Once upon a time it was typical for both nuclear family and extended family to not only share blood thus having a natural tie that binds, but as importantly the family had a shared world and life view. This shared world and life view also served as a tie that bound the family together. Between blood and faith nothing could cut the familial bonds of affection and loyalty.

However modernity first attacked the natural worldview ties chiefly by seizing our children and training them in educational centers where the children were separated from their parents beliefs. Now modernity is finishing off the family working to dissolve the natural ties of blood. The family is under attack. Read the recent Atlantic Monthly article on the family by David Brooks wherein Brooks seeks to convince the readers of the need to rid ourselves of the blood family in favor of “make it up as you go” family. The modernists created the problems that has given us the crack up of the family and now the modernists are offering “solutions” that will only serve to make the problem worse. If Brooks “solution” was to be followed we would soon slide into third world status. Children would not be able to identify their parents and parents would begin to conclude that providing for their particular children was not their unique responsibility. Brooks has only offered a more sophisticated version of Hillary’s “it takes a village to raise a child.” Brooks gives us families defined as anything from two Lesbians and their cats as well as some waif they found on the streets to group marriages as combined with children adopted by the group and the group’s children who don’t know which two people of the group are their mother and father. It’s insane but such is modernity.

The family will not survive this attack on blood unless it can restore its understanding of the need to have a shared Weltanschauung (world and life view). The family has to return to the idea of a shared Christianity … a shared confession … a shared theology and a shared understanding of who God is or the family will not survive. A shared world and life view informs the family why blood is important. A shared understanding of God means a shared understanding of a family structure where there is the honoring of thy Father and thy Mother. A shared understanding of the Christian God means a shared understanding of marriage wherein a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves now to his one singular wife so as to establish another sub-unit expression of the trustee family. A sub-unit that is supportive of the extended family while at the same time being distinct from the extended family.

This means parents you have to go crazy training your children to share your faith … your morality … your theology or else you will lose your children to the gale force winds of modernity and post-modernity. Family will sink under the pressures brought by the Marxist Revolutionaries unless we can restore the importance of blood by emphasizing the importance of faith.

As Christians we absolutely have to stop losing our children to contrary faith systems and worldviews because if we cannot pass our Worldview on to them they will dismiss the importance of shared blood ties. Without the God of the Bible and belief in Him there is no reason to value blood ties. At the same time the importance of worldview isn’t going to take unless our children understand how important blood ties are. Our families thus can be neither solely propositional families nor solely blood families. It must be both or it will be neither.

This is why we need to keep our children home and not ship them out to be trained by non blood related strangers who do not own our Christian world and life view. The end result of doing that has been the interruption of the idea of “covenant succession” whereby the faith is supposed to be passed on to our blood kin seed. If we can not keep our children the church will pass, for a season, into dark chaos and old night. It’s already on the cusp of just that.

