Category: Apologetics

Setting the Libel Straight — part I

Part of what it means to be a high-profile person in the Christian Ministry is to be libeled and slandered. Usually one sloughs it off as just the price that a nationally recognized Minister like myself has to pay for being in the ministry. However, every once in a while matters have to be set straight for the record and that is what I intend to do in the next few posts. Life would go on as normal if I just ignored this insignificant libel. In the grander scheme of things I have been libeled far worse and by worthier enemies but I thought, all the same, it would be good if people could see just how twisted Denominational outlets, media outlets, and hate group outlets can get things.

One thing that does disappoint me is that my little platform at Iron Ink is not going to be as far-reaching as an area Newspaper or a statewide radio station or a public broadcasting network. I will not be able to reach as many eyes and ears as the advocacy/legacy media. However, since unlike them I have the God of the Bible undertaking for me, I can live with the reach deficit.

Before getting into the rebuttal, people want to know why I put Iron Ink under maintenance mode during the season of libel and slander. The reason is simple. Given that the intent by the advocacy media was to libel and slander it made no sense to give them carte blanch to my blog history so that they could continue to wrench material out of context. It simply is the case that if you want to get out your view, you don’t invite the enemy to be your mouthpiece. Giving access to the history of Iron Ink to advocacy muckrakers would be like Alexander Solzhenitsyn asking the Soviet News Agency, TASS, to report on his grievance with the KGB and Politburo. Everyone knows Solzhenitsyn would be a fool to do such a thing and it would have been equally foolish to allow the muckrakers to access the articles of Iron Ink.

Now the very first correction I would like to make is this quote below from one Rev. R. Smith from the Christian Reformed Church. Rev. R. Smith holds some kind of position in the bowels of the denominational HQ. Rev. R. Smith offered,

McAtee’s sermon was like “any other traditional church until the prayer time came,” Smith said, and a woman in the crowd of about 20 asked for prayers for the white people living in South Africa.

“There was this supposedly false rumor that white people were being killed by Black people in South Africa, which was totally untrue,” Smith said.

Smith said McAtee “embraced” her sentiment.

Note the following,

1.) The thing that has riled me the most about all that has gone on in seeking to blacken my name is this statement by Rev. R. Smith. The reason it has riled me so is that it is perhaps the blackest lie at all.  Countless numbers of Boer farmers have been murdered by ANC terrorists and yet here Smith tells us that it all is a “false rumor,” that is “totally untrue.”

Of course, this lie serves the ends of the Marxist ANC and the cultural Marxists stateside. However, it is discredited by the truth. There is no need to take the word of a famous clergyman like myself. Instead, take the word of news reports;

https://unpo.org/article/11177?fbclid=IwAR0daizs2UVW1d4EAVPjHSdZs05XEBx7QP0Qa7Vkq6OqIooRp0hobPuzHac

And again,

https://d0dbb2cb-698c-4513-aa47-eba3a335e06f.filesusr.com/ugd/e5b74f_624b7676f2e8450c90433acc4c536604.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0rjOgTj5oDlR9RREh51k8wQavKt6NEdNzmENZasmz9NG2nmot-SdkqBrM

And again,

https://www.genocidewatch.com/south-africa

And again,

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-asks-mike-pompeo-south-africa-land-white-killing-apartheid–8

So, it is the case that Rev. R. Smith is the one who is trading in myths that are just not true. Denying the danger of the Boer farmers vis-a-vis the miscreant marauders of the ANC is, in Rev. R. Smith’s words, “just not true.”

2.) Rev. R. Smith said that “McAtee (that is me, your humble worldwide known Clergy member) embraced the sentiment of the danger of the Boer Farmers in S. Africa.

Damn straight I did, and after I read this news report chronicling Rev. R. Smith’s account we prayed once again in the long prayer last Lord’s Day for the safety of our Boer farmer friends in S. Africa. As a famous and well-known clergy member with global standing, I typically do embrace the sentiment of matters that are true.

But this is only the first expose of the repeated dissimulation that has put forth since I moved from a humble nowheresville member of the Clergy to a famous Clergyman with such worldwide status that everyone had to know about me.

Your Preacher & His Preaching Habits; McAtee contra “The Godless Coalition”

I’ve come to call them “The Godless Coalition.” I’ll not insist that every piece they publish is abhorrent or that some can’t be helpful. I will say however that just as one doubtless can find good food in the garbage dumpsters behind 5-star restaurants but still might decide better food sources are available so one may be able to occasionally find salutary articles in “The Godless Coalition’s” archives but why would one bother to search when there are so many other better sources available?

