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“I think we have to affirm that there is a basic antithesis between believers and unbelievers — between a Christian way of thinking and a unbelieving way of thinking. At some fundamental level we think and act in different ways. At the same time, I believe, and I make the argument for this in the book that actually God calls us, as believers, to live together alongside unbelievers in our political communities. God did not institute political communities only for Christians. These are places where Christians and non-Christians are called to live together in some sort of peace, justice and order. And that really is the challenge because that is not easy….”

“There is a sense in which under Christendom … there was sort of this attempt to say, ‘you know the only people who really ought to have a share in our political communities is those who think like us, and so we all ought to agree on the same sort of basic fundamental issues.’ I’m making the argument that the Lord is calling us to strive to live in peace with all sorts of different people and not to try to eliminate from the political community those who don’t agree with us about the most important things and so that really is the challenge. How can we faithfully, wisely seek to live together peacefully as justly as possible with whom we disagree about fundamental things. Here, I think the doctrine of common grace is very important because we recognize that in addition to God’s saving grace … God is at work preserving a measure of peace in this world…”

Dr. David Van Drunnen (DVD)
Politics after Christendom
Interview w/ Dr. R. Scott Clark
Office Hours program

This will be part 1 of a likely 3 part series on DVD’s interview with Clark. The reason that I am preoccupied with DVD now is that DVD has a new book out pushing the R2K agenda and as such he is out everywhere hawking his book. As such I am everywhere out exposing the gross error found in his “theology.”

1.) DVD speaks of an antithesis existing between believers and unbelievers and yet I very seldom hear DVD talk about just exactly what the antithesis looks like in the every day world. In point of fact, DVD’s whole R2K project is to say that in the common realm the antithesis is, or at least ought to be, completely muted. DVD heralds the idea that in the common realm the Buddhist, Talmudist, Muslim, and Christian can come together, and by virtue of all living under the same natural law — which we call appeal to together — we can all live in harmony. Reading or listening to DVD there is very little antithesis that is articulated. One wonders where DVD would find the anti-thesis (concretely speaking) in the common realm?

2.) DVD denies Christendom when he says above that “God did not institute political communities only for Christians.” This sounds reasonable to those of us who have been raised in the multicultural environs that is now the West. DVD’s statement is the perfect theological reflection that reflects a willingness to embrace multiculturalism. I don’t believe Christians have any business embracing multiculturalism.

However, more that that I can make an argument that DVD here is saying that God did not institute families only for Christians. Keep in mind that the family is a political community. Family is a child’s first political community. Larger political communities are merely family extended. At least that is the way “nations” were thought of before the multicultural dream was hatched. As such, I disagree with DVD when he says that God “did not institute political communities only for Christians,” because in that statement I hear that God did not institute any nation as only for Christians. I think God did intend, and does intend, for all political communities to be only for Christians. I believe this because Christ’s last words to the disciples were to baptize the nations and teach the nations to observe wherein all He commanded them (Matthew 28:16f). Because of that I think that DVD is being overly comfortable with the abomination that is multi-culturalism and has crafted a theology that harmonizes with multiculturalism.

3.) DVD presupposes that it is possible to have a political community that does not have some faith in the ascendancy that is ruling over every other faith. What else can I conclude from DVD’s idea that people of different faiths can work together in peace, justice, and order. What DVD is missing is that all political communities are animated by and reflective of one particular faith expression. Now, other faiths may be allowed to co-exist but the political community has only one God running the show. Muslims may allow people of the book to survive in their political community but only as hewers of wood and bearers of water (metaphorically speaking). Democracies may allow people of different faiths to operate in their political community but only as long as they don’t take their various gods too seriously. Christians can operate in this political community as long as they don’t take the God of the Bible seriously about the definition of marriage. Muslims in France can operate in the French political community as long as they forgo wearing the Hijab in French schools.

While it may seem that I am straying afar from DVD my point here is that DVD assumes that political communities are pluralistic but in point of fact all political communities are totalistic and always insist that those living in their political communities must serve the God in charge of the differing political communities. So, in order for Christians to live in political communities that are putatively multicultural they must be treasonous to their God in order to co-exist. For DVD that treason is acceptable.