1.) The Gospel Coalition goes bankrupt
2.) Together 4 The Gospel is converted
3.) Ron Burns becomes an officially recognized stand up comic
4.) Ligon Duncan Does the voice over for a Foghorn Leghorn animated movie
5.) A membership for John Piper to the NRA
6.) Joe Carter actually reads what he writes before he publishes
7.) The understanding that it is not mean to put MLK in the same sentence as the word “whores.”
8.) Donald Trump has a Kushner-ectomy
9.) The PCA revoices their denomination
10.) Kevin DeYoung decides being “cool” is no longer his life goal
11.) Al Mohler gets saved
12.) Doug Wilson learns what a false dichotomy is
13.) Tim Keller repents before the pancreatic cancer metastasizes
14.) Aimee Byrdd gets a publicity photo after getting her hair and nails done
15.) Rev. Todd Bordow decides bestiality should be a crime
16.) Darryl Gnostic Hart changes his mind and admits that Nero did violate God’s law by executing Christians
17.) John MacArthur realizes the contradiction in being both Dispensational and Reformed
18.) Rev. Greg Johnson quits being a walking caricature
19.) Russel Moore would realize that funding Mosques with Baptist money is not Christlike.
20.) Mike Horton would no longer support same sex cohabiting as long as the word “marriage” isn’t used.
21.) R. Scott Clark is demoted from “I’m the God of what it means to be Reformed.”
22.) Westminster Seminary California moves to Seoul Korea. It would make it easier on all their students.
23.) R.C. Sproul Jr., Doug Phillips, Tullian Tchvidijian, Mark Driscoll and Bill Hybels hold a conference on “They Used To Hang On Our Every Word & We made Millions. You can do it also. Here’s how.”
24.) Gordon Clark, Van Til, Bahnsen, and Rushdoony finally get the respect they deserve.
25.) The Reformed world realizes that Critical Race theory was supposed to be the punch-line to a really bad joke.
26.) Carl Trueman would live up to his last name.
27.) J. V. Fesko… dude, you have to quit writing books on apologetics. I’m wearing myself out with laughter.
28.) The OPC finally admits… “Yes, we are really a Sorority.”
29.) The PCA finally admits… “About those San Francisco bath-houses….”
30.) David VanDrunnen’s confession, “I was getting stoned with my Jesuit Bro’s when I first thought of R2K.”
31.) Converted Lesbians cannot mount pulpits to teach the Church how to convert Lesbians until their minds are as clean as their bodies.
32.) Joel Belz and Marvin Olasky are required to publish a magazine from the perspective of a Christian Worldview.
33.) Matt Chandler compares his sermons to the writings of Marx
34.) The Reformed world produce “Bingo” cards for all the Intersectionality Bingo they are promoting.
35.) The brick and mortar Conservative American Seminaries at my front door … all in a pile of rubble.
36.) Sean Michael Lucas’ books read for all time the way he reads the Bible … as a post-modern.
37.) Peter Leithart takes a second wife… from the Hutu tribe
38.) The members of Joel Beeke’s Church discover the ability to look outside of themselves to Christ and so take communion for the first time.
39.) Churches all across America closed on Sundays with little signs that say, “Will be reopening when we take all this seriously.”
40.) Dr. Joe Boot’s influence expands in proportion to his moving in the right direction on the racial realism.
41.) Kim Burgess gets the hearing he deserves and the respect his knowledge of Biblical theology demands.
42.) Mark Chambers, Dan Brannan, and Mickey Henry are each made teaching Elders somewhere in America.
43.) Sam Perry receives a call from a congregation who will cherish and honor his abundant abilities.
44.) Baptists of the world deciding once and for all if they are going to follow their ecclesiology as Anabaptist or their soteriology as Reformed. You can’t consistently have both lads.
45.) Lutherans realizing that they cannot be both Arminian and Reformed.
46.) Every Cultural Marxist minister out of their pulpits so that Church pulpits would be gloriously empty on Sundays.
47.) That a millstone would be placed around the neck of the New Perspective on Paul and so be cast into the sea.
48.) R2K and FV are locked in a phone booth together.
49.) Deep and sustained Repentance by D. A. Carson for creating “The Gospel Coalition.”
50.) The ability to meld all the strengths and eliminate all the weaknesses of Gordon H. Clark and Cornelius Van Til into my thinking.
51.) The ability of Reformed ministers who are evidentialists to repent of their Arminianism.
52.) Seminary programs requiring courses that explain, disassemble, and banish all forms of Marxism as expressions of the Christian faith.
53.) Fathers that catechize their children with the confessions as existing in Worldviews.
54.) The embracing of Biblical Kinism just as our Fathers embraced it for centuries. (I have the quotes to prove it.)
55.) The reversal of the influence of postmillennialism and amillennialism upon the modern church.
56.) Joel McDurmon finally gets his wish to Pastor a Black Marxist congregation.
57.) Bojidar Marinov is returned to Bulgaria for violating his visa.
58.) Gary North publicly repents for calling his father-in-law a racist in “Baptized Patriarchalism.”
59.) That any idiot who goes about with racism on his lips should be boiled in fatback and buried with a stake of turnip greens through his heart.
60.) That every Pastor should serve as loving and generous a congregation as exists at Charlotte Christ the King Reformed Church.
61.) That all Biblical Christians everywhere would have the kind of blessed life I have had.

Exodus 20”16 – Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

Exodus 23 “Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness.

2 “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong….

