Category: Apologetics

Putin’s New York Times Editorial Piece

There has been a great deal of buzz about Vladimir Putin’s editorial in the New York Times today. I don’t consider the Times to be a reputable Newspaper but I thought I would make a few observations about the Putin editorial. The editorial can be found here,

Keep in mind that my distrust of Putin in no way implies trust for Obama, Democrats, or Republicans. I can manage to be against them all at the same time, hoping that they conspire to pull each other houses down so that a non Tyrannical house can be built.

1.) Putin offered, “But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together.”

When Putin uses the word “we” here in the context of being allies during WW II, it strikes me that he is identifying himself with the former Communist Bolshevik Tyranny that held the reigns of power during WW II in Communist Russia. For this reason alone I find Putin to be a character that is not to be trusted. Anybody who self identifies with the Communists is someone whom Christians should be skeptical.

Secondly, on this score, it is true that the Nazis were defeated, which was good news, however, the price we paid in turning over much of the globe to international Communism (the “WE” that Putin self identifies with) made the defeat of the Nazis an empty victory.

2.) Putin extols the United Nations in his piece. This is another indicator that the man is not to be trusted. The United Nations has always been the residence of the progressive Marxist left, and was established in order to assist the bringing to fruition the long held dream of the New World Order. Putin further says on this score that nobody desires to see the UN fail. That is not true. I suspect that millions of people pray daily that the UN will fail.

3.) Keep in mind as you read anything coming from Putin that a defector from the KGB, (Anatoliy Golitsyn) told us long ago that the Soviets will fake the death of the USSR. His predictions were spot on. Do we really think that one day a huge super power like the USSR just falls apart without a whimper? No trials or anything for the former rulers? All the party faithful oligarchs are transformed from communists into “entrepreneurs” overnight? The former rulers become the new rulers, nothing really changes in the power structure? The purpose of this long con is to advance the agenda of the New World Order. Putin, being former KGB, is part of this deception and the end goal remains the Communization of the globe. Meet the new boss … same as the old boss.

We have to keep in mind that the cold war was useful to accomplish big things for the New World Order but the International elites needed a new era. Remember our state dept and Wall-street gave the world the USSR, Red China, Cuba, and so on. The best enemy money could buy. Putin, in my estimation is playing his role in the long con to enslave the world.

This long con was hinted at by Gorbachev in 1987 in an address to the Soviet Politburo,

“In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, the world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road!? He further reassures his Communist colleagues: Comrades, do not be concerned about all that you hear about glasnost and perestroika and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal change within the Soviet Union other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.”

There is no reason to believe that the long con does not continue.

4.) Putin in his speech appeals to the same old tired egalitarianism that has always been part and parcel of Communist ideology. In appealing to this egalitarianism Putin reveals, for those with eyes to see, the fact that Putin remains Red.

5.) So what game is Putin and Obama playing in this dramatic song and dance routine that is Syria? (Note — I believe most of what happens before the Cameras as well as what is reported in the press is Kabuki theater meant to fool the useful idiots) I believe that this was never about Syria. It was about weakening the prestige of America in the site of the World while discouraging Americans. This discouragement is part of the psychological warfare that KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov warned about almost 30 years ago. Obama has always been about destroying this country. Putin helped him in his goal as together they operated to bring down our prestige around the world while at the same time dispiriting Americans in regards to their country.

6.) Finally, Putin notes in this article that America should not think of itself as an exceptional country. This is consistent with what Obama has said in the past. In 2010, when Obama was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, President Obama responded, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” If everyone is exceptional per Obama, then no one is exceptional per Putin. They are reading off the same script.

Those who dine with Putin, would be well advised to dine with a long spoon. I do not think he is the anti-Obama hope that some people think he is.

I’d like to be wrong. I don’t think I am.

R2K’s Inherent Pessimism

“Christians have always lived in pessimistic times. That’s the nature of being aliens and exiles. That’s what happens when you worship in the church militant. Sure, Christians are optimistic about going home to be with their Lord. But they’re not optimistic about making their home here, this side of glory….