4.) DVD speaks about living with those who don’t agree with us (Christians) about the most important things. Let’s consider the implications of this statement given our current setting in the West. Per DVD we are expected to live with those who don’t agree with us on,

a.) There being a differences between men and women
b.) The Lord’s Day being set apart as unique
c.) The routine killing of the unborn
d.) The catechization of our children in Government schools in Marxist thinking
e.) The Muslim call to Worship across Britain on BBC radio
f.) The fact that “married” sodomites should be accepted as “married.”

According to DVD we ought, as Christians “not to try to eliminate from the political community those who don’t agree with us,” on these types of issues.

5.) DVD talks about God, via common grace, preserving a measure of peace. Is that really what is happening or is it instead that Christians are compromising for the sake of not upsetting the God of the multicultural West?

“The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition, but rights come not from ancient sources alone. They rise, too, from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era. Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied. Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their person-hood to deny them this right.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

1.) “Rights come not from ancient sources alone” — Clearly a swipe at the Christian Scriptures. So if rights do not come from God alone what other God is there to give rights to man if not man as God?


2.) “Better informed understanding” — those poor poor fools of the past who were not bright enough to have the better informed understanding of this brilliant current generation. Of course this is generational snobbery. Any current living generation always has the advantage of having a “better informed understanding,” than those poor benighted fools who went before.

3.) We’re not disparaging you or your beliefs as wrong in the least. We are just saying that you did not have the “better informed understanding” that we have. No disparagement at all here. Your definition of marriage in the past was that in order for marriage to be possible you need to join male and female. Our better informed understanding will now re-define marriage so as to be defined as the joining of male and male or female and female. Let the Dictionary and all the Gods be damned, we will completely redefine marriage because of our “better informed understanding.”

4.) So, Christian beliefs as enacted law should not be but the religious beliefs of sodomites should be enacted law?

5.) I should think that the Mormons will be wanting to revisit Reynolds vs. US with this ruling.

6.) Is it ever proper to stigmatize or disparage any sexual self identity? Polygamy? Polyandry? Bestiality? Pedophilia? Necrophilia? Remember Justice Kennedy you have created a right of self identity in this decision.

7.) If marriage can be mean anything then it means nothing. This decision moves the end of marriage if only because marriage no longer has any stable meaning.

In a sane world, Justice Anthony Kennedy would be committed to an insane asylum. Elsewhere in this decision he writes,

“The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.”

Yet, a few sentences later the man could write,

“And their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment.”

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

First they themselves are defining and expressing their identity. Then, a few sentences later we find out about their “immutable nature.”

CONTRADICT MUCH?

If the sodomites are defining and expressing their identity how can it be the case that they have an immutable nature?

Just one more from Kennedy in his decision,

“The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.”

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

Kennedy found a Constitutional right that allows persons to define and express their identity?

Who knew that the Constitution supports Existentialism? Who knew that the Constitution embraces the notion that humans have not set nature? Who knew that the Constitution taught Existentialist post-modern Anthropology?

“It would be a grave mistake to reduce … the universalist principles of the Founding [for an] ethno-nationalism.”

Senator Ben Sasse — R. – Nebraska
Twitter account

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

U.S. Constitution

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, without which a common and free government would be impossible.”

John Jay, Federalist #2

“The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others, it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. It has been often likely to compromise the interests of our own country in favor of another.”

Alexander Hamilton

“If you would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that your own actions were selfish, putting your own interest ahead of those in the community in which you live, that you now see the error of your ways and understand that the society cannot function when one’s own belief in a concept of liberty permits you to flaunt your disdain for the rulings of duly elected officials. That you owe an apology to the elected officials for whom you disrespected for flagrantly ignoring and, in one case, defiling their orders, which you now know obviously applies to you. that you understand that the proper way in an ordered society to engage concerns which you may have had is to hire a lawyer and advocate for change and exception to laws you find offensive. That you publicly state that this is the way that citizens in this state should behave. That you represent to this court that you will, today, cease operation of your salon and not reopen until further order of the Government permit you to do so. this court will consider the payment of a fine in lieu of incarceration which you have demonstrate that you have so clearly earned.”