This piece was brought to my attention by an Iron Ink reader and friend.

Expect Less (and More) of Your Pastor in Addressing Current Events

And it’s just about what you’d expect from Kalergi Clergy who graduated from R2K Westminster Seminary California.

You can read it if you like. I’m just going to give a few observations on a few of the points that the article hits in order to eviscerate this anti-Christ thinking and that in order to provide some help to people who smell the foulness of this reasoning but who may have a hard time getting their arms around how to point out the source of the foul oder.

1.) The article argues that your Preacher is doing you a favor when he doesn’t preach on social issues like abortion, sodomy, trannie-ism, birth control, governmental deceptions of the highest order, the impact of a policy that will end in a disappearance of borders, or Magistrates who command wicked behavior. The reason your Preacher is doing you a favor for not preaching on those things is that he has more important things to preach on and your preacher has limited authority as to what he can speak to, besides… God really has no “thus saith the Lord” to speak on these types of issues.

The problem here is that

a.) This presupposes that Christ is not an all-consuming sovereign King.  The mind of Christ made known in Scripture from Genesis to Revelation doesn’t legislate on the kind of issues mentioned above. Per this R2K thinking Jesus came to save your soul, grant to you an individual if abstracted personal piety that has zero impact on public square issues. This is called “sanctification.” This denuded Jesus is the Jesus that your Preacher needs to be bringing to you every week.

b.) This presupposes that Preachers are not set apart to aid God’s people in taking every thought captive to make those thoughts obedient to Christ. The congregation instead, by way of silence in the pulpit, is allowed to conclude that God doesn’t have a word to speak on let’s say Marxism, Critical Race Theory, Existentialism, Romanticism, Intersectionality or that Uncle Frank is now Aunt Francis. All that is irrelevant as long as people can articulate the doctrines of Justification, Imputation, Regeneration, and give solid reasons why the third use of the law is no longer applicable.

Please understand, I am in no way saying that Justification, Imputation, Regeneration, Election, or the Ordo Salutis are unimportant doctrines or even less important than some of the other issues mentioned. What I am saying is that your Preacher needs to be speaking to both.

As an example … As a Preacher I can say; “Because we are Justified by the work of Christ so that our guilt is now taken away, we no longer should be a people who are laden by the false guilt that the race pimps seek to laden us with in order to manipulate our behavior by promising to rid us of guilt if we will only vote a certain way. Because we are Justified and have had our sin and guilt imputed to Christ we are not a people who accept notions of false guilt that are always being pushed on us as a means of our destruction.”

See… I just delivered a word on Justification with an appropriate application as it fits a contemporary issue. Other examples can be easily multiplied. If your  Preacher can’t do that then find another Preacher.

2.) Your Preacher has a limited message that must point you to Jesus.

The problem here is

a.) This presupposes that Salvation is only personal and individual and not corporate. While it is certainly true that any Preacher worth his salt will remind God’s people that Jesus is the only relief and cure for sin and sinners. People must be reminded constantly that Jesus Christ is their righteousness before the Father and that we rely solely on His mediatorial work to have Peace with God. However, all of that does not negate that pointing people to Jesus also includes helping people to answer the question, “How Now Shall We Live to Please God,” as a community. To preach the answer to that question from the pulpit is pointing people to Christ.

b.) The presupposes that theology is NOT the Queen of the Sciences. Everything we encounter in our lives comes to us informed by a theology that corresponds to the Christ or corresponds to some false Christ. When Preacher refuses to speak to the kinds of issues that the TGC eschews then the Preacher by his neglect is allowing his people to be pointed to some alien Christ who is not Christ. Every issue comes to us as an expression of some theology. If the minister is not preaching the mind of God on these issues he is a false shepherd.

3.) Your Preacher isn’t responsible to make sure his congregation has a shared world and life view because that is too much to expect. Your Pastor isn’t called to referee every dispute among Christians.

The problem here is;

a.) If you Preacher doesn’t give a “thus sayeth the Lord” on (as for example) “how feminism is an attack on Christ,” or “how cultural Marxism in the Church creates a different Jesus,” or ” the danger of the Great Reset as the next attempt at Babel,” etc. then what your Preacher is communicating is that God doesn’t have a “thus sayeth the Lord” for movements and theologies that have as their intent to cast His Messiah off His throne.

b.) It is true that your Pastor isn’t called to referee every dispute among Christians. It is also true that your Pastor is called to tell you that God, long ago, has solved disputes that Christians may be arguing about today.

