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.

Exodus 19:5-6

“Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation.”

Exodus 19:5-6

1.) It is interesting here that 19:5 with its reference to “keeping my covenant” we find a reference not to the Mosaic covenant, which has not yet been cut, but rather it is a reference to the Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant, as we know, was a royal covenant (treaty), which means that it was established unilaterally and monopleurically by God. The Abrahamic covenant was established at God’s own sovereign initiative as a covenant with an unconditional promise and yet this unconditional promise covenant is spoken of in Exodus 19:5 as requiring God’s people to “Keep His covenant.” This inclines one to believe that that this monopleurically established Abrahamic covenant was dipleurically administered. This is to say that while God sovereignly and graciously did initiate the Abrhamic covenant, He did so in such a way that there was an expectation of a proper human response to this gracious covenant promise. This is seen in Genesis 17 where God calls Abraham to “walk before Him and be blameless.” God’s graciously built upon the Abrahamic covenant by introducing the sacrificial system in the Mosaic covenant. This sacrificial system continued to remind God’s people that the covenant was completely gracious as sins committed within the context of and against the covenant were forgiven and covered upon God’s own provision of sacrifice, propitiation, and expiation. However, no faithful Hebrew would have ever argued that the grace of God’s royal grant covenant, where God does all the saving, was a license to sin against God’s gracious covenantal requirements to “keep the covenant.” Neither would have any faithful Hebrew argued that His desire to “keep the covenant” triggered the faithfulness of God to Him. Rather, he understood that it was God’s faithfulness to Him that triggered his desire to keep covenant.

All of this is to say that the salvation that is graciously and unilaterally given by God in the context of the covenant of grace is a salvation that still has the expectation of a “proper human response.” God does all the saving in Christ. There is no improving God’s gracious salvation. Yet, the effect of grace is always to prompt in God’s people a desire and a beginning to “keep covenant and obey God fully. (cmp. Heidelberg Catechism Q. 114)

2.) Note how God reminds Israel that He owns all the earth and then goes on to specify that covenant keeping Israel will be unto Him a treasured possession — a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy nation.

I wonder if there is a principle we can extrapolate here? Clearly God insists that the whole earth is His. There was not place that a Hebrew could go to escape God’s ownership and presence and yet despite this ownership of God over everything, so that everything is separate unto God, covenant keeping Israel would be the apple of God’s eye. Similarly today the earth is Gods but the Church is a royal Priesthood and a Holy nation (I Peter. 2:9-10) However, all because the Church is a royal Priesthood and a Holy nation that does not mean the rest of the earth should not be decorated with that Holiness. The whole earth is still Gods and since the whole earth remains Gods shouldn’t it be the responsibility of those who are part of God’s royal Priesthood and Holy nation to bring the authority and glory of God to bear upon the whole earth that remains His?

I ask this in particular to those who seem to fear that if everything is Holy then nothing will be holy. I ask this in particular to those who seem to think that if Holiness gets beyond the boundaries of the Church, reaching into what they call the “common sphere” then there is a real danger that Holiness will be reduced since it will have been made to define everything.

What if, instead of dividing things up into a Holy and common nomenclature we divided it up into a Holy and Holy of Holies language? What if we understood that all the earth should reveal God’s holiness but understood that could only happen as long as the fount out of which holiness gushes (the church) is understood as the life source of Holiness? If the earth remains the Lord’s and the Lord remains Holy, shouldn’t the earth reflect some of that shekinah glory? Why should the earth, owned by God, remain common if it were to be occupied by a Holy people serving a Holy God?

No, Mr. President, It’s Not “Just A Fact”

“What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

President “Where’s The Birth Certificate” Obama

“This statement has many possible meanings, all of them untrue.”

Heather MacDonald
Author — Are Cops Racist?

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTU4MGE4MDkwYzhiYjY4OTk2OWRlZjcyMWY0MjFkNmE=&w=MA==

This is a well written article that every white person who has successfully, once again, been made to feel guilty for their putatively criminal mindset towards minorities needs to read.

