Category: Theology

Confused Christian is a Ph.D in New Testament and is a Dean of a Holiness Seminary in Indiana.

Confused “Christian” (CC)

“So I think almost anyone who would be reading this post believes that homosexual sex is wrong biblically. What do we do with this? Do we

1. Try to stop it from happening anywhere we can by trying to pass laws against it or even by resorting to violence against such people? This is Bret’s Christian reconstructionist position where you try to make the nation into Calvin’s Geneva.”

Bret responds,

You know, you might first want to do some reading up on Reconstructionism before you start pretending to be an authority on what they do or don’t want.

It is interesting that you talk about “resorting to violence against such people” as if violence visited upon violators of the law is a bad thing. Was God wrong for insisting that violence be visited upon people for their committing of Capital Crimes?

Not liking Calvin’s Geneva, I presume you would prefer Harvey Milk’s San Francisco?

We try to stop rape from happening anywhere we can by trying to pass laws against it and even by resorting to violence against such people? Why should sodomy be any different?

I notice you said that “anyone reading your post would believe that homosexual sex is wrong.” You did not say whether or not you think homosexual sex is wrong. Do you?

CC,

2. “Do we ‘hate the sin but love the sinner,’ let such individuals know we love them without waffling on our values but without trying to force them to stop? This at least seems more Arminian to me and in keeping with the way God deals with the world in general, wooing people to Him rather than forcing us to obey him. And, ironically, this approach seems more in keeping with our Constitution, which does not really allow for us to pass laws based on specific religious traditions that are not universally shared and do not involve basic harm of others.”

Bret

Do you do this all the time? Do you constantly pretend to know what you’re talking about in matters outside what is supposed to be your expertise? What do you know of Constitutional law? Where does the Constitution say that we are not to pass laws based on specific religious traditions that are not universally shared and do not involve basic harm to others? Having read the Constitution a few times I would dearly love for you to point that out. Secondly, on what basis are you suggesting that homosexuality doesn’t involve basic harm of others?

All laws, all the time, are passed based on some specific religious tradition. Indeed, law itself is dependent upon some notion of a lawgiver. Show me the law … and I’ll show you the lawgiver. Having shown you the lawgiver, I’ll show you the very specific religious tradition from which the law comes.

A question for you. Should we also love people who are polygamists w/o trying to force them to stop? Yep, that certainly sounds Arminian to me. It also sounds idiotic. But I repeat myself.

CC,

“The other question is one of motive. The insidious thing about preaching against sin is that, without diluting the badness of sin, it often gives us an excuse to sin by hatefulness. In other words, it is sinful to hate homosexuals, yet because we believe homosexual sex is wrong, it is easy to let yourself off the hook and self-justify evil in one’s own heart because you are preaching against sin. Preaching against sin when we are not preaching for someone is the kind of activity that most easily lends itself to sinfulness on the part of the preacher in this way.”

Bret,

Paul said in Romans, “Hate that which is evil, cling to that which is good.”

The Psalmist, speaking to God said, “Do I not hate those who hate you w/ a Holy Hatred?”

When we preach against sin we are automatically preaching for someone. The first someone we are preaching for is God. Let’s not forget him in all of our sensitivity and compassion for sinners. The second someone we are preaching for is the Sinner himself. Sin hurts people. It hurts them bad. Confronting them w/ Sin and holding out the Lord Jesus Christ as the forgiveness of sin and the cure for sin is the most loving thing you can do for someone.

Second, it is most certainly not hateful to hate homosexuals (or any sinner) when done for the sake of love, who are, through their respective sin of choice, seeking to pull God off His throne. Certainly we must communicate a sense of pity to those who are flipping off God and certainly our hatred of them must be a hatred based on love for them (an, “against the world for the world,” kind of thing) but if we love them we must hate them. Indeed true hatred of them would be a harlot love for them that did not resist them.

“The essence of human sin is the refusal to honor the Creator-creature distinction.”