Leviticus 19:11 “‘Do not steal. “ ‘Do not lie.“‘Do not deceive one another.

Prov. 19:5 A false witness will not go unpunished, and whoever pours out lies will not go free

The Scripture repeatedly forswears the false-witness… the liar … the deceiver.

Whether it is these passages we have just had read or whether it is countless others,|

Our Savior Himself pointed out the origin of the lie

“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

St. Paul as inspired by the Spirit of the living God wrote,

Ephesians 4:25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor,

And when we get almost to the very end of the final book of Holy Writ we read,

Rev. 22: But outside (the Kingdom) are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

Clearly Christians are to a people occupied with the Truth before God.

The Westminster Larger Catechism teaches on this subject and here I quot only in part.

Q.144. What are the duties required in the ninth commandment?

A. The duties required in the ninth commandment are, the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man

Q. 145. What are the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment?

A. The sins forbidden in the ninth commandment are, all prejudicing the truth … giving false evidence; … wittingly appearing and pleading for an evil cause;

The Heidelberg Catechism teaches in part,

Rather I must avoid all lying and deceit
as the devil’s own works, under penalty of God’s heavy wrath.

We demand this of ourselves and in raising children we demand it of them. More than once growing up I heard my Mother tell me … “If you lie to me here I won’t be able to believe you in anything else.”

We take lying so seriously in our children that we visit it with the stiffest of penalties. Or at least we should.

We take lying so seriously that we break off relationships if lies become a consistent representation of the way a person deals with us.

In other words we seek to hold this standard for ourselves and we have that standard for others in our lives.

In point of fact, when Lies and lying becomes characteristic of a social order the trust quotient becomes so low that the social order can’t function. When thou shalt not bear witness become thou shalt bear false witness at every opportunity everything breaks down and grinds to a halt.

And that is where we are approaching as a people.

Our family disintegration is what it is because spouses lie to one another and children lie to parents.

Our Civil order breaks down because Magistrates lie to their constituents routinely and with regularity.

Woodrow Wilson in 1916 campaigned on the theme of “He kept your boys out of war”
FDR promised — “Your boys are not going to fight in a foreign war”
LBJ escalated Vietnam on the lie of a torpedo being fired at one of our ships
Nixon told us on TV that “I am not a crook”
Bush promised — “Read my lips, No new taxes.”
W promised knowingly lied to us about Weapons of Mass destruction
We were told by the FEDS that Bldg. #7 fell because of shrapnel
Obama promised – “If you like your Doctor you can keep your Doctor”

And these are merely the highlights.

Lying and false witness has become part of the American soul.

As Americans we have been successfully and hopelessly dehumanized by a cavalcade of lies. By the lies already mentioned. By the embrace of the lie of abortion then with our turning a blind eye to the pestilent lie that is sodomy, and then we accepted the lie of TSC agents groping our sexual organs. And now we are expected to bear the indignity of covering our faces so we can once again adjust to the lying diktats of the God-State. Incremental legislative step by incremental legislative step, with a thousand other such actions we have been dehumanized and reduced to being men without chests. At every turn, for the momentary fleeting hope that things will return to normal, we willingly surrender all our principles, our souls, all the efforts of our predecessors and all opportunities for our descendants— if only we can cling to our increasingly fragile existence.

We are no longer men of integrity, principle and honor. We want to be lied to. We take comfort in the lie. Not even the fear of the State seeking to be God walking on the earth, no, not even the fear of the world our children will occupy can break us off the lies and breathe into us the needed courage and grit to resist the lying Tyrant State. We cannot resist the lying Tyrant state because we ourselves are liars. How can we hold our magistrates accountable if we ourselves are guilty of lying to our spouses, our children, our friends and so we find the lie comfortable.

We have already taken refuge in the crevices hoping that the State will not turn its “Mordor on the Potomac” eye upon us. The only thing we fear are acts of civil courage and defiance against those who would be our Masters.

Thou Shalt Not bear false witness indeed.

We need to return to the exegesis of the public Theologian Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Any truth is morally vital to a person. Any truth in principle. The simple step of a courageous individual is to not partake in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”

Notice Solzhenitsyn’s “any truth.” When we begin to “live by lies,” then any truth becomes ground upon which to unfurl, and plant the flag as a hill to die on.

