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Recently, a Reformed friend who loves the Church and concerned about its direction, recently sent me the first syllabus you find below. It is pure Cultural Marxism complete with its methodological tools of Critical Race theory and Intersectionality. It is being taught right now at one of the putative flagship Seminaries (Reformed Theological Seminary — Atlanta campus) to students who desire to spend their lives in the ministry in Presbyterian and Reformed Churches. It is taught by one Dr. Sean Michael Lucas. He is the enemy and so the less said beyond that much, the better.

Clearly Dr. Lucas and I cannot both be Christians given the antithesis that lies between the content of our respective and competing Christian faiths. It is possible, of course, that Jesus would not recognize the worldview and faith of either one of us. It is certain however that while we both could be failing to express a biblical content that defines the Christian faith, we both can not be, at the same time, expressing Christianity.

You will find Dr. Lucas’ syllabus listed first. Note his entire reading list are books published after 2000 except for one that was published in 1996. This tells us that whatever it is that Dr. Lucas is teaching is a completely recent discovery as teased out by Academics or by those seeking to profit from the victim culture that Cultural Marxism supports. Below that is a syllabus I’ve drawn up to answer his cultural Marxism as Christianity with a syllabus that reflects the historic position of the West prior to the beginning of WW II or so. Note that two of the books I list were written in the 19^th century while several others are published before 2000.

Almost 100 years ago now the great Dr. J. Gresham Machen published “Christianity and Liberalism.” Machen’s task in that volume was to make the argument that Orthodox Christianity and Liberal Christianity could not be both, at the same time, Christianity proper. We need another book it seems, now 100 years post-Machen that would be titled, “Christianity and Cultural Marxism.” (And maybe another one after that titled “Christianity and R2K.) What Dr. Lucas is pushing in his horrific Seminary course below, is being pushed roundly in the Reformed world from the PCA to the OPC to the SBC to their assorted Seminaries.

Machen was trying to rally the troops with his work. The troops need rallying again or else it is another age of Babylonian captivity for the Church as led by men like Dr. Lucas.

This post looks rather long but it is, for the most part, merely a list of differing books we each would recommend reading to understand the issue of Christianity and race.

I.) SYLLABUS

04HT6210: The Gospel and Race

Dr. Sean Michael Lucas Chancellor’s Professor of Church History

Course description: An introductory exploration of the intersection between the Gospel and racial issues. Attention will be paid to biblical-theological material, the history of race relations especially in the United States, and sociological data. Students will seek to work through these issues toward practical steps for ministry application in their local ministry contexts.

Goals:

1. Introduce the student to biblical-theological material on race, emphasizing God’s mission to forge a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural people in and through Christ.

2. Overview the history of race relations, especially in the United States and focusing on white-black relations, engaging with key voices in the Christian tradition.

3. Begin to use key sociological terminology in thinking about race relations and develop theological constructs for understanding these issues.

4. Suggest practical steps for ministry application in local ministry contexts.

Required texts:

Anthony Bradley, Aliens in the Promised Land: Why Minority Leadership is Overlooked in White Christian Churches and Institutions (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2013); ISBN: 978- 1596382343.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spigel and Grau, 2015); ISBN: 978-0812993547

W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Dover, 2014); ISBN: 978-0486280417

Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); ISBN: 978-0195147070.

J. Daniel Hays, From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (Downers Grove: IVP, 2003); ISBN: 978-0830826162

Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity with Racism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019); ISBN: 978-0310597261

Soong-Chan Rah, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009); ISBN: 978-0830833603

In Pursuit of Gospel Unity: PCA Papers on Racism and Racial Reconciliation (Atlanta: Committee on Discipleship Ministries, 2019); order here: https://www.pcabookstore.com/p-91508-pursuit-of-gospel-unity-pca.aspx

Recommended books:

Richard A. Bailey, Race and Redemption in Puritan New England (New York: OUP, 2014)

Edward Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Marynoll: Orbis, 2013).

David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

Carolyn Dupont, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1970 (New York: New York University Press, 2015).

Korie L. Edwards, The Elusive Dream: The Power of Race in Interracial Churches (New York: OUP, 2008).

Carl F. Ellis, Jr., Free at Last?: The Gospel in African-American Experience (Downers Grove: IVP, 1996); ISBN: 978-0830816873.

