Category: Ethnic considerations

United Nations Definition of Genocide and Pertinent Videos

Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as,

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part1 ; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ&t=3s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iugxq_ePJWc

https://www.facebook.com/SmashCulturalMarxism3/videos/1929574013955409/?hc_location=ufi

The Context That Informs Immigration In Old Testament

Open by citing Blamires book… Sunday Evening reading.

It has been amazing to see how those who typically want nothing to do with the Old Testament case laws suddenly are the most earnest converts when it comes to citing Old Testament case law when it comes to immigration or refugee policy. Now, as we shall see they cite it out of context and without understanding how some of the Hebrew language is working but despite their ignorance, they suddenly want to own God’s law on this subject.  Those who have forever been telling us that Old Testament case law is void when it comes to patriarchy or instruction on sexuality, as just two examples, suddenly are citing God’s law with vigor when it comes to immigration or refugee policy.

They love to cite passages such as the ones that were read this morning,

Leviticus 19:33-34

‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. ‘The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.

Exodus 22:21″You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10:19 Love you therefore the stranger: for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

These OT passages that embrace the stranger need some context in order to be properly understood. However, those who would seek to make this a simplistic matter, don’t take the whole context into consideration, and so don’t give proper warrant to the context of the Old Testament where these passages are found. The result of this, whether or by intent or by accident is to place false guilt upon many Christians who sense there is more that needs to be taken into consideration than these texts that are pushed towards them relentlessly but who likewise don’t know the whole context of the OT passages so as to be able to resist the faulty interpretation of high profile Evangelical and Reformed ministers who are pushing for an agenda that in my estimation is not particularly Christian.

That the Church is at the vanguard for this push to de-Christianize the social order even more than it already is can be seen by a recent full page add and circular letter being run by Corporate Evangelicalism,

“Since the inception of the refugee resettlement program, thousands of local churches throughout the country have played a role in welcoming refugees of all religious backgrounds. Ministries to newly arrived refugees are ready and desire to receive many thousands more people than would be allowed under the new executive order.

As leaders, we welcome the concern expressed for religious minorities, including persecuted Christians….  While we are eager to welcome persecuted Christians, we also welcome vulnerable Muslims and people of other faiths or no faith at all.”

So the position we are teasing out this morning is contrary to the majority position today taken up by the consensus of Evangelical Incorporated.

To set the OT passages in context we get counsel from James K. Hoffmeier. Hoffmeier is an OT Scholar, and in his book “The Immigration Crisis” notes,

“Three important questions must be addressed before one attempts to apply Israelite law to the modern situation:

1) Was there such a thing as territorial sovereignty in 2nd millennium B.C. when these laws originated;

2) Within that socio-legal setting, what was a “stranger,” “sojourner,” or “immigrant”; and

3) How does one obtain this status?”

Now we are going to answer these three questions this morning and in doing so it will give us some context that provides qualification and nuance to the reading of these verses that so many well intentioned by un-nuanced people want to run to. But before we do that I want to pause to tell you why I am preaching on this issue and why I think it is of such monumental importance.

I’m preaching on it because I think the future of Christianity in the West is at stake on this issue. The reason that the immigration – refugee battle is so intense is that it is not about immigrants or refugees. It is about the future identity we, as Americans, want to own. We will either be a polyglot coffee and cream colored people who embrace a statist polytheistic religion so that all the colors and faiths bleed into one or we will continue to be a Majority WAS and only questionably P nation.

Rushdoony put it this way many years ago,

“The PROBLEM, of course, is that now we have a great deal of illegal immigration. We HAVE IMMIGRATION LAWS THAT NO LONGER FOLLOW THE OLDER PATTERN AND CONCENTRATE ON EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. We allow many, many peoples in who have nothing in common with us, who are Moslems or members of other religions and it appears that there is an effort to break the Christian heritage and character of the United States.”

~R. J. Rushdoony

So, the reason we get a sermon on this on a Sunday Morning is that this issue is a make or break issue for Biblical Christianity in the West and in this Nation. If those who would conspire to inundate the West with the stranger immigrant and the alien refugee succeed the result will be the continuing diminishing of Biblical Christianity in this country.

It’s a fight worth fighting for both sides and this issue will likely end eventually in increasing polarization.

As a brief aside we might note that Illegal immigration and Muslim refugees are to Western Civilization what partial birth abortion is to life in the womb.