Again Solzhenitsyn,

“The simple truth of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your Credo be this: let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And so, like Solzhenitsyn before us, like Igor Shafarevich, like Richard Wumbrand we must return to insisting on public truth that matches our private truth telling.

And friends loved by Christ when we embrace the Mask narrative we are living by lies. We are bearing false witness.

That is one of the first things that the wearing of the Mask does. As a people, it tells us that it is acceptable to live by public lies.

Everyone knows the Mask is irrelevant. 4 months ago they couldn’t tell us enough that the mask was irrelevant to the Wuhan. 4 months later we are told to live by these lies.

We must respond with a Solzhenitsynesque, “Live not by lies.”

There is not one RCT (random control trial) experiment that shows that masks stop the spread of respiratory viruses. In fact 14 studies show that they do not work. No science has determined that masks can keep the viral spread down. You have been told that masking might save you but there are no scientific studies that show this. Newsflash — Viruses are not filtered out by a mask.

We must not sin by bearing false witness by wearing masks. We must not let the Government train us to live by lies.

Yes, Yes, Yes, … I understand that many of your are boxed in by your workplace and its requirement for your to mask. There are times we must play the enemy’s game just long enough to smash the enemy. But when you’re not boxed in do not wear the mask and so support the State’s false witness.

Reformed clergy have been saying endlessly that people like me should not make such a big deal out of such a little thing, but in saying such a thing a thing they don’t understand what is at stake.

The Reformed clergy across the nation, exceptions notwithstanding, are leading their people to Statist slaughter. Scripture teaches that we are not to be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. Where is the transformed mind of the American Reformed clergy? Why are they going along in this manifest lunacy?

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, mask-wearing is:

“A form of disguise or concealment usually worn over or in front of the face to hide the identity of a person and by its own features to establish another being.”

The mask completes the work of the Globalists to turn man into a cog so that all cogs are seen as mere replacement for other cogs. Look at crowds as they are each and all masked. What you gaze upon is a sea of undifferentiated human cogs. The individual and the personal is lost in a sea of sameness. Masking is the perfect egalitarian move.

Even more than the French Revolution Phrygian cap or the Chinese Maoist Revolutionary Mao Suit, the mask communicates the apex of the egalitarian drone. With the wide wearing of the mask an occult transformation has occurred. Man in the image of God has become the Borg having no distinct identity.

Mask wearing then, when not necessary, is anti-Christ and Pastors who keep writing hallmark tropes on how one is showing Jesus love are doing anti-Christ work. They fail to realize not only what has been said above but they fail to realize that the mask is merely conditioning for one more step into the breech of Government tyranny.

Wear the mask has already turned into… nark on your neighbor for not wearing the mask.

Wear the mask will assuredly turn into … take the vaccine and chip

Wear the mask turns into … we must get rid of money to be hygienic

Wear the masks turns into … in order to stop this we must put this tracer on you.

Do you see why not participating in this false witness impressed upon you by the lying State is so important. It is not “just a mask,” it is the camel’s nose under the tent unto the next breach of the Christ hating tyrant state.

Masks are supporting the lie of a social order that is amped up on fear. This fear juice throughout history has been used upon the public to support Marxist Revolution. Whether it was the constant lies of the Duc d’Orleans of the French Revolution or whether it was the constant lies of the Bolsheviks before the Russian revolution or whether it was the lies of the abolitionists and jacobins of our own Revolution of 1861 fear is ginned up in order to drive people to support the Christ hating Revolution.

Christians … do not bear false witness. Live not by lies.

Masks are supporting a social order controlled by the State. A state that can make you put on a clown mask can make you accept a vaccine, can make you give up your currency, can make you tell on your neighbor for the silliest of reasons.

Fear and control … do not bear false witness. Live not by lies.

From the pulpit, in my teaching, in my writing, and even on the radio platform God has opened up I have tried to warn people that our biggest enemy right now is the Tyrant State. It was the case through Scripture and it remains the case now. Government is fire and while it can be a fine servant it always needs to remain under the control of a Christian people.

And right now the State is seeking to control you through fear by having you wear the worthless mask. Do not bear false witness. Live not by lies.