Peter Jones
The God of Sex — pg. 143

Fallen mankind can find several ways to deny the Creator-creature distinction (hereinafter referred to as C-c/d) and upon first encounter and upon initial examination those different ways look remarkably different. However, when these different ways to deny the C-c/d are looked at closely the differences that putatively mark them off as being radically different begin to evaporate to the point that these different ways of denying the C-c/d begins to look overwhelmingly the same.

One thing we need to note here before we begin to examine the different ways that the C-c/d can be denied we must understand that this denial is a denial that is limited to the religious component of a people but rather the way any given culture denies the C-c/d ends up shaping the whole life expression of the people who are participating in any one given specific denial of the C-c/d.

The first way that the C-c/d can be denied is found in classical animism where we have a kind of hyper divine immanentism. In pagan religion and societies that are animistic what happens is that C-c/d is denied by folding the Creator into the creature with the effect that all of nature becomes divinized. In animistic cultures you find streams, trees, animals, bugs, sun, stars, and people all seen as being alive w/ divinity. Often in these cultures the more status one has the more divine being it is thought that they contain. As in all the genres of the denial of the C-c/d that we shall be looking at what this leaves is a monism where all of reality is thought of and seen to be one.

In religions and cultures that are animistic the way that this C-c/d denial manifests itself typically by the presence of rigid caste systems. As mentioned earlier the belief typically is that the more status that some group has the more divinity that group therefore has. As such their status is locked into place so that the wealthy and highborn are seen as gods while the impoverished and the lowborn are perpetually locked into that status. Very little concern is evidenced for the lowborn since it is believed that they are in that position rightly due to the fact that they have so little divinity in them. This leads to a political system that is tyrannically pyramided with those castes w/ the most ontological being at the top and being in despotic control while the rest of the castes who have less divine being serving the purposes of their overlords.

Animistic cultures also are supercharged with the supernatural since everything is divine. Typically, this leads to lives spent consumed with placating the sundry gods and as such central figures in animistic cultures is the shaman or witch-doctor who is seen as being a kind of figure who has special control over the supernatural forces that everywhere are pressing in on people.

The second way that C-c/d can be denied is found in what appears to be the polar opposite of animism w/ its hyper divine immanentism. Instead of a hyper divine immanentism what this religious expression offers is hyper divine transcendence. Religious and culture expressions where we find this are those such as Islam and Neo-orthodoxy. Indeed, Islam came to the fore as a severe reaction against the animism that was prevalent in times of Mohammad the Prophet and Neo-orthodoxy found its footing in the early 20th century as a reaction against the hyper-immanentism of 18th and 19th century liberalism.

Now on first blush it wouldn’t seem that hyper transcendence would be a denial of the C-c/d since there is such emphasis on the Transcendence of God. However the denial of the C-c/d comes in due to the reality that the Creator becomes so transcendent from the creature that there is no longer any contact between Creator and creature. When the Creator is made so transcendent that there is no contact w/ the creature what happens is, as in animism, the creature is the one who becomes the Creator and the C-c/d is once again lost. So, even though these two worldview concepts of God are seemingly radically different (and they do present themselves differently to the discerning eye) in the end they come out to a very similar place, functionally speaking.

This functional similarity is seen in the kind of political structures that cultures build who deny the C-c/d via the hyper-transcendent. These cultures, not having a God concept will inevitably build political structures like animistic cultures that are tyrannical. With the loss of the Creator and his sovereignty, denizens of cultures that are hyper-transcendent will typically turn the State into God and the god-State will have the responsibility for creating reality, along with the necessary distinctions that reality requires to exist.

A third way that the C-c/d is denied was established by modernity. Modernity has been the approximately 225 year attempt to pretend that God does not exist. With the advent of the enlightenment man gave God his divorce papers and being at war w/ God man has closed down God’s embassy on earth. Putatively, God is neither hyper immanent nor hyper transcendent. God simply isn’t, or is irrational or God is dead.

However, in such a profession, god or some god concept does not go away. Like the other C-c/d denials we have looked at this C-c/d ends up en-goding man. Modernity is the age that has given us the great formal totalitarianisms of Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Gramsci, and a host of other. So, the common thread that we have thus far seen as evidence of the denial of the C-c/d is upheld. Religions and cultures that deny the C-c/d by pretending as if God doesn’t exist typically simply transfers the sovereignty and Creator status of God to the State.