The Entitlement Narcotic

“Theodore Forstmann and George Will are the latest in a long series of writers and national leaders who have warned against the seductive appeal of government handouts. For example, 1960’s lecturer / columnist Henry M. Wriston, politician George Romney, and even a Vogue magazine editorial once admonished Americans about ‘luxuries-become-necessities’ leading to a complacence in which security is valued over freedom. Today, the typical scenario for weaning the masses from independence, says Forstmann, goes like this: ‘Give as many people as possible a taste of entitlement — give everyone, as our President likes to say a ‘stake in the system.” Notice this is not the same as a stake in liberty, or a stake in being an American. A ‘stake in the system’ means dedication to milking as much from the bureaucratic process as possible….

In pushing the Universal health care scheme, the Clinton Administration sought technical advice from countries already awash in socialized medicine. What most people don’t know, says Forstmann, is that the administration also sought political advice from those countries regarding how to push the idea. For example, ‘the German parliament advised that the most certain path to becoming a permanent governing entity was to socialize health care.’ Presumably, as soon as everyone had a taste of ‘free’ health care they would be reticent to give it up and, in fact, would insist on more. In the end, no amount of health care provided would ever be enough…”

From B. K. Eakman’s
Cloning Of The American Mind

Obama’s Hatred Of The Non Culturally Marxist Conditioned White Man

Obama rarely openly reveals his true thinking but he did so at the last news conference when he said the Cambridge police (a veiled reference to the white cop in question) acted “stupidly,” and went on about institutional racism in this country, quite ignoring the statistics that reveal that there is a institutional criminal class in this country that might account somewhat for the President’s lament about racial profiling. It continues to be clear that the Obama that was mentored by Black communist Frank Marshall Davis and who for 20 years sat under Black Liberation Preacher and Theologian Jeremiah Wright and who lost his first campaign for US Congress against Bobby Rush because he wasn’t “black enough” does not like White people who have not been conditioned by cultural Marxism.

In the social agenda that Obama is pursuing he is seeking to introduce stealth reparations. Reparations is the legislative proposal whereby blacks in this country would be indemnified for their past suffering as slaves. Reparations sold as reparations would never have the legs to get through Congress however by pursuing socialized health care, and in sure to be pursued free college education, Obama is seeking to give elite status to the perpetually aggrieved and self identified “victimized” black man in the American social order. It is this agenda that explains Obama’s call during his Presidential inauguration to “begin again the work of remaking America.”

Americans must remember Obama’s earlier refusal to wear the American flag pin on his lapel. What was it that kept Obama from wearing the flag pin? Mounting evidence suggest that Obama’s grievance was (and remains) the terrible White people who have not been conditioned by cultural Marxism. That evidence includes Obama’s quote regarding rural Pennsylvanians (hardly a black enclave) who “get bitter, cling to guns or religion or (have) antipathy to people who aren’t like them or (have) anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Rural White people cling to guns. Rural White people cling to religion. Rural White people have antipathy to people (read minorities?) who aren’t like them. The evidence that the Obama’s don’t like white people who have not been conditioned by cultural Marxism include Michell Obama’s complaint about how she realizes that Obama could go to the gas station to fill up his tank and not come home because he would be shot because he is black. No one really believes that Michelle was afraid that a Black man would kill her Barack do they? The evidence that the Obama’s don’t like White people who have not been conditioned by cultural Marxism include Michelle saying that she is, “for the first time in her adult life, proud to be an American.” Well what had her ashamed all those years? I think it is safe to suggest that Michelle was ashamed because she believes that she and her people were being kept down by White people who are not conditioned by cultural Marxism. This is what Jeremiah Wright constantly preached for 20 years, and only the unwilling can conclude that this isn’t what our President believes.

Talking about Race in modern America is the equivalent of talking about sex in the Victorian age. Most people have some experience with it but don’t want to talk publicly about it, and when it is brought up by somebody people either begin to blush or they go silent. Historical White America, if you don’t start learning how to intelligently but directly talk about race issues without either being intimidated or crude you’re culture is going to be decimated racially, ideologically, and financially. Historical White America, if you don’t start learning how to intelligently but directly talk about race issues without being either intimidated or crude your culture and your God is going to be replaced. This is not merely a case where your ethnicity is threatened, more importantly it is also a case where your faith is being attacked. You must realize that those who would seek to destroy your race and ethnicity also understand that can only be successfully achieved by attacking your Christian theology.

Your enemies understand that they would never make any headway by attacking Christianity directly so instead they attack “racist white America.” But in attacking their caricature of racist white America they subtly and successfully completely identify their caricature of racist white America with Christianity so that a victory over one is a victory over both.