… 2kers, in fact, know that we are always in a battle and that culture wars often distract from the real warfare which is spiritual and that can only seen by faith and not by sight.”

Darryl G. Hart
R2K Connoisseur
https://oldlife.org/2013/09/06/making-difference-even-bill-evans-cant-see/

1.) I for one am glad that not all Christians have agreed with Dr. Hart on this matter when he says that Christians have always lived (and, by way of implication, “always will live”) in pessimistic times. For example, Dr. J. Gresham Machen did not agree with Darryl on this score. Machen could look forward to times that would be absent of pessimism,

“God still rules, and in the midst of darkness there will come in His good time the shining of a clearer light. There will come a great revival of the Christian religion; and with it will come, we believe a revival of true learning…”

2.) Note that it is Darryl’s worldview that forces him to conclude that Christians have always lived in pessimistic times. Darryl’s apriori militant amillennialism requires him to look at all history and all the future as “pessimistic times.” If Darryl did not have this worldview component, then Darryl wouldn’t be interpreting all of history through these pessimistic lenses. I especially note this because Darryl insists that he has no use for Worldview thinking and yet here we find Darryl engaged in Worldview thinking at its finest. In point of fact, R2K Theology is Worldviewism at its finest.

3.) Can you imagine attending a party with Darryl? He makes Eyeore and Oscar the Grouch look like winsome dinner guests. Darryl makes Schopenhauer and Voltaire look like guys you’d like to invite to your next garden party to hand out party favors.

Imagined conversation with Darryl at a party,

Guest — “So what do you do for a living Darryl?”

Darryl — “I write books and articles trying to convince people how pessimistic the times are in which we live.”

Guest — “Well, that sounds interesting.”

Darryl — “It depresses me and everyone who reads me but I press on.”

4.) Note that for Darryl, that the “not yet” of his eschatology completely obliterates the “now” of his eschatology. We can be optimistic about the sweet bye and bye but what is required now is pessimism. Now, R2K types will object and say that their “now” is Spiritual and that the problem with people like me is that my eschatology is “over-realized.”

Which brings us to our next point,

5.) R2K really is platonic or neo-platonic or, if one prefers, gnostic. We see this in the quote above that contrasts real warfare (spiritual) with non real (non spiritual) warfare. This is neo-platonism. Neoplatonism is the idea that the “spiritual’ (i.e., non-physical, ethereal eternal) aspect of life (Darryl’s Church realm) is superior to the more physical aspects. The Neoplatonic R2K perspective implicitly denies the biblical facts that man is a unit, and that God is concerned with the whole of our being and with all of life. R2K Neoplatonism leads to a spiritual contempt for God’s material creation and for the laws God has ordained in such areas as education or social order issues.

For Darryl and R2K, the really important part of life is in the realm of the Church. In the Church alone one finds the Spiritual. Outside in the common realm all one finds is the temporal and the carnal. In R2K thinking the temporal realm suffers soul sleep upon the consummation of all things. As such the temporal realm only finds its importance as it supports those working in the Spiritual realm.

If one wants to glory in pessimism, R2K is the way to go. However, if one optimistically believes, along with Machen, that Revival is coming, one will want to eschew R2K’s call for eternal pessimism and embrace the confidence and optimism of Machen.

Machen, The Worldview Thinker … The Machen Hart Never Told You About

“What has Christianity to do with education: What is there about Christianity which makes it necessary that there should be Christian schools? Very little, some people say (R2K “Christians, for example — BLM). Christianity, they say, is a life, a temper of soul, not a doctrine or a system of truth; it can provide its sweet aroma, therefore, for any system which secular education may provide; its function is merely to evaluate whatever may be presented to it by the school of thought dominant at any particular time. This view of the Christian religion…is radically false. Christianity is, indeed, a way of life; but it is a way of life founded upon a system of truth. That system of truth is of the most comprehensive kind; it clashes with opposing systems at a thousand points. The Christian life cannot be lived on the basis of anti-Christian thought. Hence the necessity of the Christian school.” 