A friend observed in a conversation that both abortion and mass immigration (globalism, multiculturalism, etc.) are assaults on natural relationships which represent the destruction of fences erected for protection. Who more than a mother should protect an unborn child? Who more than a king (a “father” of the nation) should protect a people from displacement and dispossession?

But both children and nations are not purely material, either.  A nation is more than its material component, as is an unborn child.

Ernest Renan, a French philosopher, and historian, said this about nations:

“A nation is a living soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the common possession of a rich heritage of memories; the other is the actual consent, the desire to live together, the will to preserve worthily the undivided inheritance which has been handed down … The nation, like the individual, is the outcome of a long past of efforts, and sacrifices, and devotions … To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to will to do the like again—such are the essential conditions of the making of a people.”

God has appointed the boundaries of nations (Acts 17:26) and is the author of life. Sacrificing our children to Baal is an attack upon God’s image (the 6th Word), but so too is the destruction of a social order and nation in pursuit of Babel. Man is created in God’s image and is thus both one and many–unity and diversity. Nations in their diversity are reflective of the glory of the divine Image and their destruction represents an attack on God’s image that is not all that different from abortion.

Well … back to Hoffmeier’s questions that will help us understand the texts that we are looking at this morning,

“Three important questions must be addressed before one attempts to apply Israelite law to the modern situation:

1) Was there such a thing as territorial sovereignty in 2nd millennium B.C. when these laws originated;

Hoffmeier asks this question because the advocacy of immigration without limits, which is what we are really talking about, is the advocacy of the disappearance of borders. And so Hoffmeier asks this question.

And the answer is that “yes, the OT gives us plenty of examples of territorial sovereignty of Nations. They had borders in the OT and they protected those borders from incursion.

Hoffmeyer observes,

“Not only were wars fought to establish and settle border disputes, borders were vigorously defended, and battles occurred when a neighboring state violated another’s territory. So, national boundaries were normally honored.”

Numbers 20:16-21

16 But when we cried out to the Lord, He heard our voice and sent an angel and brought us out from Egypt; now behold, we are at Kadesh, a town on the edge of your territory. 17 Please let us pass through your land. We will not pass through field or through vineyard; we will not even drink water from a well. We will go along the king’s highway, not turning to the right or left, until we pass through your territory.’”

18 Edom, however, said to him, “You shall not pass through [e]us, or I will come out with the sword against you.” 19 Again, the sons of Israel said to him, “We will go up by the highway, and if I and my livestock do drink any of your water, then I will [f]pay its price. Let me only pass through on my feet, [g]nothing else.” 20 But he said, “You shall not pass through.” And Edom came out against him with a heavy [h]force and with a strong hand. 21 Thus Edom refused to allow Israel to pass through his territory; so Israel turned away from him.

Edom’s refusal to allow Israel to pass, even with Israel paying a Toll, was out of keeping w/ the socially accepted custom of offering hospitality to strangers in the ancient and modern Middle East. Still, it is worth noting that even a traveler — a foreigner — passing through the territory of another had to obtain permission to do so.

Judges 11:16-20

16 For when they came up from Egypt, and Israel went through the wilderness to the [a]Red Sea and came to Kadesh, 17 then Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, “Please let us pass through your land,” but the king of Edom would not listen. And they also sent to the king of Moab, but he would not consent. So Israel remained at Kadesh. 18 Then they went through the wilderness and around the land of Edom and the land of Moab, and came to the east side of the land of Moab, and they camped beyond the Arnon; but they did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the border of Moab. 19 And Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon, and Israel said to him, “Please let us pass through your land to our place.” 20 But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory; so Sihon gathered all his people and camped in Jahaz and fought with Israel.

These episodes demonstrate clearly that nations could and did control their borders and determined who could pass through their land.

On the individual, family, and clan level, property was owned and boundaries established. Personal property and fields were delineated by landmarks — stone markers of some sort. For this reason, the Mosaic law prohibited the removal of landmarks. (Dt. 19:14, 27:17).

So the sense of National boundaries was merely an extension of the reality of property owned by individual, family and clan. During the period of the divided Kingdom (8th cent. BC) the prophet Hosea decried the leaders of Judah for seizing territory of her sister kingdom Israel by taking their boundary stones. (Job 24:2).

So we see that nation states, large and small in the Biblical world were clearly delineated by borders. These were often defended by large forts and military outposts. Countries since biblical times have had the right to clearly established borders that they controlled and were recognized by surrounding Governments.

The borders of countries were respected, and minor skirmishes and even wars followed when people and armies of one nation violated the territory of their neighbor.