Let us close by quote Solzhenitsyn one more time. Of course Solzhenitsyn knew what it was to live under a state tyranny that required its people to live by lies if they desired to survive. How long until we are living under that same kind of tyranny? We are well on our way there. We can avoid paying the cost that the Russian people paid if we will just stand fast now… at this point. If we will just refuse to bear false witness with these masks… if we will just live not by lies.

Solzhenitsyn speaking in 1978 said,

“Truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. A loss of courage may be the most striking feature, which an outside observer notices in the West in our days…Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
Commencement address at Harvard University , June 8, 1978

Do not bear false witness. Live not by lies.

MODERNITY AND THE CHURCH

Across the tattered landscape of “conservative” Christianity an interesting divide is taking shape.  The division mirrors a broader political and cultural schism.  The Nationalist-Populist/Globalist-Elitist dynamic has an often ignored religious dimension. The battle between the unwashed hoi polloi and their elitist masters—a division that increasingly defines modern politics- has come to church. 

Regrettably, the division between Evangelical elites and pew-sitting deplorables extends far and wide.  While secular institutions take up arms to “tear down the patriarchy” and root out “white privilege,” the same conflict rages within the most conservative precincts of the Christian church. 

The infection has seeped far beyond the bastions of mainline Protestantism and into denominations such as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest Protestant denomination, which has more than 47,000 congregations.

Post-modern assumptions have been smuggled into conservative churches, denominations and parachurch ministries via the Trojan Horse of “racial reconciliation,” “social justice,” and the #ChurchToo movement.  Teaching and doctrine borrowed from Black Liberation Theology, Critical Race Theory and Intersectional Feminism are being proclaimed from pulpits, conference lecterns and the Twitter feeds of Evangelical spokesmen and leaders. 

Back in 1995, Samuel Francis prophesied the growing liberalization of traditionally conservative churches and denominations.  In an infamous column written for the Washington Times, which led to the loss of his position as a staff columnist, Francis criticized the SBC for approving a resolution apologizing for slavery.  

Francis predicted that churches subordinating scripture to liberal morality would accept a “bastardized version of Christian ethics” permeated by the “pseudo-Christian poison of equality.”  “Now that they’ve decided to join the parade toward that destination,” wrote Francis, “We can expect them to adopt some even more modern resolutions that will pave the road for them.”

Ever the prophet, Francis’s prediction took roughly twenty years to come to fruition.  Aside from a ritual denunciation marking the 150th anniversary of Dred Scott, the SBC avoided racial issues until 2015 when it passed a resolution on “racial reconciliation,” urging affiliated churches and entities to increase representation of non-White leadership. 

The goalposts quickly shifted with talk of reconciliation cast aside in favor of more aggressive denunciations of “structural racism” and “White privilege” along with broader attacks on historical symbols and the Dissident Right. 

In 2016, the SBC repudiated the display of the Confederate Flag–a rejection of its own founding; in 2017 it denounced the “Alt Right” and “white supremacy,” neither of which were defined nor running rampant in SBC churches;  in 2018 SBC organizations held conferences lionizing Martin Luther King Jr.; and in 2019 the convention adopted a resolution endorsing the use of Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality as an analytical tool.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, spent most of 2016 assailing Donald Trump and his voters.  Given that 81% of White Evangelicals voted for Trump, this represented an attack on the folks filling Southern Baptist pews and paying his salary through the SBC cooperative program, through which affiliated SBC churches support state convention and SBC missions and ministries.  

Moore, who once called Jesus an illegal immigrant, said that Trump was breathing life into the White Supremacist movement.  He compared Trump’s clerical supporters to Kool Aid drinking cultists.  Describing himself as a survivor of “Bible Belt America,” he called Trump a “Bronze Age warlord” and accused his Christian supporters of worshiping a golden calf.

As looters have burned and pillaged cities and mobs of iconoclasts set upon the cultural legacy of America, SBC leaders bent the knee before Black Lives Matter and poured gasoline on the proverbial fire.  

Southern Baptist Convention President J. D. Greear denounced phrases like “all lives matter” saying, “Southern Baptists, we need to say it clearly as a gospel issue: Black lives matter.”  