Bryan Loritts, ed., Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chicago: Moody, 2014); ISBN: 978-0802411969

Sean Michael Lucas, Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2005).

______. For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America

(Phillipsburg: P&R, 2015).

Peter Slade, Open Friendship in a Closed Society: Mission Mississippi and a Theology of Friendship (New York: OUP, 2009).

Requirements and Grading:

1. Regular attendance and class participation (10%). Since we only have a week-long class, no absences are allowed; because this is a class that will have a number of discussion sessions, full participation in the discussions will be required for full points.

2. Reading (30%). You will be required to read 100% of the required texts. You will fill out a reading report that will disclosed how much of the assigned readings you have read.

3. Reflection papers (35%). You will write seven reflection papers, one on each of the

books (except for Rah, The Next Evangelicalism). Each will be one page and will be turned in at the beginning of the teaching week.

4. Final paper (25%). You will write a five-page critical interaction with Soong-Chan Rah’s

The Next Evangelicalism.

Instructions on particular assignments:

1. Reflection papers (1 page each)

a. For each reflection paper, you will respond to the book assigned by answering the

following question: in what ways did this book inform or correct my understanding of how Christians have or should engage racial relations? b. Do not write more than one page. c. The reflection paper will be written with one-inch margins, double-spaced, 12 point

2. Five-page response paper to The Next Evangelicalism.

• In section one, answer the following question (2-3 pages): in what ways did Rah define white privilege, superiority, captivity, and power (n.b., these words are used interchangeably throughout the book)? Did he see this as positive or negative for global evangelicalism? Give examples to support your answer.

• In section two, answer the following question (2-3 pages): in what ways did Rah’s book inform, instruct, correct, or challenge your understanding of the nature of the church? Did you agree with his insistence on the need for a more thorough embrace of a multi-cultural approach? What practical steps might your local church take to get there? a. The response will be written with one-inch margins, double-spaced, 12 point Times

1. Syllabus — Christianity and Race
   
   Rev. Bret L. McAtee; Pastor – Charlotte Christ the King Reformed Church
   
   Course description: An introductory exploration of the historic understanding of Christianity and social order in Western Civilization. Attention will be paid to Biblical and theological material, the history of race relations especially in these united States, considering also sociological data that pertains to race and Christian social order. Students will seek to work through these issues especially concentrating how the West has tacked away from the historic and Christian understanding towards a cultural Marxist understanding as currently pursued in much of the modern Western Church. The expectation is that such knowledge will lead to a concrete approach to these issues as ministers.
   
   Goals:
   
   1. Introduce the student to biblical-theological material on race, and ethnicity emphasizing God’s delight in distinct nations as seen in Scripture, and in National Churches, grounded in Christ, as seen in Western history.
   
   2. Reading (30%). You will be required to read 100% of the required texts. You will fill out a reading report that will disclosed how much of the assigned readings you have read.
   
   3. Begin to use key sociological terminology in thinking about race relations and develop theological constructs for understanding these issues.
   
   4. Suggest practical steps for ministry application in local ministry contexts.
   
   III.) Required Texts
2. Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation
   
   Patrick Buchanan, The Death of the West; How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization
   
   R. L. Dabney, Defense of Virginia and The South
   
   R. L. Dabney, Secular Discussions
   
   Illiana Mercer, Into the Cannibal’s Pot
   
   Wilmot Robertson, The Dispossessed Majority
   
   R. J. Rushdooney, Politics of Guilty and Pity
   
   Samuel Francis, Race and the American Prospect
   
   Patrick West, Poverty of Multiculturalism IV.) Recommended Books
   
   Ann Corcoran, Refugee Resettlement and the Hjra to America
   
   Ann Coulter, Adios America; The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hell Hole
   
   Colin Flaherty, White Girl Bleed A Lot
   
   Samuel Francis, Essential Writings on Race
   
   E. Michael Jones, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit
   
   Heather MacDonald, The Diversity Delusion
   
   Charles Murray, The Bell Curve; Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
   
   Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone
   
   Jean Raspail; Camp of the Saints
   
   James Simpson, Red Green Axis
   
   Requirements and Grading: 1. Regular attendance and class participation (10%). Since we only have a week-long class, no absences are allowed; because this is a class that will have a number of discussion sessions, full participation in the discussions will be required for full points. 2. Reading (25%). You will be required to read 100% of the required texts. You will fill out a reading report that will disclose how much of the assigned readings you have read. 3. Reflection papers (20%). You will write seven reflection papers, one on each of the books (except for Dabney’s, ”Defense of Virginia and the South”). Each will be one page and will be turned in at the beginning of the teaching week. 4. Final paper (25%). You will write a five-page critical interaction with Dabney’s, ”Defense of Virginia and the South.”
   