All this meant that nations, including Israel had the right to clearly established secure borders and could determine who could and could not enter their land.

2) Within that socio-legal setting, what was a “stranger,” “sojourner,” or “immigrant”;

This is where context becomes incredibly important. We have a need to understand the OT words in their context before we start trying to apply them to our context.

The word “stranger” in the above cited passages is Hebrew ger, and is translated variously in English versions, “stranger” (KJV, NASB, JB), “sojourner” (RSV, ESV), “alien” (NEB, NIV, NJB, NRSV) and “foreigner” (TNIV, NLT). These differences create tremendous confusion. Ger occurs in the Old Testament more than eighty times as a noun and an equal number as a verb (gwr), which typically means “to sojourn” or “live as an alien.” More recent English translations (e.g. TNIV & NLT) use the word “foreigner” for ger, which is imprecise and misleading because there are other Hebrew terms for “foreigner,” namely nekhar and zar. The distinction between these two terms and ger is that while all three are foreigners who might enter another country, the ger had obtained legal status.

So when the OT Scripture speaks about treating the ger a certain way it is speaking about someone who had obtained legal status. He had the permission of the people who dwelt in the land to be there. In our context we might say he was a green card holder. That person was to be treated justly.

However the ger is always seen as a ger… as a stranger. There were always some matters that were restricted from even the ger. The stranger could not own land in perpetuity; it would revert to the original Hebrew owners in the Jubilee. Gentiles were not expected to assimilate fully to Israel, and at some points they were accorded second-class status. They were to be treated justly but they would always be ger — a stranger.

3) How does one obtain this ger status?”

There are several episodes in the Bible that illustrate how a foreigner became a ger. The individual or party had to receive permission from the appropriate authority in that particular culture. Perhaps the best-known story has to do with the Children of Israel entering Egypt. In the book of Genesis, we are told of how during a time of famine in Canaan, the sons of Jacob did the natural thing under the circumstances—go to Egypt where the Nile kept the land fertile. Even though their brother Joseph was a high-ranking official, they felt compelled to ask Pharaoh for permission:

And they said to Pharaoh, “Your servants are shepherds, as our fathers were.” They said to Pharaoh, “We have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks, for the famine is severe in the land of Canaan. And now, please let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen.” Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Your father and your brothers have come to you. The land of Egypt is before you. Settle your father and your brothers in the best of the land. Let them settle in the land of Goshen” (Genesis 47:3-6).

Notice that they declare their intention “to sojourn” (gwr) and deferentially they ask “please let your servant dwell in the land of Goshen.” No less authority than the king of Egypt granted this permission. This means that the Hebrews, though foreigners, were residing in Egypt as legal residents, gers.

The delineation between the “alien” or “stranger” (ger) and the foreigner (nekhar or zar) in biblical law are stark indeed. The ger in Israelite society, for instance, could receive social benefits such the right to glean in the fields (Leviticus 19:9-10; Deuteronomy 24:19-22) and they could receive resources from the tithes (Deuteronomy 26:12-13). In legal matters, “there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the LORD. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you” (Numbers 15:15-16). In the area of employment, the ger and citizen were to be paid alike (Deuteronomy 24:14-15). In all these cases, no such benefit is extended to the nekhar or zar.

Now it has taken us 30 minutes to just give this introduction and to try and carefully see the context of Scripture. And it takes time and effort to do this. You can not sound bite what we’ve done this morning like Corporate Evangelical can sound bite these verses that we have been considering. There are distinctions that have to be made. Context that has to be provided. Hebrew language that has to be considered. That takes time and effort.

But the multiculturalists just want to instantly reduce everything so that they can achieve their agenda of disinheriting the historic American from their inheritance. The multicult Christians seemingly desire to guilt America into “loving their neighbor as they “love” themselves,” without ever considering how hateful it is to their own posterity — their closest neighbors — to disinherit them from the land, their social order, and their historic Christian culture.

I don’t mind saying that this policy is hateful to what little is left of Christianity in this culture. It is a tactic to recruit the Muslim refugee and dilute the already diluted Christian presence in this land.

RJR captured this,

Our federal government thinks nothing of allowing in as immigrants an increasing number of people who are religiously and racially hostile to us. They see no relationship between faith and land. As a result, the United States and the Western world have embarked on a suicidal course. They reject the concept of Christendom and embrace instead the humanistic “family of man,” and thus immigration policies in the U.S. and Europe are based on myths and illusions of a destructive nature. Because neither land nor inheritance is now seen from the perspective of faith, we have problems in these spheres.
 
