Pastor,

So, before you confessed Christ you were already saved?
Evan Ulmer

Hello Evan,

Well, careful theologians make the distinction between objective justification and subjective justification. Objectively, I was set apart for from the foundations of the world, justified in the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ and subjectively justified when the Holy Spirit regenerates and publishes to my consciousness my salvation to the end that we repent, confess, and subjectively inheriting what was laid up for me in the work of the Cross.

Think of Objective justification, as based on election from eternity past and as gained by the death of Christ on the Cross, as all the elect having an inheritance set apart for them that they will, by God’s grace alone, subjectively acquire on the appointed day of regeneration.

This is what the bible teaches,

1.) The lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13) thus giving us a glimpse that our Justification is eternal in its intent. This is underscored by the language in,

2.) Eph. 1:4 “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He [a]made us accepted in the Beloved.”

This is reinforced in St. Paul’s language in Romans 3

3.) Jesus Christ was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised BECAUSE of our justification.

We were objectively justified in the work of Christ

In Christ, God’s elect one, Christ’s elect brothers and sisters were saved from the foundations of the earth. Hebrews 2 when take together with what we have already demonstrated states this as well,

Hebrews 2:4 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Note here that the elect were considered children BEFORE they partook of flesh and blood. Being the God of all grace to His pre-incarnate elect children the elect Christ is incarnated that His elect own might be released from the devil.

It is the Arminians who remove the focal point of the cross insisting that the Cross itself cannot saved. Arminians insist that “dead in trespasses and sins” humans must add their will to Christ’s work in order to make Christ’s work efficacious. Christ is the Nitro but he is an inert component without the glycerin of the human will consenting.

Calvinists believe that CHRISTS DEATH SAVES. Arminians believe that Christ death gives dead sinners the opportunity to save themselves by choosing Christ.

Pastor,

I always hear Christians talking down on the idea of a theocracy and praising the idea that America has no religious test for holding public office. Whats your take on this?

Noa Napoleon
Hawaii

Noa,

Thank you for writing. This is a question that is bandied about quite a bit and so it is good to have a go at it here.

Folks who speak the way that you have asked about have embraced a common error. It is so common we now have a whole theological school committed to the possibility of this impossibility. It is called “R2K,” or “The Escondido Theology.” Contrary to the R2K boys, we simply must realize that Theocracy is an inescapable reality. ALL governments (EVERY LAST ONE THAT HAVE EVER EXISTED OR WILL EXIST) are theocratic. All Governments descend from, reflect some, embody some or dependent upon a theology / religion. This includes ours. Our Government, speaking out of both sides of its mouth will say at various times that either all religions must be allowed in the public square — and then serves as the true God by saying how far the various gods are allowed to walk in the public square, — or alternately that no gods may walk in the public square and then serves as the true god by being the god that locks all the other gods out of the public square. So, our pluralism really isn’t pluralistic. Instead we have one God who the FEDS serve. The name of the God in our system is named “Demos,” and the religion our Government practices is Statist Democracy.

Secondly, America DOES have a religious test. Its religious test is that religious tests are disallowed. No one will be allowed to affirm loyalty to any singular God alone and if they will not abide by that they will never be elected.

So, Noa, theocracy is an inescapable concept. I think we ought to replace the religious test we have to a Christian religious test that requires affirming the God of the Bible and His Law-Word.

Allow me to put a fine point on this answer regarding religious tests and seek to give some context. First, when the founding fathers spoke of “religion” or “religious test” they assumed some ilk of Christianity. To them “no religious test” meant that public office should not be limited to Presbyterians or Lutherans or Congregationalists. To them “no religious test” was not meant to leave public office open to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists, and whatever. The religious test idea was pushed off because they didn’t want any one stripe of Christianity to be able to forbid other stripes of Christianity from serving in the Federal Government. They desired to leave the issue of State religions to the various colonies / states, many of whom already had their own arrangements between a particular denomination and support from an individual state.

