Apologetics – Page 7

The Problems Of R2K — Part I

Premise of Radical Two Kingdom “theology.”

1.) The idea of God’s Kingdom is exactly synonymous with the Church so that when once says “Kingdom” one must hear “church” and when one hears “Church” one must hear “Kingdom.”

What then of the rest of the creational reality? Well, all that is not Kingdom/Church is a separate and distinct non-redemptive common Kingdom that is isolated from the the redemptive realm where the Kingdom/Church is located and where one finds the happenings of redemption.

From this premise a dualism follows in the Christian’s approach to reality. R2K advocate D. G. Hart has labeled this “the Hyphenated life,” which is a gussied up version of “a life lived as dualism.” Our epistemological foundation in the redemptive realm is scripture while our epistemological foundation along with all other men, regardless of their claiming or not claiming Christ, in the common realm is Natural law. The two Kingdoms have two different laws and never the twain shall meet. Those in the hyphenated (Dualistic) life are split personalities being governed differently in each distinct realm.

R2K seeks to argue for R2K by harmonizing the the pre-fall cultural mandate given by God to Adam to govern creation and subdue it with a innovative read of the post-fall Noahic covenant where the assertion is maintained that after the flood the same cultural mandate was given again to Noah as a representative of the whole human race. Post-fall Noah, unlike pre-fall Adam is a covenant head of the whole fallen human race who together work to operate jointly in this common grace Noahic covenant that is absent of any redemptive particulars. Those redemptive particulars are to be found only in the Abrahamic covenant which is markedly and dualistically distinct from the Noahic covenant.

The covenant of grace, distinct as it is from the common grace Noahic covenant, is the Kingdom/Church redemptive covenant and finds its ultimate fulfillment (unlike the Noahic covenant) in Jesus Christ. Note here that we have two covenants (common and particular) that are operating on parallel and never intersecting tracks with one another. This accounts for the dualism that is characteristic of R2K.

Whereas all mankind (including believers) belong to the Noahic covenant, only Christians belong to the redemptive covenant that is characterized by R2K as “Church/Kingdom.” There in the redemptive covenant God’s plans are worked out for His new creation. In the R2K common realm God’s has no plans except for destruction at the end of the age.

So, in the R2K paradigm Christ is both the mediator of the new covenant (redemptive realm) and He is the Mediator of the creational realm (common realm). However, these two realms never touch in the Christian’s life. When the Christian operates in the redemptive realm then he must operate as a Christian. When the Christians operates in the common realm he must operate on the same eschatological and teleological basis as all other men regardless of their religion. This explains why in the R2K world there can be no such thing as Christian culture, Christian education, Christian Law, Christian families, or Christian Nations. For R2K all of these realities (culture, education, law, family, nations, etc.) belong to the common Kingdom and by definition therefore can not be Christian since that realm is not religiously conditioned but is conditioned by the common realm natural law accessible to the conscience of all men.

R2K is so consistent on this matter that they note that the common realm Kingdom will completely be consumed by fire (II Pt. 3:1-13). This means that, contrary to what we read in Revelation 21

²⁴And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.

that per R2K it is only individuals who are redeemed and nothing of what they cultural built to the glory of God.

So, what we see here, and what I am at pains to point out, is the Radical Two Kingdom’s radical dualism, or what D. G. Hart likes to style as “the hyphenated life.” With this radical dualism we are back to the Platonic upper realm and lower realm. For R2K the Upper realm is grace and the lower realm is nature, and never the two shall meet. All men alike, believer and unbeliever, together function in the common realm, ruled as they all are in that realm by Thomistic Natural law theory. All of this realm is going to burn and so as Christians while we are to be nice Christians we realize that nothing that we do in building up this common realm for Christ’s glory will last because it can only always be common.