Now one common strand we’ve seen between these three different ways to deny the C-c/d is the the political top down structures they each tend to build. However the similarities do not end there. Remember the effect of denying the C-c/d is the denial of the most fundamental of reality distinctions. When this most basic of distinctions is denied the effect of this macro-denial, when teased out to its logical and inevitable conclusion, is the micro-denial of all other distinctions. When the distinction between the C-c is denied then all other God ordained distinctions can be and often are denied as well.

When the C-c/d is denied then obviously God has been locked out of his creation and the consequence of that will be the increasingly widespread denial of all other divinely imposed and sanctioned distinctions. Concretely this means that in a culture that is working out the implications of its C-c/d denial is the most aberrant of embraces. In these kind of C-c/d denial cultures (quite regardless of just exactly how the C-c/d is manifesting itself) what happens is distinction like male and female begin to disappear and homosexuality becomes an increasingly familiar phenomenon. Distinctions like the uniqueness of marriage as being monogamous vs. polymorphous, polygamous, or polyandrous begin to be increasingly denied. Similarly, when the C-c/d is denied the distinctions between men and women as it relates to the God designed distinctions in terms of their physical, psychological, emotional distinctions are denied so that men and women begin to be seen as interchangeable parts in a monistic machine. This of course leads to feministic oriented cultures where women are seen as being perfectly capable of being head over men. Distinctions like the qualitative distinction between man and animal are denied w/ the result that organizations that advocate that animals have human rights begin to proliferate. When the C-c/d is denied then all bets are off for all other distinctions being maintained because when the C-c/d is denied the basis for all other distinctions lose their credibility.

Finally, another key distinction that become a casualty of the C-c/d denial is the distinction that distinguishes one religion from another religion. Biblical Christianity especially becomes the victim of this denial since Christianity alone teaches a hard exclusivity. (Indeed, I would suggest where hard exclusivity is sacrificed in Christianity it is a sign that the eroding drip of the C-c/d is doing its work.) This denial of the distinctions between religions thus allows room for a multi-culturalism that gives just a bare lip service on differences between faiths that create cultures and allows one mono-culture to be created by the defacto faith created from the assumed unity of many faiths.

In brief the denial of the C-c/d leads to an inescapable monism that leads to the autonomous imposition of reality distinctions by human agents who have been en-godded. Naturally, it is the consistent outworking of this C-c/d denial that has the West where it currently is, with its rampant Statism, Homosexuality, Gender confusion, Animal rights, multi-culturalism, etc.

In the next entry on this subject we will look at other ways in which the C-c/d can be played with and the implications that often follow from that.

“From the days of the Caesars to the heads of the democratic states and Marxist empires, the ungodly have seen what Christians too often fail to see, namely, that Biblical faith requires and creates a rival government to the humanistic State.”

~ R.J. Rushdoony

With the whole Death Care legislation that has been recently crammed down our throats I have had opportunity to make a great pest of myself to several “Christians” who have insisted that there is nothing inconsistent about someone being a Christian and supporting a Marxist agenda of which the recent Death care is a part.

Some of these people, like CH are very young. Others like the writer of this article,

http://pressonuntilglory.blogspot.com/2010/03/president.html

have drank deeply from the R2Kt heretical “Christian” religion. Yet others grew up in government schools and have never yet been able to deprogram themselves. That millions of “Christians” are supporting Obama’s Marxist agenda shouldn’t surprise us given recent studies conducted that revealed that well less then 10 percent of those who profess Christ have a Christian worldview.

So, this is a good opportunity to distill some thoughts on this subject with the hope that Christians will begin to see the disconnect between claiming Christ and supporting a Marxist agenda. I should say that I have no doubt that there are genuine Christians who support Obama’s Marxist agenda. Jesus can save people who don’t think straight but normatively sanctification is the means by which immature Christians become mature in their thinking. This article is for all those Christians who have not yet had the opportunity to escape the indoctrination that this present wicked age constantly pummels us all with.