Greear also warned fellow Baptists to refrain from bringing facts to bear on any discussion of “systemic racism.”  “Let’s spare each other the quoting of stats right now,” Greear said.  Tossing around biblical tropes about “neighbor love” and “weeping with those who weep,” pastors have cancelled data-driven analysis and replaced it wholesale with an empathy cut off from all other virtues.  

In an attempt at triangulation and “gospel winsomeness,” Gospel Coalition editor and ERLC communications specialist Joe Carter called Confederate soldiers traitors.  He penned a rambling diatribe advocating the removal of Confederate monuments while meekly offering that “reasonable Christians may disagree” as to whether George Washington’s ownership of slaves means that images of the indispensable man should be purged from public life. 

Demanding a change to the state flag, the Mississippi Baptist Convention made the audacious claim that “the need to change the flag is a matter of discipleship for every follower of Jesus Christ.”

Increasingly, the clergy and those training the coming generation of pastors have embraced emancipatory politics and critical theory turning politics into a Manichean struggle between the “White Patriarchy” and “people of color” and “oppressed” women. 

But good men are beginning to rise, shining a light on the infiltration of seminaries and entire denominations by postmodernism and Critical Race Theory.  Others are finally beginning to teach their flocks about the poison of Cultural Marxism, identity politics, so-called “White Privilege,” and social justice.

Christians looking to slow the spread of social pathogens wreaking havoc in the body politic should stop tithing to institutions and churches that are taking a hammer to what remains of Western Civilization and the faith that sustains it.  Instead, they should give resources, financial and otherwise, to the relative handful of shepherds that have not bent the knee to Baal.  

-By Scot Olmstead

For many I know it would be hard to believe but I do have a influence upon some young Padwan Jedi Knight apprentices of mine. This is a letter from one of my padawans I received last night. It was so good I wanted to post it here for your encouragement. Some people are getting it.

Hello Pastor Bret

A new friend mentioned the Federal Vision to me in passing a couple days ago and tonight while perusing Sermon Audio for a nice sermon to fall asleep to, I came across Brian Schwertley’s critique of the Federal Vision among Christian Reconstructionists. Sounded interesting and I hoped it might explain some things. Then the guy proceeded to bash Kinism and argue against paedo-communion and alarm bells went off in my head. Is Schwertley a Presbyterian Baptist? Because it sounds like it! 

It hit me like a sledgehammer how terrible Baptist theology really is during his offhand comment about paedocommunion being wrong. In short, Baptist thinking denies THE ENTIRE REPRESENTATIVE AND COVENANTAL NATURE OF REALITY SET FORTH BY SCRIPTURE! How on earth did it ever become mainstream?!

Infant baptism and paedocommunion are inescapable if a representative covenant of redemption and obedience exists. Man centered humanism has infected modern Reformed salvation doctrine on a bone deep level. It assumes that salvation acts on a purely atomized and personal level and not on a representative-corporate paradigm. And yet the Bible, whenever it speaks of salvation, from Adam to Abraham to David to the Lord Jesus frames it as a representative-familial-national act between God and man!
When a man is saved, it is not in a vacuum but within the context of his God-given purpose as a husband and father. This reestablishes a covenant of grace and law THAT BY DEFINITION includes his family in the father’s representative dispensation of his covenantal duty. Having his children baptized and partaking of communion from their earliest days is nothing but a FAITHful acknowledgement that it is the sovereign grace of God alone that saves and NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CONSCIOUS MIND OF MAN!   (Heaven help us! Consistent Baptists must believe that the mentally retarded are beyond salvation!) Not only this, the act of infants taking part in the sacraments puts our necks under the very serious reality that while God generally promises generational salvation, it is up to His sovereign decree and Divine will as to HOW and the EXTENT of that promise. Because as we know, not all covenant children are elect but that in no way does away with the promises and reality of corporate salvation anymore than God’s promise of prosperity to those who keep His law is done away with by the suffering many suffering saints have endured. It’s like Baptists have never read their Bibles! How do they fail to recognize that infant circumcision as the mark of God’s NATIONAL, COVENANTAL salvific ownership AND expectation of righteousness from that covenant member is OBVIOUSLY carried over by infant baptism and communion. Ultimately, Baptists DENY Christ and the very nature of the salvation they are trying to safeguard. Man is made in the image of God and thereby models His nature on that which is communicable – in this case, representative covenants (Being a Baptist actually means you deny sin because if we have to be of conscious maturity to be recognized as believers, then we didn’t fall in Adam because we must be of conscious maturity to partake of Adam’s choice). Further, the Apostle Paul explicitly stated that men in marriage and therefore including their children are modeling the representative relationship between Christ and the Church. If this is the case, then just as the Church had no choice but to acquiesce to salvation and sanctification in their representative; neither do children before their fathers’ God-given faith in generational salvation and the expectancy that they keep His Law. Baptists deny this and in turn deny that it was Christ’s work that saves but our own mature minds acting to receive it. 