Because the common realm is common special revelation found in Scripture need not apply in this realm. One implication of this is that God’s Law-Word is not to be applied in the common realm. R2K advocates have even gone on record as saying that Magistrates have no responsibility to enforce the first table of God’s law. More and more the second table seems negotiable for the R2K advocates. The appeal magistrates are to make in the common realm is to Natural law and not to special revelation. In the R2K paradigm Christ only rules through His word and spirit in the redemptive realm. Of course, all this dualism can not help but create a schizophrenic Christian that is only resolved on the last day when our existence in the common realm is deleted because the common realm has been torched.

Dr. Robert Letham has been helpful here;

“The two-kingdoms idea has the merit of pointing to two radically different eternal destinies. It also highlights the reality that, until Christ returns, the church and its members are pilgrims and strangers in a world that has been deeply affected by sin and rebellion against God. However, it is in contrast to Herman Bavinck, who held that Christians of all people are, in another sense, at home in the world, since it was created and is directed by the triune God, with Christ its Mediator. Moreover, as Beach remarks, the two-kingdoms view splits the Christian believer into a dualism: under Christ’s authority in the kingdom of God but neutral in the common kingdom. It appears to undermine the Bible as the supreme authority in all matters of faith and practice.”

The unbiblical and non-Christian dualism that R2K posits is inconsistent with God’s record. God’s Word teaches us that Christ is Head over all things for the Church (Eph. 1:20-23). R2K mutes the explicit mediatorial kingship of Jesus Christ over all creation and in its place places an explicit mediatorial kingship of a natural law that is only as good as the beginning presuppositional lenses through which that natural law is read as by fallen men. What is surrendered in order to embrace R2K is the cosmic kingship of Jesus Christ over all Kings (Psalm 2, 110) and all authorities, reducing the offices of Jesus Christ to His Great High Priestly office and our great Prophet. R2K strips the totalistic Kingship of Jesus Christ preferring a Gnostic King Jesus. R2K takes from our theology munus triplex and gives us munus duplex instead.

So, we see that R2K has a anthropological problem inasmuch as it ascribes to fallen man, who suffers from original sin and total depravity, the ability apart from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, to read aright general revelation via the usage of Natural law. This is a denial that the carnal mind is at enmity with God (Romans 8:7) and a denial of basic Reformed anthropology. However, R2K also has a Christological problem as we have seen. Christ has effectively been stripped of His Kingly office except as existing in a very Gnostic fashion. This is not all though. The Christology of R2K is also defective in as much as Christ is divided. We could and should salute the idea that Christ is the one King, ruling by one law, over distinguished jurisdictions (family, church, civil-social, etc.) but we can never salute the idea that R2K gives us offering a Christ as the one King ruling over dualistic and divorced jurisdictions that have no relation to one another. Dualism is not Biblical and has long been the bugbear of the non-orthodox. Let the reader consider that Scripture teaches a continually expanding subjugation of Christ’s enemies (Mt. 13:31-38) so that the very last enemy that is abolished is abolished at His coming (I Cor. 15:20-26).

Next, we have to face the fact that R2K breaks down on its claims that the common realm is common. Do the Mullah’s of Iran agree that the R2K common realm is common? Does the Talmudist read natural law the same way as J. V. Fesko, or T. David Gordon and other R2K-philes. Do the trannies of Drag Queen story hour read natural law in the common realm the way that R. Scott Clark insists that it has to be read? In brief are the shock-troops of Lucifer in agreement that the common realm is common? This doctrine of a common realm seems to give up the idea that the church is to be about the business of destroying arguments, leading to every thought being taken captive to Christ (II Cor. 10:106). For R2K the church should be about the business of finding common ground in the common realm with those who share the common ground of hating Christ and His legislative word. Where is the “all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth,” in all this? Where is “the gates of hell shall not prevail” in R2K theology? Why this theology of dualism as opposed to a theology of the one and the many where Christ is the one ruler over many distinct realms?

Puritan Thomas Hall on the Appropriateness of Mocking the Enemy as Found in Scripture

“Mocking and slander is not a Christian way of dealing with anything.”