First of all we should note that Marxism is a belief system. Indeed, it would be accurate to say that Marxism is a religion. The religion of Marx avows atheism. This is not true. The God of Marxism is putatively the collective expression of the people as given life in the State. For Marxists it is in god (The State) they live and move and have their being. So theologically speaking they are humanists in the collective sense.

Were we to continue to press on with the issue of theology for Marxism we would also note that for classical Marxist theorists (theologians) economics is their theology. This is to say that because all Marxists are materialists they confess that everything must be understood in light of economics. As such, just as Christians understand that all truth is what it is because of who God is, so Marxists understand that all truth is what it is because of economic structures. As such economics is the Marxist equivalent of Christian theology. However, it is not just any economics but economics that presupposes that man’s resources must be collectively pooled together in the god state in order to achieve Marxist heaven on earth (utopia). Because this is the cornerstone creed of Marxism, all economic (theology) theory is bent towards achieving that end. Everything serves the end of achieving the state god’s drive toward Utopia.

Now here we must pause a second to connect some dots. Because Marxism makes the state god and because Marxism believes that economics is theology and because Marxism believes that the state is charged with shepherding men into Utopia, and because in Marxism man only has meaning as he belongs to and is found in the the collective, Marxist regimes have always worked in such a way where the god state seizes more and more control from the individual for their own good and the good of the hive.

This is what is happening currently in the former united States of America. In this country, as seen in the collectivizing of health care, the Marxist agenda is seen in full bloom. We see the state as the collective expression of god taking up the prerogatives of the providing God of the Bible, in order to provide a collectivistic death care system with the purpose of creating a Utopian health social order. This is achieved by insisting that the 8th commandment does not apply to the god state. The state as god cannot steal since the earth is the states and everything therein. It is not possible for any god to steal for any sovereign god, by definition owns everything. Therefore it is not theft for the state to steal from individuals because the state owns the individual as well as all the resources of the individual. This is why in Marxist regimes there is warfare on private property. The individual owns nothing. The state owns everything.

Christians thus who support Obama-care are thus, in their support, denying the God of the Bible and are in full treason against biblical Christianity. They are denying the very God who bought them and have left their first love for another.

Because there is no extra-mundane God, and because god is located in the State, Marxist ethics are what we might call Statist relativism. What is meant by this is that right and wrong is dictated by the god state and right and wrong can change as the state changes in its agenda. What this means practically is that the god state can not be charged w/ evil doing since the god state is the god which defines right and wrong. The god state in Marxism turns to those who would question it and imperiously says, “Who are thou to question God O Man.”

As we pause to connect dots again we see all of this is in the current Marxist death care agenda. The current usurper Obama regime, despite howls of protest against it, knowing that it is the determiner of what is right and wrong and what is best for the American people — knowing it is god — has basically flipped off the American people and have taken the attitude against the American people of “Who are thou to question the state god O Man?” Christians who support the Obama death apathy legislation have sided with a worldview that holds that the state is god. They have abandoned King Christ for another King.

As we move on in this examination seeking to tie Marxism to Obama-care to its anti-Christ agenda we note the means that Marxism has historically used in order to displace any competitor is to promote class warfare. This is used in such a way as to make the have nots resent the haves so as to use them to tear down the haves. We have seen this in spades in the death care debate. The haves have been villainized and demonized and we have heard countless stories about poor wretches who are impoverished and infirm. Christians have heard this and in fits of ill reasoned compassion have supported Marxist death care. What these Christians have not paused to consider is whether or not Scripture gives any authority to the state to steal from the citizenry in order to “help” the least of these. What these Christians have not paused to consider is that subsidies from the state for health care will not only not “help” the least of these but it will make their plight worse since reason, history, and experience have revealed that whenever the state, through subsidies, increases the demand of a product (in this case death care) the result is a deterioration in both the quality and the availability of whatever product is being subsidized. So while it is true that more people will have access to health care it is also true that the death care that they will have more access to will be a health care that will be positively dark age. To support such a program then is a violation of the Sixth commandment which requires not only that we not murder people but also that we do all we can to look after the interest of our neighbor. When Christians support Marxist death care they are at the same time, doubtless w/ the best of intentions, supporting doing harm to both their loved ones and their neighbors. What started out as a pursuit of compassion ends in the reality of doing grave and serious harm and damage to people created in the image of God.