Dallas Judge Eric Moye
Sentencing Hair Salon Owner Shelly Luther

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Bill of Rights V Amendment

1.) Shelley Luther (Owner of the closed hair salon in Texas) has had her fifth amendment rights violated by the Governor of Texas (Greg Abbot) who in his Executive Order regarding the closing of business did deprive all affected business owners of their property without due process of law. Judge Eric Moye then added insult to injury by jailing and fining Mrs. Luther for refusing to obey an unconstitutional order from the Governor of Texas. This is a clear case of tyranny as handed down by both the Governor of Texas and as underscored by this leftist Marxist Judge (Obama appointee) in Texas.

2.) After Mrs. Luther refused to bow down and grovel to this arrogant piece of skubala judge the man wearing the black robe literally said to the bailiff, “Take this bi…Uh, defendant away.”

3.) Notice Judge Moye’s lack of command of the English language. The skubala Judge used an inaccurate word and said Luther “defiled” an order when the word he wanted was “defied.” Clearly we have a Judge here whose IQ level doesn’t match the demands of his work. “Defiled,” is typically a theological term and means, “desecrate or profane (something sacred).”

However, on second thought, the use of a theological term was actually more accurate given what was going on as this woman was brought before this skubala Judge. Shelley Luther was a penitent brought before the State’s Father Confessor and as a heretic was being demanded that she confess her sins and publicly recant of her behavior and so have her price of penance diminished. Medieval Rome couldn’t have put on a better display.

4.) It was an overtly religious exercise. We are not dealing with some kind of “secularization” process. This all communicates that we are dealing with another religion. The judge just forgot to demand a pinch of incense and that she prostrate herself.

The danger of calling this “secularization” is that what happens with that language is that it implies that what is happening is that the culture is embracing a morality of the “secular” when in point of fact the culture is embracing the morality of a religion different from Christianity and so the culture is not being secularized but humanism-ized.  I think this is a significant point that we too often fly right by. When we complain about secularism and secularization it communicates that some form of mystery agent is changing our culture. However when we identify the alien religion that is gaining hegemony it becomes more clear who are enemy is.

Shelley Luther before Judge Moye teaches those with eyes to see that all of this was a extraordinarily religious exercise.

Governor Abbot — Pope making fiat declarations from the chair
Judge Moye — Father Confessor enforcing the Pope’s declaration
Shelley Luther — Heretic and penitent being required to recant of her sins
Jail time and fine — The penance that heretic must pay to pay for their sins

The irony here that the Governor’s last name is “Abbot” and the defendant’s last name is Luther is mind-boggling.

Hebrews 10:25, KJV: “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”

The Church from its earliest inception has been a people who have physically gathered for Worship.

Whether gathered during the time of the Tabernacle during the special feasts times of the year as recorded in Leviticus 23 or whether gathered at the Temple God’s people worship as a gathered people.

These things come to mind as I pour out my soul: how I walked with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and praise.Psalm 42:4

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD.”

Psalm 122:1A Song of Ascents. Of David.

When we get to the NT we see the gathered Church at Synagogues and then after the Resurrection the body of Christ becomes a gathered people regularly worshiping the risen Christ.

Acts 2:42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.

I Cor. 11:7In the following instructions I have no praise to offer, because your gatherings do more harm than good.

And of course the Hebrews passage this morning underscores this habit of gathered worship by reminding its audience the importance of gathered worship.

The Scripture taken as a whole, communicates part of what it means to be the Church is to be a people who are gathered by Jesus who gather regularly to devote ourselves to the preached doctrine, to receive the sacraments, and to encourage and exhort each other unto love and good works.

A Church that seeks to be a Church without being gathered is a oxymoron.

Our Reformed Divines understood this,

The Westminster Larger Catechism speaks in such a way about Worship that it is hard to believe they would have counted non-gathered “worship” as Worship.Q. 108. What are the duties required in the second commandment?