   5.) Oral Defense (20%) you will give an oral defense of your Dabney paper to the course instructor. The course instructor will be looking for your understanding of Dabney’s argument as well as non contradictory and cogent arguments where Dabney is disagreed with.
   
   Instructions on particular assignments: 1. Reflection papers (1 page each) a. For each reflection paper, you will respond to the book assigned by answering the following question: in what ways did this book inform or correct my understanding of the impact of Cultural Marxism on the Church today? b. Do not write more than one page. c. The reflection paper will be written with one-inch margins, double-spaced, 12 point 2. Five-page response paper to Defense of Virginia and the South. • In section one, answer the following question (2-3 pages): in what ways did Dabney justify the ante-bellum Souths social order? Interact with his appeal to Biblical authority. Interact with Dabney’s argument from history. Explain how Dabney’s vision could work to the end of Evangelism and discipleship. Interact with the content of the book in your answers.
   • In section two, answer the following question (2-3 pages): in what ways did Dabney’s book inform, instruct, correct, or challenge your understanding of the nature of the new-Calvinism with its emphasis on “equality” and “diversity”? Did you agree with his insistence on the need for a more thorough embrace of homogeneous cultures? What practical steps might your local church take to push back against multi-culturalism and Cultural Marxism? a. The response will be written with one-inch margins, double-spaced, 12 point Times
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

“When he (Martin Luther King) went back to Ebeneezer Baptist his Father set him over Christian Education in order to teach the congregants biblical orthodoxy and the essentials of our faith and so he would not have been able to function in that traditional setting unless he believed in conversion, and in salvation, and in justification and the kind of traditional understandings that we have of salvation in Christ…. King never repudiated the Gospel.”

Rev. Mika Edmonsond
OPC Pastor — Grand Rapids Michigan
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pass-the-mic/id1435500798?i=1000419238513&fbclid=IwAR37pKnxtDPZbHUqAD0QLODxO-3kp2Y1BY6RB2PcIjJBg-AIyjN8tF-vZT0
Start approximately 16 minute mark

Rev. Edmonsond here goes beyond revisionist history and begins to bump into fairy tale history.

The claim that Martin Luther King (MLK) was ever orthodox is past dubious and to claim otherwise means either that the person making the claim is ignorant of the subject matter or that they themselves have some questions to answer when it comes to the meaning of the term “orthodox Christian Faith.”

Somewhere between the end of 1949 and the beginning of 1950 MLK wrote a paper on the Divinity of Christ while attending Crozer Theological Seminary. King would have been somewhere around 21 years old at this time. This paper would’ve been written prior to the reference that Rev. Edmondson makes mentioning MLK’s return to Ebenezer. I reproduce a portion of that paper that proves indisputably that King was most certainly not orthodox during this time. I have not changed any of King’s spelling mistakes.

Begin MLK quote,

“The conflict that Christians often have over the question of Jesus divinity is not over the validity of the fact of his divinity, but over the question of how and when he became divine. The more orthodox Christians have seen his divinity as an inherent quality metaphysically bestowed. Jesus, they have told us, is the Pre existent Logos. He is the word made flesh. He is the second person of the trinity. He is very God of very God, of one substance with the Father, who for our salvation came down from Heaven and was incarnate be the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.

Certainly this view of the divinity of Christ presents many modern minds with insuperable difficulties. Most of us are not willing to see the union of the human and divine in a metaphysical incarnation. Yet amid all of our difficulty with the pre existent idea and the view of supernatural generation, we must come to some view of the divinity of Jesus. In order to remain in the orbid of the Christian religion we must have a Christology. As Dr. Baille has reminded us, we cannot have a good theology without a Christology.⁹ Where then can we in the liberal tradition find the divine dimension in Jesus? We may find the divinity of Christ not in his substantial unity with God, but in his filial consciousness and in his unique dependence upon God. It was his felling of absolute dependence on God, as Schleiermaker would say, that made him divine. Yes it was the warmnest of his devotion to God and the intimatcy of his trust in God that accounts for his being the supreme revelation of God. All of this reveals to us that one man has at last realized his true divine calling: That of becoming a true son of man by becoming a true son of God. It is the achievement of a man who has, as nearly as we can tell, completely opened his life to the influence of the divine spirit.