Dr. J. Ligon Duncan

Mocking is lawful:……”Puritan Presbyterian Thomas Hall destroys the modern tone police:

“IRONIA: ironic, taunting speeches may lawfully be used, as occasion serves.

(1) God himself used them in Genesis 3:22. “The man is become as one of us” – as one of the Trinity, whereby God declares his great disdain of their affectation of an impossible preeminence in being like to God, which is to say:

“By his sin he is become most unlike to us. See how well Satan hath performed his promise to man, is not he become like one of us? And hath not he gained a goodly measure of knowledge, both of good and evil?”

(2) So Judges 10:14. “Go, cry to the gods which ye have chosen.”

It is an ironic upbraiding them for their idolatry, which they found so comfortless, in their greatest need, their idols being no way able to deliver them.

So in Isaiah 14:4, 8-9, God himself teaches his people to deride the proud King of Babylon.

(3) Christ used it in Matthew 26:45: “sleep on,” which is to say: “Go to now, sleep on, take your rest if ye can, behold a perilous time is at hand, wherein ye shall have little list or leisure to sleep.”

(3) Elijah used it to the worshippers of Baal in 1 Kings 18:27. He mocks them, and bids them cry aloud to their drowsy or busy god, peradventure their Baal was asleep, or in a journey, etc.

(4) So Micaiah bids Ahab “go up and prosper,” which is to say: “go up and perish,” 1 Kings 22.15.

(5) So Job (17:2) taunts at his false friends, in an ironic expression: “No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you, which is to say:

“In your own conceit, there are no men in the world but you. No doubt but reason hath left us, and is given wholly unto you; yea wisdom is so tied to your persons, that her conservation and mine depends on yours.”

(6) So Amos 4:4-5: “Come to Bethel, and transgress at Gilgal, multiply transgressions,” etc., which is to say:

“Since by no means ye will be reclaimed, but are desperately set on sin; go on, and fill up the measure of your sin.”

(7) Thus Solomon, without any breach of charity, or stain of holiness, checks the young man’s folly [by saying in] Ecclesiastes 11:9: “Rejoice O young man, etc. but know,” etc.

By an ironic concession, he bids him rejoice and take his pleasure, etc., and then marries all with a stinging but, in the end.

(8) So Paul with a holy scoff, derides the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 4.8, 10: “ye are full, ye are rich, you reign as kings,” etc. “we are fools, ye are wise,” etc. “we are nothing, you are all.” Etc.

[“Ironica est concessio, exprimens Corinthiorum de seipsis corruptam opinionem.” Aretius.]”

Is Christ King or is He only Kind of King? — McAtee vs. Duncan & Hart

In the biblical worldview, the believer’s redemption in Christ is not limited to personal salvation from sin guaranteeing him entry into heaven at death. It must also include a universal perspective. Otherwise redemption reduces to anthropology, nullifying the material order created by God. Such reductionist theology truncates Christ’s saving work accomplished in the cross-resurrection-ascension event, which undermines the ultimate new creation age to come.

Ken Gentry

We are one day removed from Palm Sunday 2024 with its ringing endorsement of the fact that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. However, 24 hours later we are left asking many of those who insist they are Reformed what they think the Kingship of Jesus Christ concretely means.

There is a large branch out there in the Reformed world who want to recite that Christ is King right up to the point where the idea of Kingship has any teeth. At that point the idea of “Kingship” is suddenly redefined in a very Gnostic direction. “Christ is King,” they say, “just so long as He is not intent on actually ruling as the alone King.” “Christ is King,” they chant “just so long as King Christ has no legislative Law-Word that we have to pay any attention to in our family order, social orders, and law orders.” “Christ is King,” they dutifully recite, “just as long as Christ has no territorial claims over any nation or over any footage on planet earth.” The Kingship of Jesus Christ for this group is esoteric, abstract, and invisible. The best that they offer for the impact of Christ’s Kingship is the insistence that Christians should demonstrate their belief in Christ’s Kingship by being nice and making room for a pluriform of competing gods in the public square. “Christ is King” for these crypto-Gnostics means a pluralistic social order where Christ as King as to compete for the table scraps of recognition from the God-State, along with the demon gods of Islam, Molech worship, Talmudism, and Salt Lake city fantasies. The Gnostic Reformed insist with us that “Christ is King,” but then turn around and define Kingship to mean “not Kingship.”