~ J. Gresham Machen

“It is this profound Christian permeation of every human activity, no matter how secular the world may regard it as being, which is brought about by the Christian school and the Christian school alone. I do not want to be guilty of exaggerations at this point. A Christian boy or girl can learn mathematics, for example, from a teacher who is not a Christian; and truth is truth however learned. But while truth is truth however learned, the bearings of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian; and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlies not a part, but all, of the curriculum of the school. True learning and true piety go hand in hand, and Christianity embraces the whole of life — those are great central convictions that underlie the Christian school.”

~ J. Gresham Machen

The Second Coming Of Jenny Geddes Stool

Comes now a story as told from 21st century lore
When the Church was living in captivity as Babylon the Whore
Escondido had sworn that R2K would become the new Reformed jewel
They never dreamed they’d be undone by Jenny Gedde’s stool

The Ph.D’s and their sycophants, with printing presses hot
Expected all to genuflect over the theology they had wrought
Meredith Kline had sworn that Westminster 19 would never be the rule
But he passed before he could be introduced to Jenny Gedde’s stool

Kline’s disciples filled his shoes with Academic gravity and pomp
Resolved to cover the Reformed globe with their Republication swamp
VanDrunen, Hart, Horton, Clark, and others among those counted “cool”
Never expected they’d feel the wood of the metaphoric Gedde’s stool

They pushed their books insisting that Recovered Confessions meant
That all the Reformed World must offer up its assent
They introduced saints gone by, claiming all taught the hyphenated dual
But their plans began to crumble when met by Jenny Gedde’s stool

First Machen was trotted out by Hart as crypto Radical 2K
And that floated among the dupes until Machen’s words were displayed
And all the time they gnashed their teeth at the stubborn mules
Who had the temerity to resist R2K with Jenny Gedde’s stool

Then Natural Law was spun by the Magic of Van Drunen’s pen
The common realm was ruled by it, without Scripture’s intoned “Amen”
In the hearts of the saints the blood upwelled with bitter anguish full;
And to their blogs they took as one, casting Jenny Gedde’s stool

Next came covenant republication in this Reformed poison brew
Here the fingerprints of Horton were found creating this ballyhoo
To defend the truth rose warriors to expose this Escondido tool
And the weapon of their choice was Jenny Gedde’s metaphoric stool

Came forth then the sputtering of men not used to being told they’re wrong
Reinforcements did arrive but  Gordon and Trueman could not prolong
The inevitable demise of these schoolman’s Reformed Theology re-tool
It was brought to an end by the flying wood of Jenny Gedde’s metaphoric stool

hidelawblogger.wordpress.com

Combating Left Wing Christian Fundamentalism — Part II

LW Fundie writes,

5. We water down the Gospel when we eliminate the centrality of social justice.

The act of “doing justice”, as the prophet Micah references, is hard and sacrificial work. Yet, the cause of justice was extremely important to Jesus, and became a hallmark of the early church.

In Mathew 23:23 Jesus goes off on the conservative religious leaders, and tells them that while they seem to value keeping small rules, they are missing the “more important” part of the law, which is justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

However, the idea of “social justice” is offensive in much of Western Christianity, which tends to value wealth and individualism. Glen Beck famously told his listeners to run from any church that had the term “social justice” on their website.

Similarly, the concept of “mercy” offends ones senses, and doesn’t fit within a Western, guilt vs. innocents oriented culture. Giving a murderer mercy instead of death? It offends the senses. But, Jesus is crazy like that.

I love it.

I’m pretty sure that if Jesus came to America, he’d go off on us for the same thing– because when we focus on small rules, and resist or ignore the larger need for forms of justice in society (restorative justice, economic justice, etc.)… we have watered down the gospel and missed the most important part (Jesus’ phrase, not mine), just like the leaders in Matthew 23.