~Rushdoony, R. J. (2014-05-01). Numbers: Commentaries on the Pentateuch Vol. 4

And here we have only scratched the surface. We have not spoken of certain segments of the church through what are called Volags (Voluntary Agencies) are getting 30 pieces of silver and more for their advocacy of immigration and refugees. Follow the money applies.

We have not touched on how in many quarters where this refugee policy is being followed 70% of the refugees are men, thus giving countenance to the fact that this is an invasion and not an immigration. We have not spoke about the Muslim idea of Hijra as civilizational Jihad. We have not spoken about the already increasing role of Sharia in the West. We have not covered how to respond to typical objections to our positions as coming from Evangelical Incorporated. We have only scratched the surface this morning.

But we have scratched it enough for you to begin to have an inkling that when “Christians” start throwing around passages that are intended to frog march you into a false guilt about not supporting refugee resettlement programs or about not supporting untrammeled immigration you can resist such propaganda.

We’ll end with a quote from the early 20th century fiction author Lovecraft,

“Only a damn fool can expect the people of one tradition to feel at ease when their country is flooded with hordes of foreigners who — whether equal, superior, or inferior biologically — are so antipodal in physical, emotional, and intellectual makeup that harmonious coalescence is virtually impossible. Such an immigration is death to all endurable existence, and pollution and decay to all art and culture. To permit or encourage it is suicide”

H.P. Lovecraft, from a letter written on 27th September 1926.

Sources

Hoffmeyer
Rushdoony
Corcoran
Simpson
Dow

 

When the Alt. Right Becomes the Alt. Left

1.) I’m starting to believe in reincarnation. I think Spencer was Ernst Rohm in a previous life.

2.) Hail Trump… Hail our People … Hail Victory

Sounds a great deal like,

Heil Hitler … Heil the Aryan race … Heil the Deutschland.

Hail Hydra anyone?

3.) When Spencer glorifies whites, he is doing so in the context of a Christless presupposition. Glorifying White people apart from Christ is “raceolatry,” and is to be repudiated at every turn.  I heard Spencer speak once and was able to query him afterward. When asking about Christ and nationalism he explicitly said he was not interested in embracing a distinct religion for his nationalism. He wanted a “big tent.” At that point I knew what he was promoting would be an utter failure. Spencer and the alt. Left is Anti-Christ. The attempt to rebuild Western Civilization and Christendom apart from the Kingship of Christ is like attempting to make Beef briscut without the Beef.

4.) Spencer mentions to his audience, “we are children of the sun.” A branch of the Hitler Youth was the Deutsche Arbeiter Jugend – HJ (German Worker Youth – HY). This organization  the Hitler Youth was a training ground for future labor leaders and technicians. Its symbol was a rising sun with a swastika.

5.) The Internationalist Leftist Press (Communist) have created the Nationalist Leftist movement (Alt. Left – Socialist). Spencer’s complaint about the “Lugenpress” is the “Lugenpress’s” own fault. As far back as the 1971 publication of Edith Efron’s “The News Twisters,” the Lugenpress has been deceiving, practicing disingenuousness, providing propaganda, and have been bald face lying with ink bought by the barrel.

6.) Having said all that about our “Lugenpress” Spencer seeks to turn these propagandists and liars into sub-humanoids with his comment,

“Indeed one wonders if they are people at all, or instead soulless golems animated by some dark power…”

Spencer here, as the enemy of all Christian men, is practicing the heart of objectifying the enemy and the results of such craft is always to the end of being able to hate without pangs of conscience those who have been turned into evil incarnate. This is routinely done throughout history. Americans did it to the Japanese in WW II by referring to them as “Japs” and by referring to Germans as “Huns.” The enemy can be defeated without turning them into non-humans. The Ukranian Christian Kulaks were turned into non-humans. The Bourgeoise were turned into non-humans. They Gypsies were turned into non-humans. The unborn child as been turned into non-human. Recently, there has been the attempt to turn WASP’s into non-humans. Spencer is following in that ideological train and it is a train that no Christian should desire to be on.

7.) I’ve been saying for quite some time now that the snap back that would attend the internationalist left’s program over the last century was going to be ugly. That snap back has created the pagan Nationalist left. Biblical Christians better realize, and that right quick, that Christianity cannot be reinterpreted through either the grid of Internationalist Cultural Marxism nor the grid of pagan Nationalist Marxism. We need to busy ourselves pointing out the common ground of each of these putative extremes as well as how each of the two is in rebellion to King Christ and His Law-Word.