Secondly, the original understanding of our US Constitution was that it was created by 13 nation/states for their mutual protection. The federal government was one of strictly defined delegated and enumerated powers. The prohibition against test oaths was only for that federal government. Most, if not all, of the 13 nation/states had mentions of Christ in their own constitutions and had no prohibition against oaths or creeds declared in the federal constitution regarding their own state required religious tests and oaths. The federal government would be comprised of men who had already taken religious oaths when they served in the various State governments from which they would be drawn to serve eventually in the Federal Government.

—————-

Dear Pastor,

Are you saying that false teachers and heretics, do not have a right to practice their faith and believe and do you want the government involved in that process of determining which religion gets to practice their religion and which doesn’t?

Matthew Pasalic
Maryland

Dear Matthew,

You will be glad to know that I am not saying that.

I am saying that God says just that.

It is correct that Christ-haters do not have a right to practice their Christ hating faith and beliefs. If they had the right to do that where would that right come from? From the God who demands that there shall be no other Gods before Him?

And in terms of the Government being involved in the process of determining who does and does not get to practice their religion, well, they already are. Just try to tell the US Government that you have the place to teach Christ in the Governments schools. Just try to tell the FEDS that the FEDS must make sodomite marriage illegal again.

Every law that a governing body makes is an establishment of a religion since all laws are based on a morality and all morality is dependent upon religion. Lawmaking thus is the government being involved in the process of determining who does and does not get to practice their religion.

See … Governments always are inescapably involved in that process of determination.

This is why R2K is such a torpid “theology.” It desires to keep religion out of the public square and out of Government, as if such a thing were possible. R2K theologians with their desire to consign the Christian religion to the Church guarantees that other religions will take over the public square. A singular religion in the public square is an inescapable reality.

One Timothy L. Cho decides to labor in proving that the Holy Scriptures speak out against “Racism.”

https://faithfullymagazine.com/bible-silent-racism/

In this piece I labor to refute Timothy L. Cho and the Cultural Marxist – Critical Race theory well from which Cho is drinking.

First, note Cho’s proofs provided from the Scripture don’t by themselves give us a definition of “Racism,” as we will see as we respond. Most of the passages that Mr. Cho provides really don’t have anything to do with modern day constructs of “Racism.”

Right out of the gate we should note that this whole idea of “Racism,” as used in our modern Cultural Marxist context, was popularized by the Marxist Leon Trotsky in the 20th century as a means by which White Christianity could be weighted with false guilt and so eventually destroyed. As such, the charge of “Racism,” has been nothing but a tool of the Marxist Left to clear the field of their opposition – ultimately, to the end of triumphing over Christ and His Kingdom (Christendom). The fact that this idea of “Racism” has gained so much traction in the 21st century is proof positive that the Trotskyists have won the day. The fact that Mr. Cho can hurl this charge at Christ’s Church is proof positive that he is (perhaps unknowingly) riding the Cultural Marxist Trotskyite train.

Having given this introduction, let us turn to the article in question, Cho beings his article:

“An honest look at the history of Christianity in the United States will quickly reveal the appalling truth that racism has too often gone hand in hand with the gospel.”

Now, keep in mind that Cho hasn’t yet given us a definition of “Racism,” so we can’t be absolutely sure what he is talking about here. Still, Cho is clearly convinced that presumably White Christians have been uniquely guilty of not treating non-white people very well. He doesn’t seem conversant with the history of white-slavery in America, which long preceded the “Racism” he seems to be complaining about. That white slavery existed as it did is indicative that whatever sins may have been perpetuated among non-white people they were not unique in their suffering. This dulls the charge of “Racism.” If all ethnic people groups suffered under the same conditions, at one time or another, then it is hardly the case that “Racism” is afoot. The point here isn’t to suggest that minorities weren’t at one time or another ill treated by white Christians. They were. The point is that if white people were also ill-treated, at one time or another, by white people then it is hardly the case that Cho’s “racism” obtains.

The fact that Whites were, at one time in America, held in the same bondage as non-whites would one day be is seen by just a few quotes. First, David Brion Davis writing in the New York Review of Books, Oct. 11, 1990, p. 37 states:

“From Barbados to Virginia, colonists.., showed few scruples about reducing their less fortunate countrymen to a status little different from that of chattel slaves… The prevalence and suffering of white slaves, serfs and indentured servants in the early modern period suggests that there was nothing inevitable about limiting plantation slavery to people of African origin.”