I apologize for this rant on a subject you know well. But I found I had to get my thoughts out and roar against what seems a terrifying heresy in our midst. If I am wrong on anything, I would welcome your correction. It just seems that Baptists and Brian Schwertley are condemning infants taking part in the sacraments as part of the Federal Vision and they’re wrong. Also, what the sherbert is Federal Vision – exactly? I have been looking it up and it is just endlessly confusing. I get a few things (like denying the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to man) but the precise nature eludes me.

Lastly, it appears to me that Baptists got lost on the way to the mall and drove over a cliff instead. And by the looks of it they are still falling. This is what happens when the familial, kin-based, corporate, flesh and blood nature of salvation gets lost on people and they replace it with an abstract construct divorced from the real life Christ of blood, hearth and family!

Love you Pastor! And if you have time, please let me know if I have got a hold of this properly….

God bless

Perry Salvius

____

Dear Padawan,

On the whole I think you have this right though I might state some of these matters with a wee bit more precision.

In terms of Schwertly’s criticisms against Kinism they have been thoroughly refuted in a two part response here,

http://faithandheritage.com/2014/12/kinist-orthodoxy-a-response-to-brian-schwertley-part-1/

In terms of your question on Federal Vision allow me to say briefly that while Federal Vision did a service for the Church in pointing again back to the implications of Covenant theology Federal Vision over-corrected and ended up in the opposite ditch of heresy as the ditch of heresy their arch-opponents (R2K) were laying. In all the cross fire of the R2K vs. FV battler R2K tried to besmirch Theonomy with the brush of FV.

Here are a few links that explain why Federal Vision is heretical.

https://ironink.org/?p=2665

https://ironink.org/?p=66&

https://ironink.org/?p=3700&

https://ironink.org/?p=672

I have waged an unrelenting war against Federal Vision as well as R2K since I started this blog. The two errors deserve each other. They are to our modern setting what Eutychianism, (also known as Real Monophysitism) and Nestorianism were to each other in that early Church battle royal. R2K and FV are mirror errors as I explain elsewhere on this blog.

However, I want to say again here, that one thing FV got right was taking us back to covenantal categories with teeth. Indeed, the kind of teeth that you note in this letter my Padawan.

Interestingly enough most of the Reformed world declaim against paedocommunion, while generally speaking FV gets that one right. Scripture and less importantly logic dictates if we are going to bring children to the baptismal font we should be bringing them to the table. First generation Reformed Theologian Wolfgang Musculus agrees,

(1) Those who possess the thing signified also have a right to the sign

(2) Children who can receive the grace of regeneration (as is evident from Baptism) can also be nurtured in their spiritual lives without their knowledge.

(3) Christ is the Savior of the whole church, including the children, and feeds and refreshes all of its members.

(4) The demand for self-examination (I Cor. 11:26-29) is not intended by the apostle as a universal requirement.

W. Musculus – Loci Communes
First Generation Reformer

Remember that it is often the case that two errors fighting each other can both be wrong and can both get some things right. Federal Vision and R2K are arch enemies. We desire to be in neither camp, choosing instead to watch and eat popcorn while their war rages. Of course the occasional Bronx cheer for both sides is always in order.

Keep up your training Padawan. You are coming along nicely.

The Jedi Knights will prevail against the dark forces on all sides.

Your Master Jedi,

Obi Wan McAtee