8.) Having said all that, we must realize that the Mainstream Media’s (MM) head popping over this video is hypocritical to the extreme. Where was the MM head popping over the same radical extremism of “Black Lives Matter,” or “The New Black Panthers?” Where has been the MM head popping over La Raza or over the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the pronouncements of the Council of American – Islamic Relations? True, Spencer is ugly over the top but we’ve been living with “ugly over the top” for quite some time now and nobody in the MM has had a cow over that.

9.) So, after years of the pagan Black Lives Matter and of the pagan La Raza and of the pagan CAIR, and of the pagan ADL, a pagan White organization (Alt. Left) arises and people are surprised? None of these people or organizations are the Biblical Christian’s friends. Their respective news agencies are all propaganda tools. Their crummy salutes — whether the raised black clenched fist or the white, palm opened outward, salute — have anything to do with the sign of the Cross.

10.) Just as the Apostle Paul in Romans 9:3f I love Christ and so I love my family, and so I love my people and so I love the stranger and the alien. Each of these outward concentric loves all in their proper place. Those loves compel me to warn against any “love” that lifts race — whether the preferred blender race of the Internationalist Cultural Marxist leftist, or the preferred Christless Aryan Race of the National Socialist leftist — above Christ. One cannot love their people apart from loving them as Christ as King.

We live in strange times. We should be aware of all the various ways we can fall into error.

Examining Rev. Dr. Jim Cassidy’s “Racial Supremacy and The Gospel” Sermon (III)

“The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them; and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.

“Now this is not something special for the Javanese , but stems from a general rule . The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood and soul, and they do not always remain the same , but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach, but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application and confession must be different , as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races , countries and traditions can not be blind for the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”

Abraham Kuyper
‘Common Grace’ III  XXXII

RDC sermonized,

“The good that is given to each culture comes by the undeserved blessing of God. The bad, of course, comes only from sin and to the curse.

Now, it is true that we can say that some Nationalities have produced some aspects of culture that are superior to others. There are (not that the race is superior, not that a particular ethnicity is superior) we can say, we have to rightly acknowledge that there are some aspects of culture that some Nationalities have excelled at advancing.

For example, think of the Germans. The Germans are known to have made a better car than the Irish. But the Irish are known for making better whiskey than the Germans. Fair enough. But see we also have to keep in mind on the negative side that the Irish drink way too much of their whiskey and the Germans drive their cars way too fast. Alright? So you’ve got good and you’ve got bad. But be that as it may, before the eyes of God — and this is the point — all Nationalities, all races stand condemned and each and every one of these races are totally depraved. You see sin becomes the great leveler of humanity. It’s not like we can find a race in the world that is morally superior to another, that is perhaps only 90% depraved, or that we can find a race of Ethnicity in the world that is only 70% depraved. No, all the people of all the nations are 100% depraved. That is what our doctrine of total depravity teaches us.”

Bret responds,

I am confident that RDC is mishandling total depravity. 

When Calvinists speak of humans as “totally depraved,” they are making an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality — his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being. So, total depravity is extensive, not intensive. Not all total depravity looks the same. People and / or Nations can remain totally depraved and still be morally superior to other people and / or Nations who are also totally depraved. Total depravity does not mean that everyone is equally depraved, in the sense that everyone is as equally wicked as they could possibly be. Total depravity most certainly is not the moral leveler that RDC contends. People and / or Nations who are totally depraved can be morally superior though that moral superiority lends no salvific aid.

Dr. Loraine Boettner put it this way,

This doctrine of Total Inability, which declares that men are dead in sin, does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that any one is entirely destitute of virtue … What it does mean is that since the fall man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive but not necessarily intensive.

Further, God’s common grace can be more abundant to one people group than another people group so that the former group is indeed morally superior than the latter group. That common grace, in the end, makes the former group more ripe for judgment but total depravity does not make all men, cultures, or races, functionally or morally equal. Who would ever contend that the cannibal Korowai tribe from Indonesian New Guinea is on the same moral level as Victorian England? Yet, outside of Christ Victorian England perishes in its sins as much as the Korowai tribe does.

Now certainly when it comes to salvation sin levels us all in the sense that it makes all, outside of Christ, fit only for hell. However, total depravity does not mean that all people, nations, and cultures are equally functionally wicked.