In part I of this series I introduced you to Mr. Mark Chambers. Mark is one of those rare laymen who, being epistemologically self conscious, continues to seek to be epistemologically self conscious. Mark is one of the sharpest laymen I’ve ever met. Indeed, he is sharper then 95% of the ministerial class I know.

In part II of this series I would like to introduce you to Joshua Butcher. Joshua is 20 something, has a beautiful wife and two young sons and is finishing up his Ph.D. work in Rhetoric somewhere in the Republic of Texas. Joshua, like Mark and myself (and many others) is a presuppositionalist, a theonomist, and as this article reveals, a supralapsarian reconstructionist.

Joshua, in this article, beginning with the counsels of God in eternity, connects the dots in a sweeping overview, between God’s exhaustive decretal sovereignty, Christ’s sufficient and efficient work and our necessary obedience to the Crown rights of King Jesus.

I don’t know if I’ve ever read a better concise overview of the necessary interrelation of God’s eternal decrees with the finished work of Christ with the inevitable and irresistible obedience that the Spirit of Christ calls forth from every member of God’s tribe.

Joshua’s blog can be found at,

http://anotherreadersreview.blogspot.com/

THE END OF A THING DETERMINES ITS BEGINNING

The phrase that heads this current post seems counter-intuitive in our present age. How can something’s end determine its beginning, see as how the beginning precedes it in time? It is such temporally determined thinking that prevents us from considering how it is that God works in the world, how it is that He makes good what is evil, how it is that we must see all things now are, though they have not yet been brought to pass in history.

From all eternity, in order to glorify Himself to the uttermost, God did determine to choose unto Himself an elect people to give unto His Son, with whom the mutual agreement was made to unite this people unto the Son, in an immaculate display of God’s perfection. As God is both merciful and just, as He is both gracious and wrathful, He decided it most pleasing to choose some upon whom His love He would place and some upon whom His wrath He would place, not according to any condition foreseen in these objects, but because of His own desire to magnify Himself did the God of Heaven make unto Himself objects of mercy and objects of wrath. Here is the first decree, the last to be revealed in history–for we do not yet see all who it shall be that God has confirmed as His people, or denied as rebellious.

Given that God did choose to elect unto Himself a people to Love by His grace and mercy and a people to Hate by His justice and wrath, God did determine to apply the benefits of His Son, by the Holy Spirit’s power, upon those who He would make unto Himself in love. The righteousness, holiness, goodness, long-suffering, peacefulness, and all the other communicable attributes of God He did decree to apply to the elect in Christ according to His electing love for them. To those whom He had determined to reprobate God withheld the merits of Christ by union with Him, instead passing them over in their unloved state. Here we see in history the calling out of God’s people through regeneration, whereby they are delivered from the curse of sin and raised unto life, which they now live for God until He shall bring history to its end.

Given that God did decree to apply the benefits of Christ to the elect, and to deny them unto the reprobate, it was necessary to determine how it would come about that Christ’s benefits would be applied to the elect. This salvation was to be according to the Law, which God decreed should be that standard according to which all men should be subject, and according to which they would be reconciled to God through the incarnation, obedient life, substitutionary death, and life-giving resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ. The apparatus of God’s salvation is seen in history in the life and work of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of the elect, prophesied from the earliest ages and revealed at the appointed time.

Given that God did decree to bring about the salvation of the elect through the incarnation and work of the Son in history, it was necessary for Him to determine how it would be that men should come under the penalty of wrath and the need for redemption. Therefore God decreed that all men should fall under the penalty of lawbreaking in their federal representative, Adam. By this Fall the whole of Creation would be separated from the love of God and be subject to the effects of God’s wrath, including the curse upon the earth, and upon the subsequent generations of men propagated by natural generation. The means of bringing all men under the need of redemption was accomplished in history in the disobedience of Adam in the Garden of Eden, wherein he did take the forbidden fruit to the dishonor of God’s commandment to him.