A. The duties required in the second commandment are, the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath instituted in his Word; particularly prayer and thanksgiving in the name of Christ; the reading, preaching, and hearing of the Word; the administration and receiving of the Sacraments; Church government and discipline; the ministry and maintenance thereof; religious fasting; swearing by the name of God, and vowing unto him: as also the disapproving, detesting, opposing, all false worship; and, according to each one’s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry.

So, while the Christian is to be a man or woman whose whole life is characterized as Worship, the Christian is also known as the person who regularly gathers for Worship. 1st Century Ignatius of Antioch spoke of the import of gathered worship,

“When ye frequently, and in numbers meet together, the powers of Satan are overthrown, and his mischief is neutralized by your like mindedness in the faith.”

18 centuries later Albert Barnes played the same theme,

“Christians should regard it as a sacred duty to meet together for the worship of God … with all who bear the Christian name, with all who expect to make advances in piety and religious knowledge, it should be regarded as a sacred duty to assemble together for public worship. Religion is social; and our graces are to be strengthened and invigorated by waiting together on the Lord. There is an obvious propriety that people should assemble together for the worship of the Most High, and no Christian can hope that his graces will grow, or that he can perform his duty to his Maker, without uniting thus with those who love the service of God.”

Albert Barnes

Doubtless the Apostles had in mind the gathering of the Church as a true fellowship of Christians. There is no point in assembling together in assemblies where the assembly has become merely a diluted and pale reflection of the larger anti-Christ culture. There is no point in assembling in a place that has the word “Church” on the sign or doesn’t have the word on a sign but clearly advertises themselves as a Church when the people gathering are indistinct from the culture around them, where the clergy are one part hipster, one part Rogerian psychologist, one part Ad-man and no part theologian. There is no point assembling when the liturgy is merely a cheap knock off of some bad “boy band” concert where the groupies swoon at tatted Pastor McCool as he leads the praise and worship time. No point in assembling when the liturgy is as vertical as a dead cat on the highway.

This is one qualification we must give to Hebrews 10:25. Dead Churches require no allegiance and indeed the gathering of yourselves together in these types of night-clubs is absolute sin. You’re better served sleep in on Sunday morning.

Now lets turn to the forsaking of assembling together when in the midst of a public health crisis.

If churches are darkened in the face of sickness and death, only TV talking heads, media pundits, and public health officials will speak to our anxieties and fears. This reinforces the secular proposition: Life in this world is the only thing that matters.The docility of our Christian leaders in the cessation of public worship is stunning. It suggests that they more than half of what the secular talking heads are telling them when they tell them that “life in this world is the only thing that matters,” and “you only go around once in life grab all the gusto you can.”

Shuttering our Churches and so canceling the gathered worship service of God and His Christ is not a great deal different than removing the statuary of our heroes from the public square or changing out the names of places named after our heroes and wise-men. To shut down orthodox Christian worship services of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, as a matter of habit or routine, even in the face of plague and pestilence is to weaken the faith and to alter who we are and what we confess. To be sure, prudence may dictate an occasional cancellation – even for a period of time – but to create a culture of worship cancellation is to diminish the Christian faith and to forfeit our confidence in the God whom we confesses rules over all.

Church can’t be done online…. not for a long and sustained period of time. We are the body of Christ together as we meet as a covenant community in real space and in real time. We are the body of Christ as we exhort on another face to face, hear each other’s stories of God’s faithfulness, pray for one another, and bear each other’s burdens. To reduce worship to what happens virtually online, is to suggest that the tactile presence of one another with each other is irrelevant for the fellowship of the saints and the communion of the body of Christ.

We need to be careful that this pestilence doesn’t diminish who we are in our covenant collective identity as the militant Church … the Church as the Army of God who continues to battle for the crown Right of King and heavenly country.

Look what the visible Church has done in the face of a shadow pestilence. We have fled like so many mice before a shadow cat. Compare our current actions to the Church during the time of the 3rd century Roman Emperor Diocletian. Diocletian rendered the 3rd century version of an Executive Order for Christians to cease and desist from gathered worship. Diocletian’s order was routinely disregarded and flouted by many Christians who chose the promise of martyrdom for the privilege of gathering to Worship the thrice Holy God. If Diocletian could only see how easy it was for Gov. Wretched Whitmer to successfully shutter churches he would be dizzied.