The orthodox attempt to explain the divinity of Jesus in terms of an inherent metaphysical substance within him seems to me quite inadaquate. To say that the Christ, whose example of living we are bid to follow, is divine in an ontological sense is actually harmful and detrimental. To invest this Christ with such supernatural qualities makes the rejoinder: “Oh, well, he had a better chance for that kind of life than we can possible have.” In other words, one could easily use this as a means to hide behind behind his failures. So that the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my mind quite readily denied. The true significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact that his achievement is prophetic and promissory for every other true son of man who is willing to submit his will to the will and spirit og God. Christ was to be only the prototype of one among many brothers.”

End MLK quote

If MLK was not orthodox on the divinity of Christ then he could not have been orthodox on any other issue from conversion to salvation to justification. An attestation of belief in a non-divine Christ means the person making such a profession is wrong all the way down the line in their soteriological orthodoxy, which is the orthodoxy that Rev. Edmonsond is referencing.

Now, to be fair, seemingly MLK would have affirmed the divinity of Christ but that affirmation, by dint of how MLK is defining the divinity of Christ, is a affirmation that no orthodox Christian for 1900 years prior to the rise of F. C. Baur and the Tubingen school of divinity with their Higher Criticism methodology would have recognized. King’s assertions certainly has never been considered orthodox by the OPC, the denomination that credentials Rev. Edmondson.

Note that MLK denies that Jesus is,

1.) The Pre-existent Logos
2.) The Word made flesh
3.) The 2nd person of the trinity
4.) Very God of Very God
5.) Of one substance with the Father
6.) Incarnated by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary
7.) Of two natures, yet one person
8.) Is anything but a prototype of many humans who will follow in his divine steps


In other words MLK denies Christian orthodoxy and exchanges it for Humanist (Barthian neo-orthodoxy) orthodoxy. Rev. Edmondson tells us that believing that the divinity of Jesus was comprised,

“in his filial consciousness and in his unique dependence upon God. It was his felling [sic] of absolute dependence on God, as Schleiermaker [sic] would say, that made him divine. Yes it was the warmnest [sic] of his devotion to God and the intimatcy [sic] of his trust in God that accounts for his being the supreme revelation of God.”

is Gospel orthodoxy.

I suppose facts no longer matter. It no longer matters what MLK actually believed. It no longer matters that a minister in the OPC says things that are just not true, while also calling into question the very definition of orthodoxy. It no longer matters that large numbers of people will believe podcast assertions that have no anchor in facts.

Just call me old fashioned.

And orthodox to boot.

“In his very first speech on his very first trip to the USA in 1975, the fifty-six year old Solzhenitsy asked the question he wanted to ask Americans most of his adult life. He set it up by comparing America’s historic aversion to alliance with Czarist Russia to Roosevelt’s rush to recognize a far more repressive and infinitely more violent Bolshevik Russian in 1933. Pre-Revolutionary executions, by the Czarist government came to about seventeen per year, Solzhenitsyn said, while, as a point of comparison, the Spanish Inquisition at its height destroyed ten persons per month. In the Revolutionary years of 1918 and 1919, he continued, the Checka executed without trial more than a thousand per month. At the height of Stalin’s terror in 1937-1938, tens of thousands of people were shot per month. The author of the Gulag Archipelago put it all together like so:

‘ Here are the figures: 17 a year, 10 a month, more than 1,000 a month, more than 40,000 a month! Thus, that which had made it difficult for the democratic West to form an alliance with pre-revolutionary Russia had, by 1941, grown to such an extent and still did not prevent the entire united democracy of the world – England, France, the United States, Canada, Australia and small countries – from entering into a military alliance with the Soviet Union. How is this to be explained? How can we understand it?'”

Diana West
American Betrayal — p. 195

How can we understand it… indeed.

The only conclusion that can be offered in light of books like “Blacklisted by History,” and “Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government,” by M. Stanton Evans, “American Betrayal,” by Diana West, “Freedom Betrayed,” by President Herbert Hoover, and “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century,” by Paul Kengor is that the US Government for up to twenty-seven years, from 1933-1961 was a vassal government beholden to Communist interests in the USSR.