L. Ruchames in “The Sources of Racial Thought in Colonial America, states that, “the slave trade worked in both directions, with white merchandise as well as black.” (Journal of Negro History, no. 52, pp. 251-273).

With this accusation of “Racism,” Cho has fallen into the false narrative contrived by the enemies of White Christians and White Christianity. For those interested in reading the true narrative that counters the Cultural Marxist false narrative that Cho is espousing, I recommend the small booklet, “They Were White and They Were Slaves,” by Dr. Michael A. Hoffman II. Hoffman, in the opening pages, offers a truth that Cho and many others should consider,

“The height of academic and media fraud is revealed in the monopolistic trademark status the official controllers of education and mass communications have successfully established between the definition of the word “slave” and the negro, while labeling descriptions of the historic experience of Whites in slavery a fallacy. Yet the very word “slave,” which the establishment’s consensus school of history pretends cannot legitimately be applied to Whites, is derived from the word Slav. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word slave is another name for the White people of eastern Europe, the Slavs. (Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, p. 2,858). In other words, slave has always been a term for and a definition of a servile condition of White people. Yet we are told by the professorcrats that it is not correct to refer to Whites as slaves but only as servants, even though the very root of the word is derived from the historical fact of White slavery.”

What we have established already (and we have much more to deconstruct from Cho’s article) has proven that the idea that American Christianity has often gone hand-in-hand with “Racism” is just so much progressive white guilt cant.

Cho presses on:

“Unfortunately, when confronted about their racism, many within the church have defended their way of life by arguing that the Bible is silent on racism. The purported silence of the Bible on this topic and its related issues – racial supremacy, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia – is used to claim that Christians should have liberty to hold or not hold these sorts of views. Racism in all of its forms is considered a “social issue” or a “political issue” rather than a “gospel issue” or a “spiritual issue.’”

Let us concede here that if “Racism” is sin, it cannot be dismissed by merely labeling it as a social or political issue. However, “Racism,” in the way it is construed by modernity, is not a sin. Neither is ethnocentrism, which we find everywhere in Scripture. St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit communicates his ethnocentrism:

“I have deep sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race.”

Romans 9:2-3

When it comes to “racial supremacy,” it is simply the case that all races have their own unique superiorities which allow them to believe with certainty that they are, objectively speaking, racially supreme in one area or another. Who can look at modern professional athletics and not conclude that blacks have their own their racial supremacy in this field?

Just as clearly, when considering racial supremacy there can be no dispute that white Christians are superior when it comes to building civilization. That this is true is indisputable. Any walk through a museum or a library proves the racial superiority of white Christians. Any examination of the history of inventions, discovery, industry, the arts, or warfare techniques testify to the racial superiority of white Christians.

Jesus Himself articulated racial superiority.

You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.

John 4:22

Note here that Jesus is clearly articulating that His people were superior to the Samaritans when it came to the issue of worship. He also insists that salvation comes not from Samaritans, but comes from the faithful Jews. Clearly there is racial superiority being communicated here. Now, the Jews were the carrier of salvation only by God’s grace alone, but that doesn’t overthrow that there was racial superiority on this matter among the Jews. The Jews were not made of better dirt but God out of His free grace decided to make these people who were “the least of all peoples” to be superior when it came to the truths of God until their rejection of their Messiah. It has been all downhill for them since then.

The superiorities of any race is by God’s grace alone. There is no reason to boast or become arrogant because of these varying superiorities. This is because these superiorities are gifts of God. The attitude of any race in reference to their superiorities should be one of humble gratitude for God’s goodness to them, and how he has set them apart to be superior while beseeching forgiveness for where they are responsible for their inferiorities. To deny racial supremacy where it exists is to embrace the fatuous idea that all peoples are equal (i.e. the same). Clearly, that idea is observably nonsensical. All people are not the same, nor do all people have the same potential for everything. It is only Cultural Marxism that requires us to be blind to what would be obvious to any precocious four-year old.

John Calvin did not buy into equality,

“All are not created on equal terms … This God has testified, not only in the case of single individuals; He has also given a specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham, to make it plain that the future condition of each nation was entirely at His disposal.”

