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.

Failure in Baptist Thinking

The baptism of infants, no doubt, presupposes that salvation is altogether of the Lord. No infant can be the Lord’s unless it is the Lord who makes him such. If salvation waits on anything we can do, no infant can be saved; for there is nothing that an infant can do. In that case no infant can have a right to the sign and seal of salvation. But infants in this do not differ in any way from adults; of all alike it is true that it is only “of God” that they are in Christ Jesus. The purpose of Paul in arguing out the doctrine of signs and seals, was to show once for all from the typical case of Abraham that salvation is always a pure gratuity from God, and signs and seals do not precede it as its procuring cause or condition, but follow it as God’s witness to its existence and promise to sustain it. Every time we baptize an infant we bear witness that salvation is from God, that we cannot do any good thing to secure it, that we receive it from his hands as a sheer gift of his grace, and that we all enter the Kingdom of heaven therefore as little children, who do not do, but are done for.

B.B. Warfield

Because baptism now replaces circumcision, it follows that every Christian who neglects to have his own children baptized in infancy, cuts them off from himself and from the people of God. What an awesome sin of omission, then, is committed by some of our dear Christian brethren who refuse baptism to their own little infants and thus despise the sacrament of the saving grace of God!

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee

In the old covenant the first fruits belong to the Lord. The believer’s income belongs to the Lord. The believer’s children belong to the Lord. The meaning behind covenant is that we are God’s possession. Baptism is the New Testament covenantal seal, and sign that was the mark of God’s ownership placed upon every newborn child in the household. This is standard covenant theology. In the Old covenant the children went with the parents and the male child was marked as God’s property by circumcision. In the New covenant, which is more expansive, every child is proclaimed to be owned by God (God’s property) by the placing of the sign of the covenant upon the child.

The Baptists make hash out of the idea of a “new and better covenant” by insisting that while in the old and worse covenant children were included in the covenant community but now those children of believers are not in a covenant that is referred to as “new and better.”

The idea of being God’s property is the meaning of the sign of the covenant, and baptism is a covenant rite. When we fail to baptize our children we are proclaiming either that our children are NOT God’s possession or we are proclaiming that our children might not be NOT God’s possession until they decide first. However, by emphasizing that our children have to be able to make a decision for Christ before the Spirit of Christ is able to make a decision claiming our children sets the meaning of a completely gratuitous redemption completely on its head as Warfield notes in the opening quote. Reformed Baptists not bringing their infants for Baptism gives the contradiction between the idea of “Reformed,” and “Baptist.” In the words of Big Bird on Sesame Street, “One of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you name which one?”

When we present our children for Baptism one hymn we might sing would go like this:

We give thee but thy own
Ordained by thy decree

The gift was given by thee alone
Your favor now we plea

And having now blessed us

We pour on them thy sign

And place in you our trust

For their lives as your design

Baptism is, above all else, the sign of the covenant. Being in covenant is the recognition that we and our children, our income and our possessions are the Lord’s. We are his possession and his property. If it is the case that we, the parents, are the Lord’s property then it only stands to reason that any children we have are the property of the Lord’s as well and so should be given the sign (Baptism) that is God’s brand that signifies His property.

To neglect to give the sign of the covenant to our children is an act of treason against God’s ownership. It is saying … “You may own us God but we will not obey you and give our children the mark that proclaims your ownership of your children.”

Baptists must repent but they need to be reminded that God delights in the repenting of His people. Embrace the Reformed … hold the Baptist.

DKQ

“I say that we are bound to love as ourselves, all those whom we must hold as our neighbors. But it does not follow that I am equally bound to everybody. For the husband is more bound to his wife, and the wife to her husband, and the fathers and mothers to their children, and the children to them, and the brothers and sisters to each other, than to strangers. For this reason, St. Paul says ‘Do good to all, but especially to those of your own household.’ If, therefore, it is a question of a Christian, a Turk, and a Jew, I am more bound to the Christian than the other two; and must let the others help themselves, if I cannot help them at all. Similarly, in the law of God, many things were permitted to the people of Israel towards foreigners, which were not permitted to them in their own nation, such as usury and other things.”

Pierre Viret

Reformer

Instruction Chretienne II – pg. 768-769

Viret teaches, that while we must hold all as our neighbors, that does not mean that all neighbors are treated in the same neighborly way. This means that there exist differing degrees of “neighbor.” This means that while we might use the word “neighbor” for our relation to people we come across in a casual manner, we must assign a ranking mechanism to the word neighbor so that some are 1st rate neighbors, while others are 2nd rate, and some are 3rd rate, etc.

Think about it … if everyone is a neighbor in the same sense of the word neighbor that means no one is a neighbor, just like if everyone is our friend then no one is our friend. These words lose their meaning if they are applied universally and without distinction.

Rev. Joseph Spurgeon and Rev. Jerry Dorris and others were just in error on this subject a few weeks ago when the subject of “neighbor” was being tossed about.

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“He tells them the charge of his master had given him, to fetch a wife for his son from among his kindred, with the reason of it (v. 37-38). The highest degree of divine affection must not divest us of natural affection.”