I agree that the Minister should speak to local issues when warranted. I agree that a minister only has so many hours in a week but I would remind people that the Preacher’s primary work is prayer and ministry of the Word (Acts 6:4) and that others must take up other perceived clergy responsibilities so that your minister may excel in what he was set apart to do. Preachers are supposed to understand Christianity as communicated in God’s Word and then are to understand the times and know what must be done in light of that understanding and then are to Preach like their hair is on fire so that some may be saved though singed by fire.

It is my prayer that people would flee from the kind of Preachers who take seriously the counsel offered in this “Godless Coalition” piece. I’m sure the author has good intentions. I’m also sure good intentions pave the road to hell.

Trump Exposes Division in Visible Church

It is interesting that God has used the whole Trump phenomenon to expose the cleavage that has existed in the Church for quite some time now as between the Biblical Christians on one side and the Cultural Marxist / R2K “Christians” on the other side of the chasm. This has been seen again most recently with the hue and outcry being breathed out by the Liberation theology type Churches over what they consider to be the absconding of their Christian symbols as used in the Trump march. These types expressed by the likes of Wheaton College, and Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville Kentucky (Where Al Mohler attends). These and others have been hyperventilating that Jesus was desecrated by the Christians marching on 06 January 2021 in DC. They are doing all they can to create distance between themselves and those who marched in DC.

Now, as a large contingency of those marching in DC are from the Pentecostal strain of Christianity I have my own problems with many in that crew of marchers – enough so that I also don’t really care to be associated with their erratic theology and behavior. However, on the issue of where the chief danger in this country lies count me a Pentecostal fanboy. On this subject, the Pentecostal ecstatics are far closer to the truth than the “we want to be as close as possible to those who hate Christ and still claim to be distinct” Evangelicals who populate the R2K “Reformed,” Southern Baptist, and Evangelical world. For simplicity’s sake let’s call them the “Soy Boy” crowd.

The Soy Boy crowd communicate that they desperately desire to be neutral in the current kulturkampf that we are experiencing. They consistently suggest that Jesus doesn’t really care about the kulturkampf and that for all they know Antonio Gramsci may be as close to the truth on cultural matters as R. L. Dabney was though they are certain that R. J. Rushdoony is a dunce. On one hand, they present a studied indifference to the kulturkampf while on the other hand, they are constantly letting their slip show that there is more Herbert Marcuse about them on cultural issues than there is John Calvin. They are forever raising dire warnings about “Christian America” theology but are never heard sounding the klaxon on the Sovietization of America. They trip all over themselves rushing to the mic to denounce Pastors who have opened their Churches to worship Christ (looking at you RSC) while at the same time you never hear a peep from them in denouncing those who are forbidding us from worshiping Christ and doing so via contrived reasoning. They seem to be blind to the irony of strip joints and pot dispenser businesses remaining open while the houses that are responsible for Word and Sacrament remain under tight closure orders in many states. John Knox wouldn’t recognize them as ministers of Christ. Neither do I.

These chaps spent too much time reading Harvey Conn, Meredith Kline, and the Frankfurt authors and not enough time reading Calvin, Knox, and Rutherford. Their studies find them more beholden to humanist authors than Christian authors. They are passing that legacy on to those who will pilot pulpits in the West today.

The Reformed Church in the West needs another grand Reformation and it needs that Reformation as coming out of the “conservative” Reformed denominations.

Andrew Sandlin & His Opposition to “Cultural Homosexualization”

“The vast majority of those of us firmly combating cultural homosexualization hold no personal animosity whatsoever toward individual homosexuals. In many cases, they are acquaintances and even friends and colleagues. We treat them with the greatest respect and dignity, as fellow humans created in God’s image.”

Andrew Sandlin
Excerpt; Facebook post

Sandlin styles himself a cultural warrior reconstructionist. He views himself as someone seeking reformation along Biblical lines but here we see the lie given to that self understanding as he seeks to treat the wound lightly. Sandlin here is being nicer than God.

A few observations,

1.) Sandlin’s niceties towards individual sodomites goes a long way towards proving that Sandlin and our larger culture has already accepted sodomy as a way of life. I challenge anyone to replace the word “homosexuals” above with the word “necrophiliacs,” or “bestialics.” Would Andrew really have necrophiliac and bestialics over for tea and crumpets? Would Andrew really share with them a beer and a brat while taking in a ball-game? Would he really own those who make love to the dead and to farm animals as friends and colleagues? If not then why does Sandlin desire to own men who bed other men as friends and colleagues? Do you see Sandlin’s gross incongruity?