Calvin, Institutes …,bk.iii, pp.206-205 Beveridge translation

Finally, as it pertains to xenophobia, there have been many times when xenophobia is the very essence of wisdom. I know that were I alive in the 15th century I would have been xenophobic towards the Aztecs, whose barbarity is legendary. As such, contra Cho, I conclude that Christians should be allowed to hold these sorts of views when appropriate. Cho is in sin by claiming others are in sin for embracing ethnocentrism, racial supremacy, and xenophobia when it is properly required.

From here, Cho attempts to use the Scripture to condemn what he hasn’t even defined and what he, so far, hasn’t successfully demonstrated as sin.

In Part II we will turn to Cho’s putative Scriptural proofs.

Dear Pastor,

“What is your obsession with race?”

Matthew Pasalic

Dear Matthew, I am very glad you asked that question. It is worthy of being answered if only because so many people in our population remain, like yourself, tuned out to what is going on in this country. When you ask me, “what is your obsession with race,” I hear that as someone asking a homeowner who is being burglarized, “what is your obsession with burglars?”

Of course if I’m being burglarized I am obsessed with burglars and only a person who doesn’t realize his neighbor is being burglarized can be confounded concerning why his neighbor is obsessed with being burglarized.

In the same way the Christian White man is being burglarized of his faith and heritage and so is to be commended for being obsessed since those who are doing the burglarizing are comprised largely, though not totally, of non-white people.

Allow me to explain Matthew. Please be patient as I set this up so the answer to your question is completely understandable.

In post WW II America a political movement that had been around since the 1930’s began to gain leverage in America. In its beginnings it was called “The Frankfurt School,” but as time passed it began to be known as Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, or multiculturalism. The leaders of this movement began to be the gurus on American Universities and with their teachings and their books they began to have influence beyond their numbers. Names like Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, Georg Lukacs, Max Horkheimer and Erich Fromm became the Generals leading a student rank and file who would accomplish the long march through the Institutions, seeking to overturn the previous identity of every Institution wherein was heard the footfall of the march. The final goal of this march was the overthrow, shredding, and destruction of every vestige of biblical Christianity that remained in the DNA of the West.

This “long march through the Institutions,” to the end of creating a Revolution that would fundamentally remake America was the brainchild of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci, who died in one of Mussolini’s prisons is now remembered mainly for his “Prison Notebooks.” Gramsci, as the fountainhead of what eventually became “Cultural Marxism,” in his “Prison Notebooks,” advocated the aforementioned “long march through the Institutions,” as well as advocating for a revamping of Marxism. For each of these projects Gramsci wrote that there would be a need for a new proletariat, since the previous workers proletariat had failed in bring in world Revolution.

Matthew, I’m sure you would agree that such a march required a cadre whose numbers swelled beyond what disenchanted students could provide. As such, Gramsci recommended clear back in the late 1930’s that his new proletariat — his new marching army — should be comprised of criminals, women, and racial minorities. Per Gramsci, the Christianity that was the animating influence in White Western Christian civilization (but, I repeat myself) would be overturned and cast aside by the pervert, the feminist, and the minority. It would be these groups as combined with the compromised Church and Academia who would pull down Christ from his throne.

This answers your question. This is why I’m obsessed about race as well as about feminism, and about sexual perversion and especially traitorous, treasonous Judas clergy. I loath every component who comprises this new proletariat, and I loath them because of my fealty and love for Christ.

Now, that minorities are part of this new proletariat devoted to destroying old Narnia is proven by minority voting habits. Across the board members of minorities communities vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic party which is the political vehicle for Cultural Marxism. This is not to say that every minority is part of this new proletariat. For example, black social critic understood what was going on,

“White conservatives don’t want to take the lead in preserving what remains of this country’s now tenuous White, Anglo-Euro culture. To take on such a responsibility would make them even more vulnerable to the racial bullets and daggers they have been ducking for years.”

Elizabeth Wright
Black Conservative Author

We praise God for the Elizabeth Wrights in the minority communities but sadly, there are not enough of them. As such we can rightly speak in generalities about minorities genuinely belonging to the new proletariat committed to destroying what little remains of White Christian Western Civilization (Christendom).