Bret responds,

Nowhere does the Scripture peep a word about “social justice.” Social justice is a completely Marxist idea. Scripture advocates Biblical Justice. The whole idea of “social justice” comes from Marxist liberation theology. God is concerned about Justice but there is nothing in Christianity that suggests that wealth is inherently sinful or that a Biblical individualism is frowned upon by God. The whole idea of “social justice” is based upon the foundation of envy. Social Justice sanctions the greed and lust of the envious by telling them that they deserve to have what they have not worked for or earned.

Now this is not to say that such things as unbiblical wealth and oppression don’t exist. We are neck deep in such today with our Governmental Fascism and social order Corporatism. However, speaking out against unbiblical wealth in favor of unbiblical poverty is idiotic. Both the wicked wealthy and the wicked poor must repent for their respective oppression and envy.

But our LW Fundie does not make these kind of distinctions. Instead he gloms on to the idea of “social justice,” as it exists in its Marxist paradigm.

And the idea that we can now set aside, by a humanist “mercy,” what God demanded when He said, “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man,” in the name of a humanist Jesus, is just ridiculous. There is no warrant from Scripture that the magistrate can set aside God’s law in order to give mercy to a killer while at the same time showing insult to the family of the victim. If LW Fundie’s Mother was murdered would he think it mercy to coddle the murderer? Given his version of Christianity he probably would.

I would contend that the Jesus that LW Fundie serves is a different Jesus then walks through the Scriptures. It is a Jesus of his own left wing fundamentalist imagination.

LW Fundie wrote,

4. We water down the gospel when we explain away the whole nonviolent love of enemies part.

What if Jesus actually meant it when he said: “you have heard it said ‘an eye for an eye’ but I tell you to love your enemies”?

What if he meant it when he said: “put away your sword”, “don’t respond in-kind to an evildoer”, and “he who is without sin is free to cast the first stone”?

If there’s anything we know for sure about Jesus, it’s that he taught/practiced a radical, non-violent love of enemies, and that he invites us to do the same. Instead of picking up a weapon, Jesus actually says that in order to follow him, we will have to pick up a “cross”– a symbol of radical, nonviolent love of enemies if there ever was one.

Yet, we have a way of watering those teachings down so that they don’t apply to us, or our country. We start with small loopholes, which in time grow bigger and bigger. We’re able to water it down to the point that ever expanding military budgets are embraced and supported by Christians, the pro-gun movement becomes a championed movement of Christians, and that preemptive war is taught and encouraged by evangelical leaders (as it was after 911).

Once we start finding small loopholes in the command to nonviolently love our enemies, those loopholes get bigger and bigger… until we are able to safely drive tanks and fly drones through them, with little affect on our conscience.

At that point, we need to continue watering it down, because there’s a lot of blood we need to wash away.

Bret responds,

1.) Let us say on this score that never was Jesus loving his enemies better than when he picked up a whip and scourged his enemies with a violent love via that barbed whip and sent them flying out of the Temple. Does LW Fundie aspire to that kind of love? What of this violent love of Jesus that LW Fundie skips over?

2.) Love is defined as treating people consistent with God’s law. So, when a man commits murder against another man, as an example, love requires that the social order see to it that he forfeits his life. When we do so, we are showing love to God, love to the murdered and love to murderer.

3.) It seems to be assumed here that love is defined by man quite apart from consideration of God’s law. This sounds like advocacy of situational ethics.

4.) “Put away your sword” — Situation specific. Jesus is speaking to Peter as he attempts to save Christ from what Jesus was predestined to do. Earlier Jesus had told Peter that the two swords they had were sufficient and that the disciples should sell their cloak to buy a sword (Luke 22), thus indicating that swords have their place. However, the place wasn’t in Gethsemane. Put away your sword is not a passage that supports pacifism. All those degrees and LW Fundie hasn’t learned about context?

5.) “He who is without sin cast the first stone” — Stoning was the means by which the death penalty was applied. He who cast the first stone was the one who had brought the charge (Dt. 17:7). The death penalty could not be invoked legally if the eyewitnesses were unavailable or unqualified. Jesus was striking directly at the fact that these witnesses were ineligible to fulfill this role since they were guilty of the same sin, and thus deserved to be brought up on similar charges. They were intimidated into silence by their realization that Jesus was privy to their own sexual indiscretions. Jesus was not teaching, contrary to LW Fundie’s hermeneutic that we should be non judgmental against those who have committed serious crimes. He was not teaching tolerance and humanist non-violent love. He was teaching the proper way in which to carry out justice.