The early Church was persecuted because it refused to pinch incense to Caesar and here we are two millennium later repeatedly kissing the ring of Caesar as seen in our closing down over a modestly more dangerous expression of influenza compared to what we see annually. The clergy across the nation has done to our people what Popes used to do to whole Kingdoms who refused to be brought under their thumbs. When Kingdoms went their own way during Medieval-ism the Popes would bring down the hammer of the Interdict against the whole Kingdom. The Clergy were forbidden to give the Mass. Refused to solemnize Marriages. Forbidden to baptize children. Forbidden to give last rights or hear confession. Forbidden to give a Christian burial to the dead. This was what it meant to be under the Interdict and when leveled the Pope would not lift it until the King repented of whatever offense that brought Interdict.

“The interdict of 1208 decreed that no services were to be held in the parish churches. The Mass was allowed in monasteries—but only behind closed doors. Infants could not be baptized except at home or in the church porch; the dead could not be buried in consecrated ground; the living could not receive Holy Communion except at the point of death; church bells were silent” (David Edwards, Christian England: Its Story to the Reformation, 130).

And this is what the Church has done to itself. It has put itself under the Ban because the State has told it to. I ask you Saints … is this sane? Is this God-pleasing?

Where is the desperation to hear the Word broken among God’s banned saints? Where is the longing for the Sacraments broken and distributed? Shall these be ended all because a State that has a long and distinguished record of lying tells the Church of Jesus Christ to shutter?

All of this belies how we are the lesser children of greater Fathers. Our greater Fathers, once realizing that there was no danger would not have put up with being refused the Preached Word or the Sacrament distributed. Our Greater Fathers would not have tolerated or trusted Magistrates who had a long record of lying. Our Greater Fathers would not have prioritized Science so-called over Theology.

Listen to another account of our Greater Fathers,

In 303 a minority among the church in Abitinae in North Africa at the time of the persecution unleashed by Emperor Domitian refused to cease gathering. On the verge of his surprise abdication, this ruler, who would rank among the greatest of the Caesars had he not unleashed massive persecution upon the Church, issued a decree on 24 February 303 ordering the churches across the empire to cease and desist from public worship and to hand over the Scriptures and the sacred vessels to the civil authorities. Bishop Fundanus of Abitinae succumbed to pressure, committed apostasy, and surrendered the Scriptures. A plucky minority of his flock remained within their baptismal grace and continued (clandestinely, they thought) to meet for the regular Sunday Eucharist under the leadership of the priest Saturninus. A group of 49 were caught as it were in flagrante delicto as they assembled for their chaste sacramental union with Christ, brought under arrest to Carthage, tortured, put on trial and swiftly executed on 12 February 304. Saturninus’ four children, including his infant son, stood steadfast in loyalty to Christ, sharing the martyr’s crown with their father. When asked by the interrogating judge why they had defied Diocletian’s orders, one of the 49 martyrs of Abitinae gave a reply that rings through all subsequent centuries of the Church, delivering a powerful message not least to our own time and place: “Sine dominicis non possumus—Without the Eucharist/Divine Service we can’t get by.” The prevailing attitude among professing Christians in North America and Western Europe at this time appears to be a lukewarm “Sine dominicis bene possumus—We can get by quite easily without the Eucharist.”

It is time to gather again Saints. Time to respect and honor the truthful Word of God more than the lying Word of either stupid or lying Magistrates. Time to remember that we are not to live by lies. It is past time now to remember again that Christians should rightly oppose any Governmental power that prevents the placarding of Christ crucified and the administration of the sacraments as based on either bogus science or outright lies.A “virtual” technocratic Christianity is a defective Christianity, a specter of the Church instituted by Christ as an assembly of people that needs must surface and gather in the public arena for the purpose of Worship.

Gathering a bunch of cars so that we can privately worship Drive in theater style is not gathered worship. Indeed, one thing the Reformation warred against was private Masses and when we gather around the internet or radio we are back to a type of private mass.