For Biblical Christians there is no compromising with the members of the new proletariat. This is something that the new proletariat clergy hasn’t learned. “Men” like Al Mohlers, Ligon Duncans, Sean Michael Lucas’, James Whites, and Kevin De Youngs probably with the best of intentions are doing the devil’s work. These men are most unwise. They so desperately desire to be accepted by Christ’s enemies that they are willing to empty the content of Biblical Christianity in order to have peace with these new proletariat destroyers of Christendom.

This is why I am obsessed with race. Minorities, generally speaking, as members of the new proletariat (consciously or unconsciously) are seeking to roll Christ off His throne while being agents by which Christendom is changed out for Humanism-dom. The house of my great King and Liege-Lord is being burglarized. At the very least I can be loyal enough to be obsessed.

My Filipino Doctor friend has words of wisdom here,

“It (the issue of race) wouldn’t have been a major issue if there was no intent by many to blatantly demolish white civilization, and reject its standard of excellence and its ancestors and descendants, especially since all of it are rooted on Christian truths and the uniqueness of the people of the West as beacons.”

As such, I am four square opposed to radical feminists, black extremists, leftist anti-war ‘peace’ activists, animal rights groups, LaRaza, Black Congressional Caucus, black lives matter, animal rights wackos, brain dead environmentalists, sodomite – LGBTQXYZAWR rights groups, the ADL, the Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, the People for the American Way, Planned (no)Parenthood, Code Pink for Peace, the SIECUS and most especially the lion’s share of clergy in America regardless of denomination. The clergy may be those most responsible for paving the highway to hell that we are currently driving upon.

And yes, I am obsessed about it. Won’t you join me in my obsession Matthew?

In the previous entry we took a look at the presence of nations in the Scripture. Methodologically speaking, we used a biblical-theological approach to consider the presence of nations in God’s plan as revealed in Scripture. In using a Biblical-theological approach we traced the theme of nations in the Scripture starting in Genesis and we allowed the Biblical text to reveal the growth of the theme of nations from an acorn in Genesis 10 to the full grown oak in Revelation 21 and 22. As a method, Biblical theology takes a theme and traces its progress and growth from seed form to full grown stratus. The Biblical-theological method can be used for any number of subjects from tracing the scarlet thread of redemption through the Scripture starting with Genesis 3:15 to tracing the theme of covenant or kingdom or the church or the tabernacle. When I think of this methodology I think of time-lapse photography. Time-lapse photography can take a large sequence of time and condense it so we can see the highlights of that time, editing out everything except the theme that the photographer is focusing on.

In this article we want to continue to consider the theme of nations in Scripture. However, instead of using a Biblical-theological approach we want to use a Systematic-theological approach. While the Biblical-theological approach concentrates on focusing on the chronological unfolding narrative through time of a specific theme, the Systematic-Theological approach takes Scripture in its totality and looks for all the instances of the theme in Scripture. Think of the Scripture being a large bowl containing varied colored marbles. The Systematic-theological approach looks at the whole bowl of marbles and starts picking out and separating the various colors and placing each colored marble in different piles so that all the red marbles are with the red marbles and all the blue marbles are with the blue marbles and all the green marbles are with the green marbles, etc. Systematic-theology is far less concerned with the organic relation of the thematic motifs than that Biblical-theological approach.

Both of these methodological approaches are necessary and Biblical-theology theologians debate with Systematic theology theologians over which methodology should have pride of place.

As it applies to the nations we have established the Biblical-theological argument for the continued presence of nations from Scripture and by extension that a biblical nationalism is the preferred organizations of social orders. In this essay, having already established that we will now support that conclusion by considering other Scriptures that under-gird this conclusion using a Systematic theological methodology. In doing this we are linking this essay and the previous essay as being interdependent.

When we consider nations in Scripture, the texts that support the texts which we have previously adduced are as follows. Keep in mind, as in the previous essay, we are not intending to be exhaustive on the texts that might be brought forward. Being exhaustive would require a book for each essay.

When we consider the Pentateuch we don’t have to go any further then the story of Babel where eventually God divides mankind into nations. This division is both judgment and blessing. Judgment because it thwarts the intent of the builders of Babel. Blessing because it delivers mankind from his intended sin to rise to the place of the most high by means of racial, ethnic, and national amalgamation. God’s judgment saved the Nations.