How does someone get two Masters degrees from a Seminary with a (false?) Evangelical reputation and miss basic hermeneutics?

6.) Championing the 2nd amendment is done because I love my wife and family enough to want to protect them from those who would harm them. It is true we must love our enemies but how much more must we love our friends and family. So, Scripture teaches we must love our enemies but never at the price of hating our loved ones and to allow myself to be disarmed per LW Fundie’s desire to take my weapons, would be a lack of love for my family and a violate of the 6th commandment.

7.) Everyone will be glad to know that I agree w/ LW Fundie regarding the sin of preemptive war and the sin of Christians supporting the military-industrial complex.

LW Fundie writes,

3. We water down the gospel when we over emphasis sins rarely mentioned in scripture, while conveniently neglecting the ones that are talked about constantly.

The top two sins spoken against in scripture are idolatry and greed- sins that don’t often make the playlist in many churches today. Honestly, I rarely hear sermons on either of those topics. Maybe idolatry, but definitely NOT greed.

When’s the last time you heard a sermon condemning the wealthy who neglect the poor? That’s talked about all the time in the Bible, yet I don’t hear that message in many American churches. When’s the last time you heard a preacher condemn anti-immigrant attitudes? The Bible I read sure does talk a lot about the way we should love immigrants.

I think we’re watering down the gospel so that other people’s sins appear to be worse than our own sins.

Your sins? Well, you get a concentrated version. My sins? Watered down, please.

Bret responds,

1.) Recently I did a sermon series on the greed of the wealthy and the envy of the poor. I wonder when the last time LW Fundie did a sermon on envy. I recommend Helmut Schoeks, ENVY: A Theory of Social Behaviour and, Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora’s,Egalitarian Envy: The Political Foundations of Social Justice. If LW Fundie would read those two books maybe he could move past his soft Marxism.

2.) On immigration I would recommend that LW Fundie read Peter Brimelow’s, Alien Nation, and then do a sermon series. It is true that we are to be kind to the stranger and alien, but it is not true that we are to sacrifice our children and their future so we can turn our nation over to the alien and the stranger. It is not true that we are to allow the State to destroy what little is left of the Christian ethos among us by supporting the destruction of it via the importation of aliens who have no familiarity with Biblical Christianity.

3.) Still, LW Fundie’s counsel to not concentrate on sins that are easy to concentrate on while ignoring our own sins is wise counsel. However, I wish LW Fundie would take his own counsel and concentrate on the sins of pacifism and Marxism.

LW Fundie writes,

2. We water down the gospel when we exclusively use the concept of “penal substitution” to explain the Gospel.

Many of us grow up believing that the penal substitution metaphor for explaining the gospel is the gospel. It goes something like this:

You broke the law, which made God angry. Jesus paid your fine by taking God’s wrath in your place. Since Jesus paid your fine, you can be set free.

However, the penal substitution view of the atonement, is just a small glimpse of the cross– and in isolation, is a watered down version that reduces the cross to an individual transaction.

The “classic” view of the atonement is called “Christus Victor” and is a bigger way of understanding the cross. With the classic view, it is understood that Jesus was reconciling all of creation and freeing it from the works of the Devil. Within the classic view, yes– Jesus was reconciling me, but he was also reconciling everything else he made too.

This has big implications: in the watered down version of the gospel, it’s all about reconciling individual people. However, when we look at the classic view, we find out that God not only wants to reconcile people, but that he also wants to reconcile creation (environment), broken social systems, whole communities… and that means, my job as a “minister of reconciliation” is to get busy– not just reconciling people, but reconciling everything else too.

If you’ve only understood the gospel in light of the concept of “penal substitution”, let me just tell you that the Gospel is way, way bigger than you’ve ever realized.

And, so is your part in that.