We are seeing this all over the Reformed world today. Most recently it came out in spades with an interview of Establishment figures Dr. J. Ligon Duncan, and a podcast including Dr. Darryl G. Hart. If you listen to these back to back it will take your breath away in turns of the animated hostility for traditional and historic Reformed views. Duncan goes especially after Theonomy and Reconstructionism. Hart has a wild hair growing over the possibility of Christian Nationalism, though he manages to make clear his loathing for theonomy type movements.

Duncan’s approach to the issue is almost comical.

He opens by insisting that mocking and slander are not Christian ways to deal with issues and then proceeds to slander fellow Christians who take Christ’s Kingship seriously all the way through the section he speaks on that subject.

Next Duncan tell us that King Christ was not a mocker and yet in His ministry Jesus mocks Herod by calling him a “she-fox.” The Pulpit Commentary offers here;

“The epithet “she-fox” is perhaps the bitterest and most contemptuous name ever given by the pitiful Master to any of the sons of men.”

Ellicott’s commentary reveals,

The word was eminently descriptive of the character both of the Tetrarch individually, and of the whole Herodian house. The fact that the Greek word for “fox” is always used as a feminine, gives, perhaps, a special touch of indignant force to the original.

We learn thus, that a Chancellor of a flagship seminary does not know what he is talking about on this particular mocking issue as it relates to the life of Jesus, and we haven’t even bothered to consider the treatment Jesus gave to the Pharisees. If all that is too complex for Dr. Duncan as it touches the issue of the appropriateness of mocking, perhaps he might consider Who is speaking in Proverbs 1:26; “I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;”

Duncan goes out of his ways that the bible teaches that there are different ways to be faithful, and that is true. However, Duncan doesn’t mention that the Bible also teaches that there are different ways to be unfaithful. It is my opinion that Duncan’s work in this interview is one example of how to be unfaithful.

As one continues to listen to Duncan boast of his creating a Christ, Culture, and Contextualization course that he taught one realizes that Duncan has embraced the contextualization model of Christ with culture. This paradigm can be understood by accessing Niebuhr’s book on “Christ and Culture” where Niebuhr gives different paradigms for Christians engaging culture. “Niebuhr’s five views are: 1. Christ Against Culture, 2. Christ of Culture, 3. Christ Above Culture, 4. Christ and Culture in Paradox, 5. Christ the Transformer of Culture.” Clearly Duncan’s “Christ of Culture,” paradigm is one that liberals have embraced for quite some time. Duncan’s offense at the Reconstructionist paradigm indicates that Duncan is for appeasement. This is diametrically opposed to Scripture which finds Jesus teaching, “He who does not gather with me, scatters.” We know that Duncan is for appeasement given the tongue lashing and the slander he visits upon theonomy and reconstructionism.

Duncan insists that those who disagree with him are doing what they are doing because “a lot of it is ego and envy,” and a lot of unimportant people trying to be important. Yet, in my estimation Duncan’s ego and self-importance is just dripping off the interview. Honestly, I don’t mind being critiqued but the mean-spiritedness of Duncan in his words against those who take God’s Law-Word seriously was palpable.

Something else here that doesn’t ring true. Duncan says he gave up on critiquing Theonomy in 1996 or so because it was dead. However, in the archives on Iron Ink you can find a piece from 2009 where Duncan was again slamming theonomy. In this interview Duncan says that theonomy has risen from the grave like a zombie. Yet another slander from Duncan comparing a Reformed movement with the living dead.