(As a quick excursus here. No, Pentecost did NOT reverse Babel. If Pentecost had reversed Babel we would have expected each man to speak and hear in a universal Esperanto. The fact that each heard and spoke in varying distinctive languages communicates that Babel – and so Nations – remains on God’s menu.)

However, we can find the importance of Nations elsewhere in the Pentateuch. Genesis 27 (ESV):

28 May God give you of the dew of heaven,

and of the fatness of the earth,

and plenty of grain and wine.

29 Let peoples serve you,

and nations bow down to you.

Be lord over your brothers,

and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.

Cursed be everyone who curses you,

and blessed be everyone who blesses you!

This is Isaac’s blessing of his son Jacob. Notice the existence of nations in this passage. We have already noted in the previous essay that Abraham is promised to be a blessing to the nations. Here the nations bow to Jacob. We might conclude then that it is a blessing for the nations to bow to Jacob and especially so if we read this passage Christologically. If we understand that Jacob is a Christ figure then the declaration of the nations bowing here is a declaration that finds it ultimate fulfillment in Christ to whom the nations as nations bring their obedience.

One chapter later we see God’s promise to Jacob re-articulated which had been first given to Grandfather Abraham in chapter 12, with its “be a blessing to the nations” component:

13 And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring.

14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 

Deuteronomy 32:21 gives us another indication of God’s intent to deal with nations as nations:

They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

Here we see God promising to reject Israel as a nation only to replace them with other covenanted nations who will be His people. When this finally came to pass and the Jews as nations were rejected the Jews indeed were passionately provoked (cmp. Matthew 21:43, Acts 11:2,3 and 22:21-23, 1 Thessalonians 2:15,16).

Clearly the ongoing continuation and presence of Nations throughout time is assumed in the Pentateuch and then confirmed throughout the rest of Scripture.

When we turn to the Historical books we come across a passage like I Kings 8:

 41 As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name

42 For they will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this temple

43 Then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.

Solomon’s prayer demonstrates his anticipation that God would deal with nations as nations.

I Chronicles 16:8 likewise captures this idea:

Give thanks to the LORD; call upon His name; make known His deeds among the nations.

That this prayer is to be one day fulfilled when we hear the report of the eschaton where people from every tribe, tongue and nation, in their tribes, tongues, and nations, are present before the throne of the Lamb (cmp. Rev. 7:9).

In II Kings 19:19 we are given Hezekiah’s prayer in a time of danger:

And now, O LORD our God, please deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O LORD, are God.

Where do we find, as authorized in Scripture, the end of the Nations? And if there is no authority from Scripture to pursue the end of Nations then why are Christians of many stripes pursuing just that? And if the Nations are to be a permanent marker of God’s work then it naturally follows that a Biblically informed Nationalism is what the Scripture anticipates when it comes to Biblically arranged social orders. It would be idiotic to suggest that God loves and desires nations but hates Nationalism.

When we come to the wisdom literature we once again find the Nations. Psalm 7:

6 Arise, O Lord, in Your anger;

Lift Yourself up because of the rage of my enemies;

Rise up for me to the judgment You have commanded!

7 So the congregation of the peoples shall surround You;

For their sakes, therefore, return on high.

8 The Lord shall judge the peoples;

Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness,

And according to my integrity within me.

Kirkpatrick comments on this judgment scene: ‘The psalmist prays that “the peoples” may be summoned to stand round the tribunal. It is a general summons. No distinction is made between Israel and other nations in terms of each and all being summoned. Jehovah is exercising his judicial functions in their fullest extent as the Judge of all the earth.’ This picture of the nations summoned to account for their deeds is developed in Psalm 9 and is developed again in the New Testament in Matthew 25 when Jesus talks about the judgment of the Nations.

The Messianic Psalm 22 likewise anticipates the continuance of Nations:

27 All the ends of the earth shall remember

and turn to the LORD,

and all the families of the nations

shall worship before you.

28 For kingship belongs to the LORD,

and he rules over the nations.