2.) Treating these people as those who share with us the “Imago Dei” is not to ignore their own desire to rip off the Imago Dei by exchanging natural affections for un-natural affections. Indeed, to treat them as Sandlin suggests is to show them hatred of the greatest intensity. These people need to be told, for the sake of their own souls, to repent. If that can be done over tea and crumpets then fine but tea and crumpets without a pressing for repentance is to treat them with hatred and not as friends.

3.) In my estimation part of the problem here is that we tend to view the sodomites in the same way that Jesus viewed the “sinners and publicans.” People like Sandlin fail to recognize that “sinners and publicans” that Jesus ate with were generally characterized as understanding their sin with a concomitant humility due to that sin. The “sinners and publicans” of Jesus day understood they were social outcasts. The “sinners and publicans” of our day are seeking to make Jesus and His people the social outcasts. The 21st century “sinners and publicans,” are the 1st century Pharisees. These sodomites are proud of their sin. They do not see themselves as the 1st century sinners and publicans saw themselves. Can you imagine any of our modern “sodomite sinners and publicans” crying out “God have mercy on me a sinner?” Can you imagine any our our modern flamers washing Jesus feet with their tears and drying his feet with their tears? No… the roles have been switched so that our modern Pharisees are at the same time an in your face defiant version of the 1st century “sinners and publicans.” Our modern sodomite “sinners and publicans” have absolutely zero sense of being “burdened and heavy laden,” and have no sense of the need for and so no desire to be forgiven. As such, treating them with respect and dignity does nothing but to feed their psychosis. Sandlin is compounding the problem and not helping his sodomite colleagues and friends.

4.) Of course Sandlin is in contradiction here. Sandlin wants to insist that he is a culture warrior fighting the general problem “cultural homosexualization” while at the same time embracing the particular people who are individuals of that very “cultural homosexualization” that he says he is fighting. This is a bit like saying that one is fighting forest fires while treating individual trees that are on fire with dignity and respect.

5.) Sandlin is caught up in the “hate the sin but love the sinner” wash cycle. We find him here divorcing the action of the actor from the actor themselves. This abstraction of the sin from the sinner has been taken way too far. Given the way we use this trope today one would expect God someday to throw only sin into hell while the sinner goes to heaven. The act of sin and the actor of that sin cannot be divorced from one another. We cannot find the sin disgusting and worthy of capital punishment and at the same time hold those involved in the sin to be friends and colleagues. Can we not see the incongruity.

Now, let’s be clear here. Should any sinner repent they should be seen as being part of the family of God but one simply cannot fight the “homosexualization of the culture” while at the same time feting individual sodomites as “friends and colleagues.”

In the end the question should be asked of Andrew … “Why do you own no personal animosity whatsoever toward individual homosexuals? After all, these are people who are in defiance of God and His commands and His order. These are people who are seeking to destroy your children, grandchildren and your neighbor’s children. These are people who would turn the whole world into a sodomite pride parade and a Queer library reading hour. Mr. Sandlin, do you think that somehow you get points because you don’t loathe them personally?”

Now, I quite get being as civil as is necessary in a given situation but having no personal animus? What’s wrong with you people? Such a lack of personal animus reveals that you are infected with the same kind of sickness as the sodomite in question.

From the Mailbag; Pastor Can You Provide A R2K for Dummies?

Thank you Colin for the question. I think I can do that. In examining R2K (Radical Two Kingdom “theology”) we must understand that what drives it first and foremost. The answer to that is its eschatology.

1.) R2K is a eschatology (doctrine of the end expected) of defeat. Their eschatological model teaches that Christianity can not to be triumphant in this world beyond the Church (grace) realm. Indeed, defeat is hard baked into their eschatological model inasmuch as their eschatology doesn’t even allow Christianity to contend in the common realm against the various other gods and religions. If Christianity can’t even contend anyplace but the Church then obviously defeat is the eschatological consequence.

2.) When we consider the ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) of R2K it is absolutely essential to keep in mind that for R2K “the Church,” and “the Kingdom of God” are exactly synonymous. The Church and the Church alone is where one finds the Kingdom of God. Now one could fix this as the Roman Catholics do by bringing in everything from the common realm into the Church in order to make it ‘Holy’ but R2K doesn’t make that move. Instead R2K does just the opposite of Rome and keeps everything else outside the Church restricting the Kingdom to being the Church and the Church alone. Everything outside the Church (Kingdom) is called “common.” So, this means

1.) family
2.) civilization
3.) culture
4.) education
5.) law
6.) arts
7.) science
8.) civil-social (Government)

each and all are not in any way related to the Kingdom of God but are to be considered “common.”