RDC wrote,

“Now that doesn’t mean that any given people or any given nation is as depraved as it can be by God’s restraining grace. We know that sin is held in check but sin nevertheless does reign in each of us extensively. So where then could be our boasting? Sin becomes the great leveler of humanity.”

Bret responds,

I quite agree that any boasting of any superiority, as if that superiority is not all of grace, is an indictment writ against the one doing the boasting.

RDC writes,

“Sin is the great equalizer. We are all 100% depraved. What kind of deep-seated arrogance then, what kind of deep seated pride does it take to think that we, or our particular ethnicity, or our particular culture, or our particular language (whatever it is) is superior to another? You see sin, being the great leveler, renders all men under sin…. We are all equally depraved.”

Bret responds

The fact that all unregenerate peoples are depraved and so equally, spiritually shut out from God does not translate into all Nations are functionally equal. Japanese culture, as one example, is certainly superior to the Bush Men culture of Irian Jaya. Now, as outside of Christ, they are equal in being without God and without hope but that is not the same thing as saying that because of sin they are leveled in terms of ethnicity, race, or culture so that one is not superior to another.

RDC’s reasoning seems to make total depravity the handmaiden of cultural relativism. Total depravity, per RDC, is the great leveler of race, nations, and culture, therefore, no culture is superior or inferior to any other culture. The Reformed doctrine of total depravity does not teach functional egalitarianism.

There seems also to be a kind of double speak here again. On the one hand, sin is the great leveler, but on the other hand, earlier RDC admits that the Irish can be superior in making whiskey. The confusion here may be found in the fact that RDC keeps jumping the shark on categories. It is true that spiritually speaking all unregenerate people stand condemned before God but then there are times RDC wants to apply that category broadly so as to say, “therefore there is no functional superiority in terms of race, ethnicity, nations, cultures or languages.”

RDC sermonizes,

“The Gospel is also a great equalizer…. The Gospel teaches us that Christians especially must never regard themselves as …. superior over others. That is because the Gospel teaches us that was rent asunder at Babel has now been brought together and healed. What is more, since the Gospel means that God is the one who saved us, then we Christians stand on the same footing with one another before God, for we stand on Jesus Christ and in this sense there is equality…..”

Bret Responds,

Yes, we are equally saved by grace alone in Christ but that does not mean that are races or ethnicities are functionally equal. This would be to teach cultural or racial relativism. Cassidy has confused categories here. He wants to make a Redemptive equality of outcome in terms of any people and / or person looking to Christ to translate into a Creation equality of outcome in terms of culture and / or race. This is a category confusion. Many are the people that have come in from comparatively backward cultures and who will be in the New Jerusalem but that doesn’t mean their comparatively backward cultures, in the present, are equal to other clearly superior cultures.

RDC is correct when he says, in that last sentence above, “in this sense there is equality.” If he had stuck to the idea that Paul presents in Galatians 3:28f that temporal position or status doesn’t advantage or disadvantage one in terms of Redemption he would have been fine but RDC constantly wanders from that wonderful truth and seeks to apply it into functional realities.

Because RDC has muddied the waters earlier it makes his statement about “the Gospel being the great equalizer,”  suspicious, if only because historically it has been the Anabaptists who were known as thoroughgoing socio-cultural “levelers” and “equalizers.” Historically the Anabaptists have believed that Jesus Christ is our great High Priest and Chief Leveler. Historically, the Reformed have always spoken out against Anabaptist socio-cultural levelers and equalizers.

And RDC is wrong about Christians never thinking themselves superior. Clearly St. Paul is making the case of his superiority of the more inferior false Apostles in II Corinthians 11. Now, Paul thinks it is folly that he is forced to do so, but there is no doubt that he is making a necessary case for his superiority in that passage.

The fact that Babel has not been brought together and healed the way the RDC thinks has been dealt with earlier, but I will note again here that all those nations walking around in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21-22) testify that the Church is a nation of nations and not Babel restored.

RDC wrote,

 

“God forbids that we would segregate in the Church. Peter tried that and Paul was very upset about it. We do not separate the people of God based on race or nationality. Ethnic churches while in one sense understandable are far from ideal. What is glorious however is when we see the people of God gather for worship and we see among the people of God many nations represented in her midst. That is Pentecost.”