Matthew Henry

Commentary on Genesis 24:29-53 – pg. 134

What is interesting in Gen. 24 is that Abraham sends his servant to secure a wife from among his people so that Isaac doesn’t end up marrying a Canaanite woman. Still, even though Isaac doesn’t end up marrying a Canaanite pagan he does marry a woman from his own kindred who did not reveal themselves to be particular believers in the God of Abraham. (Consider Rebekah’s pagan brother Laban and her niece Rachel who later stole Laban’s idols.)

This teaches the Kinist idea that marrying from among one’s own people is a priority vis-a-vis marrying outside one’s people group. Of course, we are commanded to marry those who are Christian but the above suggests that marriage should be between Christians who belong to the same people group.

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“The temper of some nations in more inclined to some vices than others.”

Matthew Henry

Commentary on Titus 1:12

Comprehensive Commentary – pg. 1360

Compare Matthew Henry’s statement (which is not unusual in the least in Church history) with the statement making the rounds in NAPARC churches,

“That the 221st General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church do on this solemn day condemn without distinction any theological or political teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristics and does on this solemn evening call to repentance any who would promote or associate themselves with such teaching, either by commission or omission.”

It sure seems likely to be the case that St. Paul in the book of Titus 1:12f would be required to repent for what he said about “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” Sounds like Matthew Henry agreed with Paul as against the NAPARC Keystone Clergy.

Review of Grace Halsell’s “Forcing God’s Hand”

Grace Halsell was a journalist who also spent time as a LBJ speechwriter. Her worldview was decidedly classically liberal. She rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers of the world. In her book she laments losing the friendship of Iphigene Bertha Ochs Sulzberger, wife of the publisher of the New York Times. Halsell complains about Iphigene’s praising of Grace when Grace was championing the cause of the putative underdogs in the US during the civil rights era and yet when Grace started to champion the cause of the Palestinians, by reporting the terror of the Jews, Iphigene Sulzberger (a Jewess herself) decidedly and hypocritically pulled the plug on their friendship. This loss of friendship was because of the subject matter in Halsell’s book, “Forcing God’s Hand.”

The reason for the title of the book is Halsell’s discovery, upon investigating Dispensationalism, that the Dispies believed that by their actions and work they could force God’s hand on the matter of the return of Christ. Through various interviews, as pursued while she was on trips to Israel as led by Dispie tour guides, she learned that the true Dispie believers genuinely believed that if they pursued certain avenues, like returning Jews to Israel, and like supporting and funding the re-building of the Jewish third Temple, the Dispies could shoe horn God into sending forth the Messiah.

In this book, Halsell exposes the looney tune nature of Dispensationalism by letting the Dispensationalists tell her about their beliefs in their own words. Halsell then probes gently with questions about their answers to, once again, reveal these people majored in brain disease while attending Dallas Theological Seminary or by reading Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, Hal Lindsey, Lewis Sperry Chafer, C. I. Scofield, etc.

Believing Dispensationalism is more difficult than believing Soviet narratives about WW II.

Halsell is clearly a liberal herself and would hate the Reformed faith but for different reasons. She clearly expresses that she cannot believe in a God of wrath. She is at her worst when she travels down these paths in her writing. She’s at her best when she just allows the Dispies to say stupid things. For example,

“Standing, overlooking the Meggido valley, Clyde, a traveling companion, explained to me that this was the site where Christ would lead the forces of good against evil. ‘Two-thirds of all the Jews will be killed,’ Clyde said, citing Zechariah 13:8-9. Pausing for some math, he comes up with nine million dead Jews. ‘For two hundred miles, the bl00d will reach the horses bridles.’

When I express concern over this scenario, Clyde, explains, ‘God is doing it mainly for his ancient people, the Bagels. He’s devised a seven-year tribulation period mainly to purge the Bagels, to get them to see the light and recognize Christ as their savior.’

But why, I ask, would God have chosen a people — ‘God’s favorite’ as Clyde says – only to exterminate most of them?

‘As I said, God must purge them,’ Clyde says. ‘He wants them to bow down before His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.’

But, a few will be left? To bury their dead?

‘Yes,’ Clyde tells me. ‘There’ll be 144,00K who are spared. They will convert to Christ.’

Grace Halsell

Forcing God’s Hand – p. 81

Over and over again in this volume, Halsell lets the Dispies hang themselves by their own words. The odd thing for the reader of Halsell’s volume is the amazement found in the inability of the Dispie’s to hear what they are saying. The lack of self-awareness is dumbfounding.

Halsell, admits in her book that upon writing this book she was a different person than the person who worked for LBJ. She even faults LBJ, in the book, for lying to the American people about Israel’s attempt to sink the USS Liberty. Halsell, is an example of a liberal who was mugged by reality and whose worldview was severely altered by being mugged. As mentioned above she loses the friendship of many of her former friends because of her Worldview change. This worldview change is noted in the pages of her work,

“By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled, experienced the police state tactics Israelis use again Palestinians.”

Grace Halsell
Forcing God’s Hand – p. 117

“What is the message of the Christian Zionists? Simply stated it is this: ‘Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God and should be condoned, supported, and praised by the rest of us.’

