are often times when people who call themselves Christians are carnal in the pursuance of influence. I agree that a proper estimation of God and self must precede strategy to take over the world. What I don’t agree on is that it is ever possible to be done with our own foolish pride and I don’t agree that we must wait till our foolish pride is finished before we begin to strategize or act. Were we to wait until our foolish pride was finished we wouldn’t do anything for the root sin of all creatures is pride and that root sin won’t be finished until we see Jesus as He is.

We are proud sinners. Regardless of how much sanctification we are given we will remain proud sinners. The palliative care for that is a vision of God’s Holiness but that vision of God’s Holiness and that palliative care must come in the context of long marches through the institutions, and preparing ourselves for positions of power and influence, and by raising up children to seize the institutions of higher learning, and by developing strategy on how we may assist in the subduing of all things.

It Was All Said Hundreds Of Years Ago — Dangers Of Government Schools

“To commit our children to the care of irreligious people is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves.”

Timothy Dwight
President of Yale University (1795-1817)
Grandson of Jonathan Edwards

“…where the Holy Scriptures do not rule, there I advise no one to send his son. Everyone not unceasingly busy with the Word of God must become corrupt; that is why t…he people who are in the universities and who are trained there are the kind of people they are. For this no one is to blame with the training of the youth. For the universities ought to turn out only men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, who can become bishops and priests, leaders in the fight against heretics, the devil and all the world. But where do you find this true? I greatly fear that the universities are wide gates of hell, if they do not diligently teach the Holy Scriptures and impress them on the youth.”

— Martin Luther

“Keep your children as much as may be from ill company, especially of ungodly playfellows. It is one of the greatest dangers for the undoing of children in the world; especially when they are sent to common schools: for there is scarce any of those schools so good, but hath many rude and ungodly ill-taught children in it.”

~Richard Baxter (1615-1691)
Puritan Minister / Theologian
Author — “The Reformed Pastor”

“If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a teacher?”

John Taylor Gatto
The Underground History Of American Education

“The statist school is a citizen-producing factory designed to manufacture people whose every loyalty is eroded. No family ties bind the well-taught statist school product…. Thus, all competing institutions… or loyalties of family, faith, and heritage are eliminated. The result is a mass man; such a man is easily a rebel, a malcontent, or a drone, but he is not capable of anything but a statist answer to problems, because for him no other agency has any stature or viability. He is a factory product with standardized reactions and responses.”

R. J. Rushdoony
American Reformed Theologian

“We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.” ~ Horace Mann

“The purpose of state schooling is not intellectual training but the conditioning of children ‘to Obedience, Subordination, and collective life.’” ~ John Taylor Gatto

“We must focus on creating citizens for the good of society. Public schools promote civic rather than individual pursuits. Each child belongs to the state.” ~ William H. Seawell, Professor of Education at the University of Virginia, 1981

“Plans are underway to replace family, community and church with propaganda, mass-media and education. People are only little lumps of dough”. ~ John Dewey

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

~ Woodrow Wilson at the address to the Federation of High School Teachers.

“”The aim of public education is not ‘to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States.'” -H.L. Mencken

“It is the teaching of the Bible and of sound Political ethics that the education of children belongs to the sphere of the family and is the duty of the parents. The theory that the children of the Commonwealth are the charge of the Commonwealth is a pagan one, derived from heathen Sparta and Plato’s heathen republic”

– Robert L. Dabney

Of course we must take slight issue with Dr. Dwight for it is literally impossible to commit the care of our children to irreligious people since all people are by definition hopelessly religious. So, whenever we commit the care of our children to strangers we are at the same time committing our children to the religious. Dr. Dwight’s point was the dangers of committing our children to those who embrace a pagan wolf religion. To commit our children to those who practice a pagan religion is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves. Yet, American Christian Parents do so every day — day after day, year after year — until their children, because their belief system has been shaped by the wolves, no longer belong to them and are strangers to God.