Given that God did decree to bring about the Fall of men in order that the means of salvation in Christ might be provided, and the merits of Christ be applied to those whom God had chosen to elect in Him for His own glory, God did decree to create the world and all that is it in, including the federal head Adam in whom all humanity consists under the law and according to natural generation. The Creation of the world was the first act of history, and the last intention of God necessary to bring about His utmost glory.

The consistency of logical progression of God’s thought is the perfect reverse reflection of their temporal accomplishment. Understanding the character of God’s thought as such, we are called to consider our own lives and every event in them as determined by the ends for which God is doing all things–His own glory, and the brining to maturation all those elect who are the image of Christ, Who is the image of God, who has manifest His glory in just this way, and no other.

When, therefore, there is evil, let us praise the name of the Lord and work according to His express commands. When, therefore, there is good, let us praise the name of the Lord and work according to His express commands. When, therefore, there is doubt concerning what is our destiny upon this earth, let us praise the name of the Lord and look into His perfect Law and find all that we are in Christ, and all that we shall do in His name and by His power for the restoration of all things to the great glory of our God, Father, Savior, King.

End of part 1

I’m sure a few of you read the previous post, blanched at its abstract character, and pulled away thinking, “but what has such considerations of ‘logical’ order have to do with how I live in the world?”

A perfectly valid question. Consider the fact that if you are one of God’s elect, there is no moment in the history of your life, beginning to end, when God has not considered you in light of His loving purposes. That means that every circumstance, every sin, every success or failure: every single aspect of your existence is characterized by the love of God. Each sin, for example, brings not condemnation, but the opportunity for greater illumination and subsequent obedience. “Are we not then to lament our sins?” May it never be! That all things work to our good does not entail that all things we experience are praiseworthy! The breaking of God’s law is indeed a lamentable offense, yet because the elect have been accepted in Christ from eternity, his standing before God is as a son, and not as an enemy. What father would give a snake when the son asked for an egg? God conditions us by degrees into His very likeness, the express image of God that is Christ Jesus. Thus, every destination has its journey, and every step of that journey is characterized by the direction determined by that destination. God is the governor, guide, and goad–how could we, his sons and daughters, come out otherwise than He desires, if we are indeed His children?

I often hear Christians complaining of how great is their sin, how manifestly difficult it is for them to master, and how wonderful it will be when we are free from sin in heaven. While all of these considerations are true in one sense, they are profoundly misleading in another. Has not our sin been placed upon an even greater Savior? Has not our flesh been crucified, and our life that we now live, lived in the power of God Himself, the Holy Spirit? Has not the power of sin and death been buried with Christ in His death, in order that we may walk unencumbered by the sins that so easily beset us? We children of God, every one of us, struggle in our sin to the extent that we fail to understand our identity–we are not our own individual self, but we are the complex identity of Christ-in-us-and-we-in-Him. The commandments to be of one mind so often given in relation to our brothers and sisters in Christ is because we are first of all made of one mind with Christ Himself. We have the mind of Christ – 1 Cor. 2:16.

A further corollary consideration to our being identified completely with Christ is that we must know what it means to be Christ upon the earth. If Christ is our Head, and we His Body, then the sense of the analogy would indicate that the Head will use the Body to accomplish His will in the earth. But what standard has been given, or what orders been issued, that we may know not only who we are, but what we are to be about? Jesus Christ came to be about the will of His Father, and while we are not privy to the same tasks in every respect (which of us would profess to propitiate the wrath of God for the elect!?!?), we nonetheless are given in Christ a model of our true humanity. Christ fulfilled the Law by following the Law in every respect. Love God. Love your neighbor. Two very simple commands within which are contained the limitless directives for Christians in every age and in every circumstance. Yet there are those who claim that the Bible does not speak to every consideration. God has indeed been silent on a great many truths, but those are expressly concerning Himself and His particular reasons for what He does. What we must choose in each choice is profoundly determined by Scripture in every aspect. Even legitimate matters of Christian liberty are characterized by the requirements of the first word: they must be Christian; they must glorify God as Christ glorified God in every way.