‘Never mind what Israel does’ says the Christian Zionists. ‘God wants this to happen.’ This includes this includes the invasion of Lebanon, which killed or injured an estimated 100K Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians; the bombing of sovereign nations such as Iraq; the deliberate methodical brutalizing of the Palestinians — breaking bones, shooting children, and demolishing homes; the expulsion of Palestinian Christians and Muslims from a land they have occupied for 2K years.

Grace Halsell
Forcing God’s Hand
Published 1999

“Indeed, I hold that Christian Zionism threatens not just the lives of Palestinians and other Arabs, but the very existence of the US. Because of the cult of Israel, we have become a nation that does not have its own Middle East policy, but the policy the government of Israel tells us to have.”

Grace Halsell
Forcing God’s Hand – p. 126
Published 1999

For readers who have a pulse, it is easy to see the application between what Halsell was seeing and writing about almost 30 years ago and what we are seeing today as the Jews commandeer our foreign policy in the current war we are engaged in as a client state of Israel.

I highly recommend reading Halsell. I also would advise another volume that covers some of the same ground, “Against our Better Judgment,” by Alison Weir. I found myself being a sympathetic reader and I found myself saddened that Grace never stumbled across Biblical Christians. It is clear she was a stranger to Biblical Christianity though in the book she reports a conversion experience when she was a child.

DKQ

“For some, on hearing that liberty is promised in the gospel, a liberty which acknowledges no king, no magistrate among men, but looks to Christ alone, think they can receive no benefit from liberty so long as they see any power placed over them. Accordingly, they think that nothing will be safe until the whole world is changed into a new form, where there will be neither courts, nor laws, nor magistrates, nor anything of the kind to interfere, as they suppose, with their liberty.”

John Calvin

Institutes, Book IV, ch. 20, pg. 1168

Calvin here is complaining about the Anabaptists who turned Gospel liberty into licentiousness. The Anabaptists earnestly desired to war against hierarchy and distinctions. The Reformed churches today are showing their anabaptist slips by disciplining men who are maintaining distinctions that have been held by all men, at all times, in all places.

When Calvin writes above that the Anabaptists, “they think that nothing will be safe until the whole world is changed into a new form, where there will be neither courts, nor laws, nor magistrates, nor anything of the kind to interfere, as they suppose, with their liberty.” I would note that the “nor anything” points to the current Anabaptist impulse in the Reformed churches to want to deny the reality of race. The current incarnation of NAPARC/CREC/SBC churches is to insist that Christian liberty means a world where “all colors bleed into one.” These denominations are levelers who insist that all because all men everywhere are commanded to repent that therefore all men who do repent lose their racial/ethnic identity and so can form one nation. These denominations are teaching that grace destroys nature when the historic teaching is that graces restores nature. When a Japanese man repents, he doesn’t lose his Japanese-ness in conversion. Instead, he increasingly becomes the best expression of what it means to be Japanese.

Depart the NAPARC/CREC/SBC churches.

“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regarding policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”

John Calvin
Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3

Eusebius of Caesarea & John Owen on Modern Israel

Eusebius of Caesarea (AD 260/265 – 30 May AD 339) in his Ecclesiastical History wrote that the OT prophecies had been fulfilled n Jesus and power and leadership in Israel had come into the hands of the Christian Messiah. Eusebius wrote;

“The historic world mission of the people of Israel had been taken from them and has been given to Christian churches.”

John Owen (1616 – 24 August 1683) in his Commentary on Hebrews could write much the same as Eusebius centuries prior to Owen,

“Upon the expiration of that term, their (Jews) right and title unto it (the land/kingdom) were cancelled and disannulled.

And thereon God in his providence sent the armies of the Romans to dispossess them; which they did accordingly, unto this day.

Nor have the present Jews any more or better title unto the land of Canaan than unto any other country in the world.

Nor shall their title be renewed there unto upon their conversion unto God.

For the limitation of their right was unto that time wherein it was typical of the heavenly inheritance: that now ceasing forever, there can be no especial title unto it revived.”

For 1800 years of Church history nobody believed this bilge regarding the importance of Khazarian/Edomite “Israel.”

Modern Israel is irrelevant…. Nationally speaking, they are dead to God. God divorced them serving His divorce papers in AD 70 with the judgment coming of Jesus Christ upon Jerusalem. There is not one whit of connection between Israel’s future and God’s eschatological clock. The idea of building a Third Temple is the stuff that blasphemy is made of. Armageddon, if it is fulfilled as the Christian Zionist fruit loops believe, will be fulfilled only has self-fulfilled prophecy; it will be wish fulfillment without any relation whatsoever to God’s revealed will.

Red Heifers … Temple sacrifice being practiced, Temple utensils being crafted for future usage … it’s all comes from the multiverse stuff that Marvel comic books created.

People who believe this stuff belong in padded rooms as clothed in restraints.

If I was leading a country that was opposed by another country filled with Zionists who believed that it was God’s will for modern Israel to expand, I’d want nuclear capability in order to defend myself against Zionist dreams of glory.

And I say that as someone who has no desire to see Mooselimbs prosper or expand or have dominion in the Middle East (or anywhere).