Bret,

1.) In Galatians., Paul was the one in favor of segregating in the Church. The Judaizers and Peter were arguing that in order to be justified one had to become a soci0-cultural Jew and keep the same laws. Paul, on the other hand, was reasoning that one could remain an ethnocultural Gentile and still be Christian. The Judaizers and Peter were the ones trying to force an integrated uniformitarian Church and Paul resisted them to their face and insisted that one could have a Gentile diet and be justified … Gentiles could be segregated and have their own Church. (see also Acts 15)

2.) Quotes that contradict RDC’s claim that “we do not separate the people of God based on race or nationality;

a.) (See opening quote by Abraham Kuyper)

b.) “Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

c.) “As a matter of fact, the early church was segregated. First of all, in New Testament times it was segregated between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers. And there was… a good reason for that. The Jewish believers were so far superior that to integrate the two would have meant more often confusion. And when you realize that in, say the Corinthian church, they didn’t even know that fornication or adultery was a sin because in the Greek world there was nothing wrong with that. After all the chambers of commerce in Greece and Corinth and elsewhere… in Corinth, the chambers of commerce maintained regularly around two thousand prostitutes for all visiting businessmen. It was a manufacturing town and so on… and no one thought there was anything immoral about that. Or about men having relations with prostitutes. This was all taken for granted. So in the Gentile churches, the moral standard was pretty low. It was a lot of hard work for a couple of generations and more to bring them up to any kind of standard. Well, the Jewish congregations represented a far higher moral standard and Paul saw nothing wrong with that, nor did any other apostle. So the principle of segregation was present there from the beginning.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Audio – On Segregation

God does not forbid segregating in the Church.

 

 

Examining Rev. Dr. Jim Cassidy’s “Racial Supremacy and The Gospel” Sermon (I)

“The ancient fathers… were concerned that the ties of kinship itself should not be loosened as generation succeeded generation, should not diverge too far, so that they finally ceased to be ties at all. And so for them it was a matter of religion to restore the bond of kinship by means of the marriage tie before kinship became too remote—to call kinship back, as it were, as it disappeared into the distance.”

Augustine; Bishop Of Hippo (A.D. 354 – 430)
City of God, book XV, Chpt. 16

At the below link we find a sermon that I was directed to by the Minister who preached the sermon. It is my conviction that it is not faithful to the Scriptures on a subject that is of grave importance. I trust that will become evident as we examine Rev. Cassidy’s sermon.

http://www.sermonaudio.com/playpopup.asp?SID=86161140386

I have not transcribed the whole sermon. I provide the link in case anybody desires to examine whether I have cherry picked the sermon. I have no intent to be unfair to Rev. Cassidy or to bushwhack him. Anything I have left off from the sermon I left off because I thought it repetitive or I thought it not germane to the issues at hand.

I do not know Rev. Cassidy. I have never talked to him or interacted with him. I know one person who knows him and that person tells me that Rev. Cassidy is a good man. I will take my friend at his word. Otherwise, fine people can be mistaken on different subjects. I know I have been in the past. I would have hated for people to have completely written me off just because of some inconsistency in my theology or life.  Still, this subject matter requires a response.

Rev. Dr. Cassidy (hereinafter RDC) preached,

“Paul’s attitude then, as must be the attitude of every Christian, is that of a servant towards others…. Now how can we do that — how is it possible that one can serve others, how is it possible that we can think our minds as being the servants of others when we regard our race as superior to theirs, whatever race that might be.”

Bret responds,

First, RDC seems to assume that different views on races besides his automatically translate into some kind of supremacist attitude. We will see RDC making this connection repeatedly in this sermon. We need to insist at the beginning that this is not a necessary connection.  One can affirm that God has ordained the distinct races and nations without at the same time embracing any kind of supremacism.

Second, I would ask, “why is it that knowledge of non-ontological racial superiority is impossible to co-exist with a servant’s heart.” Who can argue against the reality that when the Christian Western White man went to Africa to bring Christ to Africa that the White man’s race was superior in a myriad of ways, in a non-ontological sense? And yet clearly the White man had a servant’s heart as seen in his sacrifice to bring the Gospel to Africa.

This is not necessarily an argument that any one race is superior to another in a totalistic sense. All races have the superiorities and inferiorities when compared to other races. It is an argument insisting that thinking one’s race is superior is not inconsistent with having a servant’s heart contra to RDC’s assertion.