Now, R2K makes a smooth seldom noticed move here. What I have just described is almost the position of the Anabaptist. The difference is that the Anabaptist insisted that all these were “worldly” except as they existed inside the Anabaptist community of faith. So, the only difference between the Anabaptist and R2K here is that while the Anabaptist called these Institutions “worldly,” R2K calls them “common.” One wonders if there is some linguistic legerdemain going on here? Is the R2K word “common” just a fig leaf covering their Anabaptist “worldly?”

3.) Also touching ecclesiology R2K is adamant about the “Spirituality of the Church.” Now when this doctrine was used by Reformed types like the covenanters the purpose was to keep the snout of the Magistrate out of controlling the Church. R2K has flipped that so that the purpose of the Spirituality of the Church is to keep the Church’s snout out of influencing the Magistrate.

The spirituality of the Church teaches that given the unique calling and teleos of the Church under the mediatorial Kingship of Christ the church is limited in its authority to handling the keys of the Kingdom and is tasked differently than the State. The Church is tasked with the ministry of grace while the State is tasked with the ministry of justice. This is interpreted by R2K as a cone of silence upon the Church as Institution when it comes to speaking to Caesar. There is truth in this but the way R2K handles the “Spirituality of the Church” does not allow for the nuancing necessary when the State begins to speak authoritatively via legislation in a manner contrary to God’s speaking in Inscripturated Revelation. In my estimation we need to return to a doctrine of the “Spirituality of the Church” that is a tool to keep the State from seeking to usurp the unique authority of the Church.

The impact of this doctrine of the spirituality of the Church the way that R2K handles it means that you will seldom if ever hear a R2K minister speak to social issues like Marxism, Abortion, Just War, Sodomy, redistribution of wealth plans, etc. For R2K society could be burning down around us and the pulpit would be silent about the Lordship of Jesus Christ on these issues.

4.) R2K calls it “the hyphenated life.” A less diplomatic way to put it would be R2K is characterized by a Gnostic type dualism. Because R2K divides all of life between the church realm (upper story) and common realm (lower story) the consequence is that there are dualisms everywhere in R2K.

For example, in R2K there are two authorities. There is the authority of God’s Word for the Church realm and then there is the authority of Natural Law for the common realm. God rules explicitly by His Word in the realm of grace but does not rule explicitly in the common realm but rather rules by Natural law. As such the Clergy should keep only to the Church realm issues not preaching or teaching on issues taking place in the common realm.

For example, while the Church might forbid homosexuality in the Church, outside the Church, Church members could freely state that they could affirm domestic partnerships as a way of protecting people’s legal and economic security.

For example, in the Church Christ is Lord but outside the Church in the common realm Caesar is Lord. Here is a quote from a R2K devotee that demonstrates this dualism,

“Nero did not violate God’s law if he executed Christians who obeyed God rather than man. If Paul continued to preach after the emperor said he may not, then Nero was doing what God ordained government to do.” ~ D.G. Hart

The Gnostic part of the dualism is seen in the denial by R2K that anything in this life (family, culture, civilization, etc.) follows us into the Kingdom of God. Also, inasmuch as nothing but the Church (grace) realm can be Christian there seems to be a despising of the corporeal by R2K theology. The Creational realm is not renewed but is destroyed. This is Gnostic.

5.) The soteriology (doctrine of salvation) of R2K is hyper individual to the point of being atomistic. We might say that for all practical purposes it is Baptistic. Individuals get saved but the whole idea of covenantal categories that include children in salvation is negated by R2K’s insistence that the family can not be Christian. Also R2K’s denial that family follows into the New Jerusalem is a denial of covenantal categories. Next, in terms of soteriology, while Reformed theology has typically taught that God’s salvation is cosmic so that as salvation comes to peoples and nations so it comes to their Institutions, cultures, and civilizations. R2K denies all of this insisting that salvation is only personal, individual, and private.

There is more that could be said Colin but if you look for these five categories when you listen to or read Reformed ministers you can begin to get a sense when you are cheek by jowl with a heterodox R2K “theologian” or “minister.”

In the end R2K is a “theology” that is contrary to the Three Forms of Unity and if the R2K lads had integrity they would step forward and ask for exceptions to the Heidelberg catechism on this score. The Heidelberg Catehcism explicitly teaches that Christ is,

“our eternal King,7
who governs us by his Word and Spirit,
and who defends and preserves us
in the redemption obtained for us.”

But R2K teaches that Christ does not govern us by His Word and Spirit in the common realm but rather in the common realm we are governed by Natural Law.

Those who are R2K are outside their confessional vows and should step forward to take exceptions.