Here is the fact of the matter. As much as he might like to, Duncan cannot kill the Theonomy/Reconstructionist movement. (Though Moscow aberration of it might kill it.) The Theonomy/Reconstruction movement may be dead for the Boomers and those over 50 even. At 64 I am a relic and a Dinosaur … one of the elder statesmen of the movement. However, I am seeing the rise of a 20-40 somethings who are never going to accept Reformed-Surrender theology. They are not going to be taken off to the gulag camps without a fight. They are no longer going to salute the post-WWII consensus that Duncan and Hart (and most of those reputed to be pillars in the Church) cherish with their whole beings. The Enlightenment version of the Reformed faith with its bastardized version of the Westminster Confession of Faith is in a nursing home and the prognosis is not good for its long term health.

Ducan, Hart and their ilk are wedded to pluralism but let’s consider what pluralism has done. I’m old enough to remember the residuals of Christian America. I’m old enough to remember the theonomic blue laws that found every business, park, and amusement shut down on Sundays. I’m old enough to remember how on good Friday every year all the businesses would close at 12noon in order to attend noon good Friday services. I’m old enough to remember distinct male and female roles that were premised upon Christianity. I’m old enough to remember the necessity to refer to your elders as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” I’m old enough to remember Sunday being enforced as a day of rest. And remember, these were only the residuals of a Christian American that was already in its death throes. Darryl Gnostic Hart in his conversation asks, “what could it possibly mean for a nation to be Christian” and I offer the above as a partial answer.

At appx. the 49:40 point of the interview with Duncan he begins to mock fellow Christians. Irony much Lig? From there Duncan goes on to say that the Reconstructionist understanding of Christ’s Kingship has no possibility of being implemented in any possible world. First of all we would ask, “Lig, not being God how could you possibly know that?” Second we would ask, “Even if you could somehow know that is true would that mean therefore that Christians should cease to continue to advocate for the crown rights of Jesus Christ?” Third we would ask, “If it is possible for Sharia to be the law of nations why is it impossible to think that God’s better law could not be the law of nations? Is the Allah stronger than King Jesus Lig?”

Next Duncan trots out the old canard that Reconstructionism/Theonomy is not a Reformed view. These chaps have been trying to sell that nonsense ever since this ker started to fuffle. A book that came out early in this debate was “Theonomy; An Reformed Critique,” and in that book the authors try to sell the bilge that Theonomy/Reconstructionism was not Reformed. The fact of the matter is, is that it is the surrender monkeys found among the Reformed Establishment who are the ones holding to a Reformed faith that isn’t particularly historically or traditionally Reformed. Can anyone look at the original Westminster Confession on the Civil Magistrate or the original Belgic Confession of Faith on the Civil Magistrate, and tell me with a straight face that either the Westminster Divines or Guido de Bres would have recognized the pablum that Duncan and Hart are trying to sell as “historic Reformed Christianity?” To suggest that the Divines or de Bres would have agreed with Duncan and Hart is just gaslighting at its best.

Much more could be said but others have probably already said it. I come to this, as I said earlier, as an Elder Statesman to this debate. I’m a year older than Duncan. I wasn’t following the debates at ground zero but I was pretty close to ground zero. I know the players. I have read around all sides. I know Duncan and Hart are peeing on us and trying to tell us it is just rain. Don’t you believe them.

My fellow believers in Jesus Christ, either Christ is King with all that Kingship means or He is a the Gnostic King of Duncan and Hart and most of those reputed to be pillars in the Church.

Palm Sunday tells me that Jesus Christ is King and that His Kingship is tangible.

Stalinist America

We have finally arrived at Communist America as the two links below demonstrate.

In the first link peaceful protestors, inside the hallway and so outside the office of an abortion clinic were arrested. Six of them have been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison and some of those six may have another 10.5 slapped on them for protesting a different abortion clinic in the same way.

