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.

Two Years Later Walberg Wants My Vote Again

In the last 5 days I’ve received two phone calls from a young erstwhile supporter of
Republican Tim Walberg for US Congress. Walberg was the Congressman for my district until Democrat (Socialist) Mark Schauer beat him in the 2008 election cycle. Schauer and Walberg serve as the perfect example of Tweedledee Republican and Tweedledum Democrat. As a matter of principal they don’t disagree on very much. Where disagreement arises is only on the question of degree.

For example, Schauer is a classical socialist redistributionist. He revealed that by voting for Obama’s Death care legislation. Yet, when “conservative” Walberg was in office he also had no problem spending taxpayers money as the letter below reveals. Walberg sent this when he was still in office.

Dear Friend:

As I travel the 7th District, I have met with numerous religious groups, elected officials, non-profit organizations, school leaders, and small business owners who have all expressed one common message – times are tough, budgets are tight, and funds are scarce. Since I’ve been in Congress, I have discovered that a valuable and under-utilized source of assistance for religious groups like yours is federal grants.

Religious organizations, in particular, help the community strengthen itself through social functions, charitable work, and by providing a safe haven for those in their hour of need. I know, however, that these valuable services come with a cost, and this is where I encourage you to explore the potential for federal grants to help you fund your community building endeavors.

In order to share what I’ve learned and what may be of great interest and support to you, I am hosting workshops on How to Access Federal Grants on … I encourage you to attend. The first session from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. will discuss how to properly write a proposal to obtain federal grant from a Grant Writing Specialist from the University of Michigan….

Respectfully yours,

Tim Walberg
Member of Congress

Now, keep in mind that this clown is supposed to be conservative. He’s so conservative that he wants to teach his constituents how to most effectively suckle up to the teat of the Federal government in order to get their share of the ill gotten booty.

This is a guy who rails against excessive taxation. So on one hand he complains about the Feds taxing to much but on the other hand he encourages and teaches people to behave in such a way that the excessive taxation must continue. It’s the glaring inconsistency of being against higher taxes while at the same time being for the spreading of money around and for setting up seminars so your constituents can learn how to access the Federal pool of money created by the higher taxes that you putatively oppose. This kind of stuff just wants to make me scream!

Next, I wonder if Congressman Walberg realizes that the reason budgets may be tight and funds scarce (first paragraph in his letter) is because people are being over taxed. Does he realize then that his promotion of “accessing Federal Grants” leads to budgets being tight and funds being scarce?

One wonders if Congressman Walberg ever considered that one way to build a community is by letting people in the community keep their money. That money that Congressman Walberg wants religious organizations to access is money that was stolen from other people in other communities.

Walberg is no conservative! Walberg has no problem with stealing from one group in order to give to another. His only problem with Statist Government would be when the Statist Government isn’t redistributing money in the direction Walberg would like to see it go.

You would think a former Evangelical pastor like Walberg would take seriously the 8th commandment, but I guess it’s ok to steal as long as it is for a good cause.

It’s hard to say if guys like Walberg do more harm in the ministry or in politics.

I appreciate my young friends desire to be politically active but there are better people than Tim Walberg to spend his effort upon.

Oh … and by the by … I will change my mind on this only if former Congressman Walberg publicly repudiates this letter and promises never to do anything like it again.

Random Thoughts On Illegal Immigration & Solutions Offered

“The alien who is among you shall rise above you higher and higher, but you will go down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you will be the tail. So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the LORD your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you.” ~ Deuteronomy 28

This warning of God to Israel speaks of the consequences to God’s people for disobedience to the covenant. America is not God’s covenant people as Israel was and yet all nations who flout God’s ways are subject to God’s judgments against that nation which rebels against God. One sign that God is entering into judgment against a people is the reality that the indigenous people are vomited out of the land much like the land vomited the Canaanites out of the land when God entered into judgment against a people who were not His people. The pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform (aka — Amnesty plus for Illegal immigrants) for 12-20 million illegal immigrants is a sign that God has sent a strong delusion upon our elite for the purposes of continuing to judge America.