The FDR years found Soviet agents thicker than cats on a milking cow with a wounded teat during milking time. From as high up as the un-elected co-President Harry Hopkins, to the #2 man at Treasury (Harry Dexter White) to business consultant on Soviet Affairs (Armand Hammer) to FDR’s attendant at Yalta (Alger Hiss) to the men who turned China Communist (Lauchlin Currie, Owen Latimore) to the General in charge of “Lend-Lease” stationed in Moscow, to scores and scores burrowed deep into the infrastructure at the Department of Agriculture, the State Department, and the Treasury Department as well as being sprinkled generously across the spectrum of Federal Departments. From top to bottom the Federal government was occupied territory.

The answer to Solzhenitsyn’s question as to why the Americans — our Fathers — were so quick to recognize the USSR is because our Fathers were at that time a puppet Government, bought and paid for by our Suzerain, the Bolsheviks. America, for at least twenty-seven years was Soviet occupied territory.

And the consequences?

The consequences was the death of millions and millions of people in the crematorium that was the Communist world. The consequences further was the captivity and enslavement of millions and millions more forever shut off from freedom and civilization by an Iron Curtain that we helped knit and bring down on Eastern and Central Europe as well as China.

The consequences included the self-inflicted damages we did on our own people and times. Because of the lies turned to truth by the alchemy of cover-up, destroyed careers, and outright baldfaced lies our willingness to live by lies told to us by our “leadership,” we turned the idea of truth into a game of “spin the bottle.” Because we divorced facts from implications, knowledge from inevitable conclusions, and logic from judgment we mortally damaged our epistemology to the point that we came to believe that we could live by any reality we decided to create. It is a shorter trip than we think from accepting the Nazis were responsible for the Katyn Forrest massacres despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary to accepting that men also can experience menses cramps.

A people who do not know their history — who have chosen to live by lies — are a people who are easily manipulated as concerns their future. There is a need to let the sunshine of truth blow through our recent history because if we do not it will happen all over again. It is already happening again. Even now we are doing what our Fathers did when they lived by lies in this ear. We are accepting the lies being told to our by our leadership that “Islam is a religion of Peace,” that “Diversity is our Strength,” and that “Climate Change may destroy the planet.” These are all lies and they gain traction in part because for decades now we have been a people who have “lived by lies.”

Mark 11:12-26 / Matthew 21:18-22

18 Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again.” Immediately the fig tree withered away. 20 And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither away so soon?” 21So Jesus answered and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ it will be done. 22 And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”

A miracle is defined as an event that transcends and interrupts natural processes and serves as sign and explanation of the divinity of Christ or as a stamp and imprimatur confirming the Prophetic / Apostolic witness whose ministry is to point to Christ. By this definition miracles have ceased with the close of the New Testament canon.

Of course what is going on in this pericope is not merely a matter of Jesus being irrationally put off with a non-producing fig tree. This much teaches us that the Scripture are not always to be taken literally. There is a good deal going on here that goes beyond Jesus being angry that his hunger was not satisfied by figs.

In order to understand what is transpiring here one needs to remember a larger context.

Luke’s Gospel, in an account that was approximately a year prior to this miracle we find Jesus giving a parable,

Luke 13:6 He also spoke this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it [b]use up the ground?’ 8 But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. 9 [c]And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ ”

At this point we have to identify who it is that the proverbial fig tree represents. Scripture itself gives us the answer.

In Hosea 9:10, Nahum, 3:12, and Zechariah 3:10 we find fig trees and / or figs serving as a symbol for National Israel. This combined with the Luke passage as well as the immediate context (which we will turn to next) convinces us that as Jesus curses this fig tree what is in point of fact happening is that Jesus is cursing National Israel, from whom, up until this point, there was a reasonable expectation, give God’s care and patience, to find fruit – repentance and deeds consistent with God’s law and so in keeping with repentance.

It seems an immediate fruit that was expected was the honoring of God’s name which the Jews were dishonoring as seen in the immediate context with the Temple cleansing episode. A nation producing fruit in keeping with repentance would never have turned the worship of God into a “fleece the dumb sheep” opportunity.