This Stalinist technique needs to be reckoned in comparison to the Black Lives Matter violent protests, where if people were arrested they were instantly bailed out of jail by various organizations including those connected with Vice President Kamal Harris.

We see again here then, a two tiered system of justice. Criminals receive leniency while middle Americans receive tyranny of the very worst sort.

Samuel Francis, over thirty years ago, labeled this behavior as “Anarcho-tyranny.” The idea in Francis’ theory is that criminals would be treated with a light touch while the law-abiding would be visited with the most draconian treatment.

Indiana Couple Appeals to Supreme Court After Losing Custody for Not Using Transgender Son’s Preferred Pronouns (VIDEO)

This second article is even more outrageous than the first. This one tells a story about a Indiana (Red-state) couple who had their child seized from them by the State authorities merely because the parents refused to countenance the claim of their son that he was really a daughter. CPS admitted there was no abuse in the home besides the “abuse” of not using the preferred pronouns of their insane child.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/pro-life-verdict-up-to-11-years-behind-bars-for-demonstrators/ar-BB1hSODz

If these things can be done, why should any of middle America believe that they can get justice from this corrupt Christ hating Federal and State governments.

It is long past time that some lines in the sand be drawn. If we do no stand now we will soon find ourselves complaining, consistent with the complaints of Solzhenitsyn many decades ago;

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Word Games

The Marxist left has been doing this as long as I’ve been alive.

They are masters at controlling our language. They somehow manage to be the “word police,” dictating to us what words or phrases can’t be used. Control the language, and one controls what is societally acceptable and unacceptable, not only in terms of speech but also in terms of behavior. When the left forces us to use their language and their words they set up a hegemon over reality by controlling the way we speak. Keep in mind that the way we speak controls the way we think and when we are controlled in the way we think we are controlled in the way we behave.

The illustrations of this are abundant. Just recently we saw this logomachy at work when the chap who is serving as President spoke of, in his State of the Union address, “an illegal immigrant,” who had murdered a young lady.

The following morning after the speech our handlers (the Lugenpresse / Corporate Media) was outraged. Were they outraged by the murder of this young lady by this illegal immigrant? Were they outraged by the border policy that allowed this illegal immigrant to be here? No, what the Lugenpresse was furious with the President about is that he referred to this murderer as an “illegal immigrant,” as opposed to their required “undocumented worker.” You see, if one uses the phrase “illegal immigrant,” per the Lugenpresse’s dictates one is a “racist,” or is suffering from xenophobia. If one uses the phrase “illegal immigrant” one is a social outcast, not fit for civilized company. So, by the constant drumming of this idea, the enemies of Christendom take from the friends of Christendom a perfectly good phrase that carries a perfectly fine concept. Over the course of time, we lose the conceptual category of people who are here in our country who have gained entrance in a criminal fashion.

Now our elite handlers are not playing games here. Eventually, those who retain the phrase “illegal immigrant” will be socially shunned. They may even experience forms of cancel culture. The left always seeks to put the bite on those who will not conform to their lexical tom-foolery.

Of course “illegal immigrant” is just one example. Other examples abound. Another example of a word that can not be used anymore is the perfectly fine word “sodomite.” Sodomite was long ago replaced by the word “Homosexual” which likewise was finally changed out for the word “gay.” The reason for this logomachy switcheroo is that the left understood that sodomite was such a graphic word that people found the word and the concept attached to the word instantly revolting and so it was changed out for the word “Homosexual.” In time the word “Homosexual” developed a negative connotation and so the masters of the Universe villainized that word and insisted that the word “gay” be used instead. The wicked brilliance in all this is admirable. Who would have ever thought that a word (gay) that meant jovial, and happy would be attached to such a disgusting lifestyle as sodomy? The cultural Marxist left is good at this game.

The marvel is, is that the Church follows right along. I challenge anyone to attend a denominational meeting and bring up the problem of “sodomites” and the need to resist sodomy as a policy without finding out very quickly some stuffed clergy telling you about how improper it is to use that word.