Psalms likes this are what demonstrate the consistency of the book of Revelation where we see the eschatological presence of the nations everywhere. Nations don’t go away… ever. Indeed, the Salvation that God brings is so tied up with the ongoing reality of nations that if it could ever be the case that nations could be deleted for a monistic mass of Unitarian globalism salvation itself would be deleted. Praise God this will never be.

Again in Psalm 87:

4 I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to those who know Me;

Behold, O Philistia and Tyre, with Ethiopia:

This one was born there.

5 And of Zion it will be said,

This one and that one were born in her;

And the Most High Himself shall establish her.

6 The Lord will record,

When He registers the peoples:

This one was born there. Selah

Psalm 87 develops the idea of the Nations being present as nations in Jerusalem. In Verses 4-6 we hear the words of God. God declares that Israel’s historic great enemies, Egypt (Rahab) and Babylon and the Philistines are being granted citizenship of Jerusalem. The formula granting this citizenship is ‘This one was born there’. Other peoples mentioned such as the Cushites from Nubia and the people of Tyre show that the list is representative of all the peoples of the world. Hossfield and Zenger in their work offer here:

‘The names that are mentioned mark the four heavenly quarters: west (Egypt), east (Babylon), north (the land of the Philistines and Tyre), and south Cush.‘

All of this is consistent with what we mentioned in the previous essay as pertaining to Isaiah 19.

Everywhere in the Wisdom literature we find the continuity of Nations. How is it the case that so many Churchmen today embrace a kind of dispensational rabid discontinuity when it comes to Nations? Are we really to believe that Jesus died so as to rid mankind of Nations and Nationalism in favor of a “Christian” Globalist Internationalism where all colors bleed into one? May God deliver us from such ubiquitous clergy frenzy.

When we come to the Prophetic books we read, in Isaiah 2:

3 And many peoples will come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

4 Then He will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war.

The postmillennial advance envisions a day when Nations no longer learn and take up war but it does not envision a day when nations disappear into a John Lennonesque imagination of the voiding of nations. Such is an anti-Christ view.

Again later in Isaiah – 49:23, to be precise:

Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow to you face down and lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who hope in Me will never be put to shame.

Here we learn that the Church will be ministered to by Kings and Queens (of nations). The Church will be protected by the ministry of the heads of the Nations. Covenanted Nations will exist in tandem with Christian churches across the globe. The post-millennial advance will sweep in whole nations as nations.

Two more from the Prophets. Haggai 2:6:

For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; 7 and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts.

And Daniel 7:14:

And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him.

In Haggai it is the nations as nations (not as a Globalist glob of humanity) that come to desire of Nations. In Daniel what is entrusted to the reign of the Messiah is not a polyglot of individuals but rather peoples, nations, and men of every language. Nations do not go away and the current assiduous work of clergy and churchmen to scrub nations and despise nationalism is the work of Old Slewfoot.

When we turn to the Gospels the final words of Jesus are concerned with making disciples of whole nations. Matthew 28:

18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

20 Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

Nations do not go away. It is sin to seek to eliminate nations by lobbying to unnaturally hybridize people groups and ethnicities and it is sin made all the heavier to condemn people who note the clear and obvious teaching of Scripture all because of the current zeitgeist which seeks to bleed all colors into one.

When we turn to the book of the Acts of the Apostles we see twenty-eight chapters chronicling the work of the Apostles in seeking to disciple the nations. From Judea, to Samaria, to the nations that lay at the “ends of the earth,” the Apostles seek to disciple nations as nations. One of the last things we hear about St. Paul is his desire to disciple Spain. Romans 15:28:

So after I have completed this service and safely delivered this bounty to them, I will set off to Spain by way of you.

Further in Romans we are confronted with Nations and feelings of fealty (Nationalism) for one’s own ethnic people. Chapter 9:

1 I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit,

2 That I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart.

3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my racial kinsmen

4 Who are Israelites…

19th century Presbyterian Charles Hodge makes our point for us in his Romans 9 commentary when he elucidates the phrase “Brethren according to the Flesh”:

Paul had two classes of brethren; those who were with him the children of God in Christ; these he calls brethren in the Lord, Philip, i. 14, holy brethren, &c. The others were those who belonged to the family of Abraham. These he calls brethren after the flesh, that is, in virtue of natural descent from the same parent. Philemon he addresses as his brother, both in the flesh and in the Lord. The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles and impulses of our nature. It therefore approves of parental and filial affection, and, as is plain from this and other passages, of peculiar love for the people of our own race and country.