Mark 11:15 So they came to Jerusalem. Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 16 And He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. 17 Then He taught, saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ”

National Israel, who was supposed to produce fruit in keeping with repentance, instead is turning the name of the thrice Holy God into a commodity, and so God is made to be a a being that people sniff at and mock. Israel is a fig tree who is all leaves and no fruit. Israel is all pretense and no reality. Israel is not what it was set aside to be and so now, like the fig tree, Israel has an anathema pronounced over it that is (and this is significant) eternal. The Lord Christ says to National Israel, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again.” Jesus issues a maledictory oath and if we are to take it seriously, this means that National Israel, in 2020 (and beyond), can in no way produce fruit. National Israel, like the fig tree is a withered reprobate dead tree – and that forever.

Before we tease this out let us go on a brief bunny trail to explain a seeming inconsistency. Matthew’s account tells us that Jesus was hungry and strongly implies that Jesus decided to satisfy His hunger by snacking on a fig tree. However Mark’s account of the cursing tells us plainly that it was not the season for figs. So, if Jesus knew it was not the season for figs then why did he expect to find figs and why, upon not finding figs in a season when there were supposed to be figs, did he curse the fig tree? Upon investigation of the habits of fig trees in Palestine we find that fig trees will bud prior to leafing and that the this budding represents small figs that can be consumed before the fig tree leafs and then later produce full grown figs. The small figs guarantee the later appearance of future normal figs. Apparently, the tree that Jesus cursed was transitioning between budding and leaving and on that tree were no tiny figs that were promissory of later normal figs. In other language we might say that the fig tree with its sterile leaves was all hat and no cattle.

So, summarizing, Jesus, on the day following His triumphant entry (Palm Sunday) turns aside to satisfy His hunger by consuming some early figs. Finding only leaves, Jesus pronounces malediction upon the fig tree that it might never produce fruit again. By examining the context, both remote (Hosea 9:10, Nahum, 3:12, Zechariah 3:10 Luke 13) and immediate (Matthew 21 – Cleansing of the Temple), we understand that the Fig tree represents National Israel and the lack of fruit represents that, despite the intense agricultural care for said tree, it is good for only show but not for sustenance. Mark 7:6 gives us a Scriptural summary,

6 He answered and said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:

‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.

Implications

A.) This maledictory oath against Israel fits well with the Partial Preterist understanding that when Jesus returns in AD 70 He finalizes divorce proceedings against National Israel which was essentially promised in the passage under consideration. If Israel will never produce fruit again then it is salt that is only good to be trodden upon. Matthew 21 represents divorce papers filed while AD 70 represents divorce papers served. God is done with National Israel as His people. National Israel are no longer the people of God.

B.) If this is accurate then those who keep insisting that National Israel remains the people of God are practicing what we might call a “Replacement theology.” God in Christ has declared that National Israel is to be eternally fruitless, confirmed that declaration by pulling down its Temple and scattering the survivors to the wind in AD 70, and then referred to phony Israel as a “Synagogue of Satan,” and yet Evangelicals dare contend in the face of all of this that National Israel remains “the people of God?”

Codicil – All because God is done with National Israel as a redemptive agent doesn’t mean that individual sons and daughters of Israel will not know the joy of salvation that is provided in Christ alone. However, said sons of Israel will have to be grafted into Christ as belonging to other covenanted nations.

C.) If this interpretation is correct then this by necessity dismisses Anglo-Israelism as an interpretive option. It is difficult to see how we can fit both the eternal character of the maledictory oath of Jesus against National Israel while at the same time insisting that God still has promises to fulfill to scattered Caucasian Israel.

D.) When the maledictory oath of Jesus is read in tandem with the later self-maledictory oath of Israel in Matthew 27,

24When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but that instead a riot was breaking out, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “You bear the responsibility.”25All the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

one can only conclude that National Israel owns the curse as pronounced by Jesus just a few days earlier. The blood of Jesus does remain upon National Israel and its seed. The fig tree remains cursed.

Remember, this is a people who boldly screamed, “We have no other King but Caesar.”

II.) Application

A.) Since it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God and since judgment always begins with the household of God we, as the Church, as well as those who belong to covenanted nations should be mindful to make our lives characteristically one of ongoing repentance.

B.) This passage reminds us that there are often people who are part of the covenanted people who do not have the essence of the covenant. Not all who profess Christ, posses Christ.

C.) As we are a people who are described as “zealous for good works,” our ongoing repentance still must be characterized as having fruit that is in keeping with that repentance.