When we reduce the magnitude and beauty of what Christ did on the cross to an individualistic, legal transaction– and little more– we’ve watered it down to the point where we can’t taste the depths of its magnificent flavor.

Bret responds,

I have no problem with Christus Victor motif. Indeed I see little reason why it can’t work hand in glove with the Scriptures teaching on Christ as our Penal Substitute. What I do have a problem with is how LW Fundie defines reconciliation in a Marxist direction. Throughout this piece there has been very little concrete reference to God’s law but countless appeals to trendy Cultural Marxist memes. From the wicked dastardly wealthy, to the wonders of socialism, to the fanged greedy, to social justice, to pacifism, to the environment, all we get from LW Fundie is Cultural Marxist causes. There is more of Lenin than there is of Christ in LW Fundie’s Messiah.

Secondly, LW Fundie does not understand the Scriptures that teach the penal substitution of our Lord Christ. It is not as LW Funide articulates that Christ accomplished transaction for a bunch of individuals. Scripture teaches that Christ gave Himself for the Church. Christ gave Himself for the covenant community. So, LW Fundie’s caricature of Penal Substitution is just inaccurate. (He’s gotten so much else inaccurate what is one thing more among friends? Also, on this score the atonement was never primarily about reconciling individuals or reconciling all of creation. The atonement was primarily about reconciling a justly wroth God to sinners.

Thirdly, on this score, the only way creation is reconciled is by reconciled people. Hence the emphasis on the atonement, after it falls on the reality that in the atonement Christ rescued the Father’s name from being impugned because of forestalled Justice, while at the same time demonstrating the Father’s love, falls on reconciled Saints. The Saints are the ones who, in their sanctification, bring the impact of their reconciliation on all of creation. Creation will not be reconciled unless the Gospel goes on to those who need to hear that they might be the reconciling agents. As such, to pit the penal substitutionary death of Christ against the Christus Victor motif is just wrong-headed. They imply one another and the latter is not somehow more significant than the former. If anything it is Christ’s satisfaction for His Church that makes the reconciling work of Christus Victor possible.

Fourthly, it scares me to death that LW Fundie wants to be involved in “reconciling work.” Given some of his expressed soft Marxist views I think he needs to go back to Christianity 101.

On this point I honestly see very little evidence that LW Fundie understands the atonement and that it is primarily about God before it is about man.

LW and STILL a Fundie writes,

1. We water down the Gospel when we invite people to trust Jesus for the afterlife… but not this life.

Flowing from number 2, when we exclusively use the Penal Substitution metaphor for explaining the cross, we end up focusing on getting people to trust in Jesus for their “eternal life” later, but fail to invite them into the eternal life that they can experience right now.

Maybe I’m just thinking big here, but I’d like to see people trust Jesus for the here-and-now.

Maybe I’m just weak, but I need a Jesus who can help me in the here-and-now.

I want to see people trusting Jesus with their finances, their jobs, their families, their personal safety, and everything else.

And, Jesus is good for all those things too. A Jesus that can save me later, but not now?

That’s just a watered down version.

Bret responds,

I’ve been a minister for 25 years and I’ve never seen anyone make a connection before between the penal substitution of the atonement and a lack of living the Christian life. Always, when I’ve heard it preached properly it is preached with the idea that Jesus came to give live and give it abundantly. When I’ve heard it preached I’ve always heard it preached in the context of “eternal life begins now.” When I’ve heard it preached I’ve always heard it preached as “What God freely accomplishes in the atonement (forgiveness and right standing with God) He works in you by the Spirit so that you increasingly conform to the image of His Dear Son. I’d like to see concrete examples of where all this irresponsible preaching on the penal substitution of Christ is happening. For that matter, I’d be overjoyed to know that most ministers have a handle on the doctrine of Christ’s penal substitution.

In closing I invite LW Fundie to try to quit reading his Christianity through his soft Marxist lenses.

And in a final word … Folks, if a guy can get two Masters degrees from Gordon Conwell and come out spewing this kind of stuff it is time to give up on Gordon Conwell as a option for Seminary.