We could continue to multiply the examples of how our speech is governed. American Indian is now “Original Peoples” or “Indigenous Peoples” and don’t get caught using the word “Indian” among certain leftist group-think. A word like “patriarchy,” is now villainized and is verboten to use in a positive sense in certain Ivy League company. Indeed, in order to cleanse our minds of patriarchy we now have gender neutral hymn books and bible.

The concepts of B.C. & A.D. have been replaced by BCE and ACE in order to eliminate the taint of Christianity. Even putative Christian academics are now using this language in their academic treatises.

Of course the technique in changing our language and so changing our thinking and behavior is to villainize, scandalize, and berate our previous words, phrases, and concepts as being filled with the guilt of not being acceptable to our Cultural Marxist masters. Further, those who refuse to get their minds right are visited with being outcast. You see, our language is run through a worldview that competes with Christianity and seeks to overthrow it and the result is words and phrases are dropped in order to satisfy the standards of a worldview that is in competition with Biblical Christianity. Slowly and inexorably we, as a people, are changed from the inside out and become a different people that our Christian ancestors would not recognize.

Another example is the word “Kinist.” Kinist is a word coined in the mid-1990s to communicate what WASP Christians had believed for millennium on race relations (See Achord & Dow’s, “Who is my Neighbor,” and Storen’s “A Survey of Racialism in Christian Sacred Tradition.”) However, the cultural Marxist left, along with their clergy allies (I’m looking at Moscow) has villainized and scandalized this word so that it can no longer be used without people becoming somewhat timid concerning what might happen to them if they are known to be compatriots with someone who uses this dreadful, vile and scary word. And this, in spite of the fact, that I have bent over backwards in order to specifically point out what I am and am not saying.

An example of this treatment was seen online recently. Rev. Michael Shover gave an excellent sermon, and in that sermon Shover pointed out the dangers of the 1st amendment being embraced as more important than the first commandment. A firestorm erupted. What was interesting is that in this firestorm a bloke named Keven Johnson flung at Rev. Shover and Shover’s sermon, the epitaph “Kinist Pastor” in order to vilify anything Rev. Shover might say on any subject.

So, what is to be done about this? Well, we could invent new words (Oikophillia — “Love of One’s own Household”), we could just use old words (ethnonationalists, race-realist,) but of course you have to realize that whatever word we use the cultural Marxists are just going to scandalize, villainize, and fill with calumny any word a Christian reaches for in order to communicate this set of ideas. We cannot win by playing according to the left’s rules.

Because of this technique of emptying us from our language through the process of villainization and scandalization of perfectly good words, we have nothing to do but to play the man and to use all of our language and words doing all we can to violate the speech code that the left increasingly seeks to press down upon us and we do this as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Of course, we have to be wise in how we go about all this, but if we just allow the left to determine what language we can and cannot use we will eventually find ourselves owning a diluted Christianity. I mean how much Christianity can there be left in someone who constantly plays by the left’s logomachy rules?

A closing word has to be added. We need to realize that we are in a war. The left has successfully taken over the role of cultural gatekeepers. This means that when we violate the code of the cultural gatekeepers there is the possibility of consequences the cultural gatekeepers will press upon us. For example, just this morning I learned of a chap who has already been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for peacefully protesting an abortion clinic. He’s looking at an additional 10.5 years because he did the same at a second abortion clinic in the same area. By all accounts there was nothing at all violent in what he had done. However, he did violate the code of the cultural gatekeepers and he is now in staring at 21 years prison time, which amounts to a life in prison ruling given his age.

All of us, as Christians, who refuse to play by the rules of the cultural gatekeepers need to count the cost. We need realize that we are living in 2024 and not 1984 or even 2000. Matters have changed drastically and it is just a fact that anyone who wears their Christianity too boldly is going to run afoul of the cultural gatekeepers.

May the Lord Christ give us courage for the days ahead.