D.) We can rejoice that indeed God is producing in us, by the Holy Spirit, fruit in keeping with repentance. We need not to panic over this issue. We must remember how patient God is. What we have looked at here took centuries to arrive at. God was patient with Israel over and over again and He will be patient with us. We must not forget that God is long-suffering towards His people and will not always chide them. We must remember that if we have a heart to repent then God will receive us. When God is done with a people the desire to repent is removed and their hearts are hardened so that the very reality of their unwillingness to repent is a sign that God has cast them off. |

Still, lamp-stands can be removed for a generation or longer in light of fruitlessness.

E.) The Church in the West – as well as many covenanted nations in the West – have been given so many blessings by God in Christ. We need to recall that to whom much is given, much is required. Let us fervently pray that we would once again be a repentant and so fruitful people.

Qualification – Romans 11

Following Vos, we must allow that it is possible that Jesus, when He offered a maledictory oath against Israel that the “you” that was being applied (may YOU never produce fruit again) is referring only to the “you” of that generation of Israel. This understanding would see this generation of National Israel as a branch that was dead which could yet be made alive again in future generations by being grafted back into the olive tree. However, I would say that the self-maledictory oath taken by Israel does somewhat mitigate against this interpretation.

“The days of the policy of ‘the white man’s burden’ are over. Vast masses of people simply are not going to tolerate it and for the life of me I can’t see why they should. We have left little in our trail except misery and poverty for the people whom we have exploited.”

Harry Hopkins — 1941

For those who don’t know, Harry Hopkins was to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), what Col. Edwin House was to President Woodrow Wilson — to wit; a chief adviser and some would say a co-President with FDR. Hopkins was so central to the Roosevelt presidency that he actually lived in the White House with his wife from May 1940 to December 1943. Further, the historical evidence points to the fact that Hopkins, at the very least, was a fellow traveler if not a outright Soviet Union partisan and agent.

This quote is fascinating because it is suggestive that one of the central purposes of WW II, was to strip the White Christian of his authority among the Nations. The wisdom of this policy offered by Hopkins can be measured by the results 70 years later. 70 years later demonstrates that the formerly exploited are in far worse condition now then they were during the age of colonialism.

The whole idea that the Christian white man exploited the third world is a narrative that has been created and sustained by the enemy of the Christian white man. That is not to say that there was never injustice done to inhabitants of the colonized world. It is to say when the risk vs. benefit of colonialism is considered the benefit to third worlders was far greater than the risks they took in having the white man taking up their burdens.

The idea that the Christian white man has left little in his trail save misery and poverty was nonsense when Hopkins said this and it is now pure dumbassery when read almost 80 years later. Yet, we still hear people today make this same type of complaint about the evil of the white man.

I’ll start off by saying Western people in general, and white Americans in particular, have little or no concept of corporate evil or they are actively set against the idea. I think it’s very important for me as a white man to say “Look, that’s wrong.”

Tim Keller
Supporting the “White man is evil narrative”

 “White nationalism is a manifestation of an ancient evil that we as Christians, of all people, ought to recognize immediately. White nationalism emerges from what the Bible calls “the way of the flesh.” This is a form of idolatry that exalts one’s own creaturely attributes, making a god out of, for instance, one’s ancestral origins or one’s tribal culture.”  

Russell Moore
Supporting the idea of the White Nationalism is evil

What was controversial when Harry Hopkins spoke it in 1941 has become de rigueur in the pulpits of “conservative” American pulpits across the country. The premise behind all these words is that the white man has “left little in his trail except misery and poverty for the people whom we have exploited.”

Because this narrative has been established the Christian white man has been loaded with false guilt that cannot be atoned for, even if it were true, by the finished work of Jesus Christ, but can only be atoned for by bowing and scraping to leftist minorities (no Biblical minority would ever believe any of this or expect his white Christian brothers to bow and scrape before him), by impoverishing ourselves for the sake of reparations, and by coming underneath the whip hand of the stranger and the alien in our own homeland.

And if these people are successful then what will happen here is what has happened in South Africa. Illiana Mercer has warned us in her book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” but still the Christian white man continues to believe this false narrative that the white man is exploitative leaving nothing but a trail of poverty and misery.

The Christian white man is the best thing that has ever happened to the non-Caucasian world, and that not due to the fact that he does not have a sin nature. The Christian white man has been the best thing that has ever happened to the non-Caucasian world only because of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.