The result of amnesty for 12-20 million illegal immigrants will be the erasure of our unique identity as a nation-state. This move takes us from citizenship as Americans to citizens of the continent of North America. Just as with the victory of the North over the South in the war of Northern Aggression deleted the notion of unique identity by regionalism or by state in favor of identity according to attachment to the Nation State so amnesty for illegal immigrants will delete the unique identity of Americans according to the nation in favor of identity according to our hemisphere. This is all part of the new world order of globalism that all people’s are being herded into.

Also, keep in mind that if amnesty (comprehensive immigration reform) goes through this means additional pressure on the social order through the certain collapse of the social safety net. There is simply no way that our social services infrastructure can accommodate the additional millions and millions of people who will come to America after amnesty is given to the 12-20 million illegal immigrants that are already here. (Remember we tried this “one time amnesty” shot once before in 1986 and 25 years later we now have another 12-20 million we for whom we are going to render up another “one time amnesty” program. If the last “one time amnesty” program ended up with 12-20 million more illegal immigrants how many more illegal immigrants will this version of the one time amnesty program yield?)

It is probably to late to stop this illegal immigration amnesty program though there are times I think that if the elite really push this it will be their Waterloo. I sometimes think that this is the issue over which the bullets could start flying.

A few random thoughts on illegal immigration.

1.)A biblical approach to immigration would be to allow untrammeled immigration AND to have provision by which unbelieving immigrants could not change a godly social order. This is what you find in the Old Testament. However, one can not say they are advocating for a Biblical basis of immigration by insisting on untrammeled immigration without the mechanisms in place to create and maintain a godly social order. To insist on the first half (untrammeled immigration) without insisting on the second half (godly social order) is like advocating for Biblical sex without a bride.

Without a bride Biblical sex is not biblical and without a godly social order advocating untrammeled immigration is not biblical. You can’t appeal to half a solution and insist that you are being true to the whole solution that Scripture warrants.

You have to have a godly social order being maintained before you can argue that untrammeled immigration is biblical. If there is not godly social order in place and being maintained then whatever you are arguing for when you argue for untrammeled immigration you are not arguing for a Biblical position.

2.) If you stop the welfare state and if you enforce the demand side of the problem by bring heavy fines against those who hire illegals then you won’t need to ask for papers. Illegal Immigration will largely take care of itself. This is important to keep in mind when people continue to insist that one certainly can’t be in favor of rounding up 15 million illegal immigrants. We won’t have to round up illegal immigrants if there is no incentive for them to stay.

3.) The idea that Leviathan will shackle American citizens if we stop illegal immigration is easily countered by the reality that if we extend amnesty to 15 million Hispanics we will guarantee Leviathan will never be brought to heel as the overwhelming percentage of these votes will be cast to permanently establish the welfare State and to fix upon us the cultural Marxist vision.

Again … enforcement can be easily settled by turning off the cash incentives. Also, we should legislate against the whole notion of anchor Babies.

4.)

Question asked,

Gentlemen, do Ex. 22:21 and 23:9 have anything to say about this situation?

Bret responds,

Scripture can not be successfully appealed to, to support illegal immigration UNLESS Scripture is also appealed to in the means it required to protect a God ordained social order. The stranger was to be treated w/ kindness BUT he was not allowed, by the mass of his numbers, to establish a social order that was contrary to God’s law Word.

So, when we have a social order that will not allow the immigrant to destroy what very little remains of a social order that still has a trace of memory of Christianity then I will be all for untrammeled immigration.

Also, keep in mind that being kind to the stranger does not mean endorsing the welfare state.

People, have to keep in mind that what is behind the call for amnesty for illegal immigrants is the desire to completely demolish the residue of Christian influence and Christian structures and Christian social order. To support this is to support the death of institutional and culture wide Christianity in support of Leviathan — a religion where the state is God in which the citizenry lives and moves and has their being.

5.) I know America is not Israel. That reality makes flat appeals to the Scriptures to be as flat as they are. This is why I insist you can’t just read the requirement for kindness to the stranger as support for the erasure of borders. We also have to think about kindness to those who are living here. It is entirely possible that a certain kindness to illegal immigrants could mean a definite hard-hardheartedness towards the citizen and the native born.

Since America is not Israel then we should not point to passages in Exodus to inform us of our position on illegal immigration and amnesty since our domestic situation is completely and utterly contrary to Israels. As such, we have to know the times and understand the ideological currents that are pushing certain immigration advocacy.