But further, who can be so foolish as to think that the Eternal God of Heaven would leave us groping for direction in those affairs that bear the most direct impact upon what we shall learn and how we shall live!? I am speaking of our decisions about how to educate our children. I am speaking about our decisions about how to use our money. I am speaking about our decisions about how best to use our “free time.” The modern Church has so circumscribed the Law of God, if it has not thrown it out entire, that it cannot be said to be about much of anything concerning the Kingdom of God Almighty. We not only fail in knowing who we are, but in knowing how who we are impacts how we live, and not by some generalized platitudinous clichés tossed from our pulpits and in our parishes (where they still exist!). What use is the “power” of the “Gospel” when we know not what or how such “power” is to be used or what “good news” is to be spoken? What does it mean to “press the Kingdom” into our lives, really? How exactly is it that “seeing and savoring the beauty of Christ,” works itself out, day to day?

The most basic implication is that we must know God’s Law, Christ’s Law, and find out how to apply it where we are now. For example, it is not enough that one should avoid lying to one’s neighbor in order to fulfill the commandment against bearing false witness. One must also do all in one’s power to protect the good name of one’s neighbor. Do you gossip? Do you criticize on the basis of preference rather than principle? Do you not only wish no ill, but also wish the best for those around you? And no, the best doesn’t always entail avoiding confrontation and being polite, for the best is to be free from sin and to honor God. If you see a brother sinning, we are to point him to God’s Word for encouragement to repent, even as we must be prepared, with soft hearts, to accept the rebuke of a brother when confronted upon our sin – Hebrews 3:12-13.

But you will fail if you forsake the fact that your righteousness is not accomplished by your obedience to the Law, but rather, your obedience to the Law is accomplished because Christ’s righteousness has been applied to your account! The end of the thing determines its beginning. You obey because you have been bought, you were not bought because you obey. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “Dogs bark because they are dogs, not because they bark.” It is in the nature of the Christian to grow in obedience, because his life is Christ’s life within, living out God’s particular purpose for that individual life in the grand drama of His glory. If you aren’t doing Christianity well, go think about what it means to be in Christ. Perhaps God will illuminate your mind to the knowledge of His Son, and thereby call you forth as son or daughter of the living God.

“I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3], we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle.”

Michelle Bachmann
US Congressional Representative From the Third US District of Dispenistan
Speech to Republican Jewish Coalition

1.) Somebody needs to tell Michelle that God divorced Israel when they crucified Jesus. If God rejected Israel in AD 70 isn’t it acceptable to reject Israel in 2010 if and when they pursue policy that is not in our best interest?

2.) Israel didn’t become a nation until 1948. Were we not blessed as a nation until Israel became a nation?

3.) Genesis 12:3, wherein God makes the promise that in you (Abraham) all the families of the earth shall be blessed is a promise that refers to all the nations being blessed through Jesus Christ, whom, by the way, the Jewish people hate.

4.) When Christ haters come upon quotes like this you can hardly blame them for thinking Christianity is comprised of various fruit loops and assorted nuts. I’m not a Christ hater but I have to agree w/ the left when it mocks this kind of insane talk.

5.) There is no curse that comes into play for rejecting Israel anymore then there is a cures that comes into play for rejecting Scandinavia. The curse comes into play for rejecting Christ.

6.) The intellectual and theological havoc that dispensationalism has played with Western Christianity leaves me just this side of having to be committed to a rubber room. That this comic book theology can be taken serious by significant players in the political realm is a profound embarrassment to the cause of Christ.

7.) Think about this for a second. Do your really want this woman making political policy given her dispenstionalism? Will she try to pass legislation to make sure planes can fly w/o pilots that disappear in the rapture? Is she convinced that Russian must be resisted simply because they are the Gog and Magog crew?