Albert Schweitzer, Liberal Missionary extraordinaire, spent a career in Gabon serving sundry African people all the while believing his race was superior. Schweitzer wrote in his,  “The Primeval Forest”

” A word in conclusion about the relations between the whites and the blacks. What must be the general character of intercourse between them? Am I to treat the black man as my equal or as my inferior? I must show him that I can respect the dignity of human personality in everyone, and this attitude in me he must be able to see for himself;  but the essential thing is that there shall be a real feeling of brotherliness. How far this is to find complete expression in the sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances. The negro is a child, and with children, nothing can be  done without the use of authority. We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression. With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: “I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.”   — Albert Schweitzer

We need not agree with Schweitzer to see that he is an example that contradicts RDC’s claim that it is not possible to think one’s race as superior while still retaining a servant’s heart.

Third, Scripture teaches that all races are ontologically equal. That is to say that we are equal in our being, having all descended from a common set of parents. Scripture does not teach that all races  – nations are functionally (economically) equal. In point of fact, economic equality as applied to human relations is a surd. No two men, no two nations, no two races are equal in a functional sense. Equality in a non-ontological sense is an idea imported from mathematics. Human relations are not mathematics. As such superiority is an inescapable category as can be seen in the confidence of Egalitarians who view themselves as superior to inferior people who do not embrace their egalitarianism.

Fourth, our Lord Christ himself communicated a racial superiority in Scripture when he dealt with the Syrophoenician woman (Matthew 15). Christ revealed His priority of love for His own when He referred to the non-Israelite Syrophoenician woman as a “dog,” in comparison to His people, who He referred to in His response to the woman as “the children.” Would any of us fault our Lord Christ claiming superiority while yet remaining a servant?

RDC sermonized,

“The One people now become many peoples…. From this one nation (at Babel) many nations arise because of the curse of God on rebellious humanity.”

Bret responds,

We need to slow down a little bit here. I am willing to concede that the concrete nations arise out of Babel. However, I am not willing to concede that the Nations as Nations were a curse. 

When we look at Genesis 9 we get a sense of embryonic Nations that God always intended to flower. What I am saying is that the dividing of Shem, Ham, and Japheth in cursing and blessing implies, at the very least, the nations which would later arise in connection with God’s actions at Babel. Noah had to understand that by blessing Shem with early dominance, and then Japheth with latter dominance, and no blessing upon Ham except that his children would be servants, he was clearly segregating them after a fashion.

If we are going to use the language of “cursing” in reference to Babel we must at the same time use the language of “blessing.” It was the blessing of God to not allow rebellious mankind to build a unipolar world in opposition to Him. The blessing of Babel is further articulated in Acts 17 when we read the purpose of Babel was,

26 And he (God) made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. 

Clearly, the division of the nations was a blessing with a salvific goal. Since God always had in mind the end he ordained from the beginning we must conclude that Nations were always intended by God.

RDC preached,

“Come the new covenant — the day of Pentecost particularly — that curse is reversed. All the Nations (at Pentecost) begin speaking each other’s languages. And we see something significant in Acts 2, the many peoples become one people. The many Nations become one Nation in Jesus Christ. That is the Church…. they are reconciled to God and they are reconciled to one another.”

Bret responds,

First here, I have to believe that RDC did not really mean to say “all the nations begin speaking each other’s languages. ” Clearly, the nations did not begin speaking each other’s languages. A quick perusal of Acts 2 reveals that.

Secondly, what is reversed at Pentecost is not the existence of nations. If the existence of nations is what was to be reversed at Pentecost then what we would have expected is that all the nations would have been hearing in the same tongue. Instead, Babel and the nations are sanctified at Pentecost with the differing nations hearing God’s word each in their own tongue. 

So, we do not see what RDC sermonizes that we see. What we see is that each Nation as a Nation receives the Gospel in their own tongue thus teaching that the many peoples remain many peoples (diversity) but finding a unity (not uniformity) in that diversity in Christ. Acts 2 actually teaches the very opposite of what RDC preached. Acts 2 teaches that the existence of Nations as Nations remains.

Thirdly, it is true that there is reconciliation but this reconciliation is a spiritual reconciliation. The old animosities and hatreds are removed because the peoples have a oneness in Jesus Christ. However, we find nowhere in Scripture where this spiritual oneness requires an amalgamated ethnic and cultural oneness. Contemporary Reformed theologians have underscored this,

“Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

And finally, on this point, (and we will return to this point repeatedly) the presence of the Nations in the book of Revelation gives testimony that the “curse was not reversed,” at Pentecost.

21:24 By its (The Temple) light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it,… 26 They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.

22:2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life[g] with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.