Hodge encapsulates in one paragraph what we have been laboring to demonstrate. God loves Nations and expects us to be Nationalists in the very best biblical sense of that idea.

Paul continues in I Timothy 5:8:

But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

This passage is relevant because all nations are families which expand and enlarge over time and generations. Because of this, the despising of nations is merely the despising of family written large. Here St. Paul sets forth the priority that must exist for one’s own family, and beyond that to one’s own ethnicity, and beyond that to one’s own race.

19th century liberal Albert Barnes supports our observation in his commentary on this passage:

The words “his own,” refer to those who are naturally dependent on him, whether living in his own immediate family or not. There may be many distant relatives naturally dependent on our aid, besides those who live in our own house.

And specially for those of his own house – Margin, “kindred.” The word “house,” or “household,” better expresses the sense than the word “kindred.” The meaning is, those who live in his own family. They would naturally have higher claims on him than those who did not. They would commonly be his nearer relatives, and the fact, from whatever cause, that they constituted his own family, would lay the foundation for a strong claim upon him. He who neglected his own immediate family would be more guilty than he who neglected a more remote relative.

He hath denied the faith – By his conduct, perhaps, not openly. He may be still a professor of religion and do this; but he will show that he is imbued with none of the spirit of religion, and is a stranger to its real nature. The meaning is, that he would, by such an act, have practically renounced Christianity, since it enjoins this duty on all.

And in his commentary on the same passage, 17th century conservative Albert Poole concurs:

By his own he means all of a man’s relations, his family or his stock.

(‘Stock’ being the preferred synonym for “race” in Poole’s day.)

When we turn to the Apocalypse of John we find Nations littered everywhere. Space does not permit us to mention every instance. Rev. 7:9:

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands…

When this passage is read in light of all that has been teased out before then it is past obvious that these nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues are to be considered as gathered in their nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues. The Lord Christ sends forth His spirit to collect people in the context of their ethnic and cultural identity – together won to Christ — not only individually but also collectively as Peruvians, Japanese, Hutus, Frenchmen, etc. There is no indication in Revelation that the Church is present in an undifferentiated mass of humanity.

Again, in Revelation 21:26:

And they (the respective Kings) shall bring the glory of the nations into it, into the new Jerusalem.

Dutch Reformed minister Doctor Klaus Schilder comments on this:

The universality of this covenant requires that not one race or people be left out. Yet during the old Testament times there was one nation singled out of the many as the chosen people, such separation was but an ad-interim. We may look upon the covenant as then on march toward fulfillment, towards times when all nations from the uttermost parts of the earth would belong to the covenant.

Schilder is telling us here that while there is one covenant and so one church that one covenant and one church has within it distinct and differing people and nations. This is just what we would expect from a God who is both One and Many in His essence. God Himself is One and Many and so the Church of Jesus Christ is likewise One and Many. One body … distinguishable parts. Unity in diversity.

Finally, in the very last chapter of Revelation:

1 And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

2 In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Here we see Eden restored. The tree of life as it was in the garden is in the New Jerusalem – in the eschaton. In this Eden fully realized the tree of life is present to heal – not merely individuals – but whole nations. The redemption that Christ brings is a Redemption that is not only individual but especially National. Nations are redeemed and so the current attempt to denigrate the integrity of Nations or to despise social order Nationalism is overwhelmingly contrary to the explicit teaching of Scripture as examined in these last two articles.

From the Pentateuch to the books of history, to the books of wisdom to the Prophets to the Gospels-Acts to the Epistles to the Apocalypse all the Scripture screams God’s desire and delight in nations as His revealed social order for the world. This desire and delight of God in Nations thus implies His desire and delight in Biblically informed nationalism.

In future entries in this series, I hope to answer anticipated objections. I also hope to demonstrate where the false teaching that God desires a global internationalism Christianity originates. That entry will seek to provide the errant philosophy which is driving this hatred of nations and nationalism.