And I’m telling you, that the ideological current that is pushing amnesty for 15 million illegal immigrants is one that desires to use the votes of those new citizens to completely overthrow any remnant whatsoever of America’s founding ideology and theology.

6.) Also, this matter of amnesty for 15-20 million illegal immigrants brings us to the subject of balkanization. A case can be easily made that with comprehensive immigration reform, as it is now packaged, the result will be to turn this nation into what the former Yugoslavia was after WW II. America is increasingly turning into a nation of nations, and a culture of cultures as these are both produced by various faith systems. The only way conflicting cultures, faiths, and visions of nationhood can be tamed is by a governmental apparatus that can use the heavy hand of the nation state to police the competing interests. In such a balkanized arrangement the State becomes the mediator, policeman, judge, and executioner in order to determine the limits of the competing cultures, faiths and visions of nationhood that exist in the balkanized nation-state.

Of gods past and gods present

“Historian Herbert Butterfield, in noting the different political spirit of Western man since the French Revolution and how he had once, long before 1789, responded to the intractable difficulties of human coexistence & social order, has remarked that men ‘make gods now, not out of wood and stone, which though a waste of time is a fairly innocent proceeding, but out of their abstract nouns, which are the most treacherous and explosive things in the world.'”

M. E. Bradford — American Man Of Letters / Classicist
Original Intentions; On The Making & Ratification of the united States Constitution –pg. 18

We are still the knuckle dragging idolaters that pagan man was. The only difference is that our idolatry is gnostic, which is seen in how we reify nouns turning them into gods. Pagan man had the good sense to eschew abstract gods for the safety of the concrete gods of wind, water, fire, and wood. The idolatry of the pagans was a mirror opposite of modernity as it embraced an animism that found its gods in all things material. The whole notion of evolutionary progress of religion is a myth, as measured by its own standard. We have not advanced from an earlier age where men worshiped false gods. We have merely abstracted our gods so that we no longer have the inconvenience of carrying them around with us or of building shrines in order to lodge them. Pagan man today is religiously one with his pagan forefathers. Their multitudinous gods were concrete. Our multitudinous gods are abstract. We simply are to close to our gods to see that they are just as fatuous and just as powerless as the gods that were made out of trees and iron.

It remains true today with our abstract gods what was true of the concrete gods made by the pagan idolaters of old.

Isaiah 44:9 All who make idols are nothing,
and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are blind;
they are ignorant, to their own shame.

10 Who shapes a god and casts an idol,
which can profit him nothing?

11 He and his kind will be put to shame;
craftsmen are nothing but men.
Let them all come together and take their stand;
they will be brought down to terror and infamy.

12 The blacksmith takes a tool
and works with it in the coals;
he shapes an idol with hammers,
he forges it with the might of his arm.
He gets hungry and loses his strength;
he drinks no water and grows faint.

13 The carpenter measures with a line
and makes an outline with a marker;
he roughs it out with chisels
and marks it with compasses.
He shapes it in the form of man,
of man in all his glory,
that it may dwell in a shrine.

14 He cut down cedars,
or perhaps took a cypress or oak.
He let it grow among the trees of the forest,
or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.

15 It is man’s fuel for burning;
some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.

16 Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
over it he prepares his meal,
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”

17 From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
“Save me; you are my god.”

18 They know nothing, they understand nothing;
their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
and their minds closed so they cannot understand.

19 No one stops to think,
no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,
“Half of it I used for fuel;
I even baked bread over its coals,
I roasted meat and I ate.
Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?
Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”

20 He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him;
he cannot save himself, or say,
“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

ADD — A Working Man’s Definition

ADD — A largely imaginary disease by which both the pharmaceutical industry and the psycho-therapy industry have become rich. It’s goal is to emasculate men from the tenderest of ages thus making them compliant slaves of the state for the rest of their lives incapable of either critical thinking skills or the courage to fight back.

ADD’s diagnosis is increased by a factor of 10 by its connection to an increase in more state money for the Schools in relation to the number of ADD students they have. ADD diagnosis is further aided by how Ritalin becomes such a handy mother’s helper to coral the sons at home.

Thank you Jesus that they didn’t diagnose ADD back in 1965 or else I’d still be on Ritalin.

Culture & Christianity

The position that Christianity should create a singular mono world Christian culture really strikes me as gnostic. It seems to suggest that there is a “Word culture” that doesn’t take to itself the material corporeal expressions of the culture that to which the Word comes. If there is a “Word culture” I would contend that won’t be happened upon until the eschaton arrives. Until them, cultures will vary precisely because God has made peoples to vary. The consequence of this will be a diversity of Christian cultures that are remarkably different, yet having a unity that flows from all being one in Christ.

People who want to build a mono cultural global Christianity seem to fail to appreciate that culture has both a divine and a human component. The divine component in culture, I would submit, is that culture is the outward manifestation of what a people believe about God, god, or the gods. The human component in culture is the result of how that belief system is poured over who and how God has created them to be as a people or race. Can we really believe that a Christian belief system as poured over the Mongolian people will express itself the same in its cultural outworking and manifestation as that same Christian belief system instantiates itself in its cultural outworking as it is poured over occidental people or Xhosa people? Culture has a human and divine component and to suggest that all cultures must look the same, or bleed into one, strikes me as denying the human component that God finds good in search for a kind of unitarian gnostic culture where the distinctness that comes from the human-ness of culture is completely nullified.

Further to insist on one “Word culture” that absorbs all unique ethnic cultural expressions strikes me as the result of a rather Unitarian understanding of God. All the emphasis is on the “One” with no emphasis on “The Many.” If God is genuinely both “One” and “Many” then it clearly suggests that it would be sinful to pursue a Unitarian culture where all the God given ethnic and cultural differences bleed into one.

There is a great deal of talk these days about diversity and the need for the Church in the West to be diverse. However, as I examine much of that talk it strikes me that what is really being said is that there is a need for the Western Church to give up its culturally distinct expression in favor of a cultural Church expression that is non Western. This causes one to ask why non-Western cultural expression of Worship are to be preferred at the price of extinguishing Western cultural expressions of Worship. When all the fog and smoke is removed from the incessant cries for cultural diversity in the Church what often seems to be left, for all to see, is the desire to exterminate Western cultural expression in the Church. If Western man is to stay in the Church then let Western man no longer be Western.

God loves diversity. Scripture clearly teaches that love of diversity will be in the new Jerusalem,

“Revelations 7:9 – After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;”

Note though that the diversity that Scripture speaks of and that God loves is a diversity that is not the result of all colors, cultures, languages, and ethnicities bleeding into one thus yielding a genuine mono-cultural mono-glot new Jerusalem. No, the diversity that Scripture speaks of and that God loves is a diversity that is distinct and polyglot yet in harmony because of the mutual allegiance and union that all peoples share with the great High Priest and King — The Lord Jesus Christ.

One implication of this is that the vision of building a church here on earth that seeks to erase all cultural differences is, at the very least, at variance with what we find in Scripture. One of the main points of the book of Galatians, is after all, that one doesn’t have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. Similarly, it should not be the case that anybody coming into the Church has to completely deny their cultural-ethnic identity in order to become a Christian. One can be a Christian and remain culturally Filipino, or Welsh, or Ndebele, or Syrian, or Sri-Lankan as those cultures have experienced the effects of redemption.

Christianity’s vision of the future outworking of God’s Kingdom parts ways with the pagan view of pagan man’s Utopian Kingdom. In Christianity both the One and the Many are culturally honored, while in pagan man’s Utopian Empire-Kingdom all colors must bleed into one. In Christianity all peoples understandably prefer their own people while still embracing the truth that all Christian cultures together express the Corpus Christi. In pagan man’s Utopian Kingdom one people are always seen as superior over all other peoples with the consequence that the favored people group live off of the groups reckoned inferior. (Currently, in our alleged pursuit of multi-culturalism the people group who are seen as superior are those who have sought to deny their ethnic and cultural rooted-ness in favor of the multi-cultural vision.) In Christianity the Christian faith is insisted upon as the one true faith while in pagan man’s Utopian Empire Kingdom the faith that is embraced is either alleged atheism or a full orbed polytheism where the State serves as the god of the gods. (Both atheism and statist polytheism end up at the same place.)

Currently, there is a great deal of confusion in the Church and culture on this subject. God grant us grace to think clearly about it once again.