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Dr. Sean Michael Lucas …. “I am actually happy that the majority is governing (in DC)”

I’m not exactly sure what you’d expect (Speaker) Ryan to do (in terms of the omnibus bill). Governance is about compromise. The GOP doesn’t have a filibuster proof majority; the “freedom caucus” has bolted from him again; and so he had to work with Pelosi to finish the job. (I am) not surprised and (I am) actually happy that the majority is governing and not simply trying to shut things down like Ted Cruz.

Dr. Sean Michael Lucas

Dr. Lucas is a minister in the PCA and does some teaching at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He’s also written a biography on Dr. R. L. Dabney. I encourage you to go to Amazon to read the reviews of his book. Now before we get to far into this, let us remind ourselves what was in this omnibus bill that Speaker Ryan “compromised” on and which Dr. Lucas has expressed his happiness concerning a governing majority.

The omnibus bill that Speaker Ryan passed via compromise with Pelosi, included,

1.) The continued funding of Planned Parenthood

2.) Quadruples H-2B Visas … thus bringing more immigrants to take American jobs.

3.) fails to defund other harmful regulations, including the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule that has been fairly described as “ObamaCare for your IRA”.

4.) Major amendments to protect Americans against abuses of government surveillance authority were stripped from the bill for the second consecutive year. These included limitations on the government’s content collection authority under section 702 of FISA, and a prohibition on the NSA working with the National Institute of Standards in Technology to weaken internet encryption standards.

5.) Increases Government spending… again. This time by 80 billion over two years. I know … I know … chump change.

6.) $1.2 billion in new funding for the Department of Education,

7.) What amounts to a bailout of the International Monetary Fund, by increasing the U.S. quota for that fund. This means the IMF will have access to even more of our taxpayer dollars to fund bailouts of irresponsible state actors such as Greece.

8.) The Cybersecurity Act of 2015. To begin with, this nearly 140-page, brand new program should be considered on its own, not tucked into a massive bill no one really has time to fully read. This bill is the final product of mashing together the Senate’s CISA bill and the House’s two bills, and manages to contain most of the worst provisions of each of them.

Now let’s start by asking, in what world can a Doctor the Church (in this case Dr. Sean Michael Lucas) be happy where a governing majority votes to fund an organization that is killing unborn babies in such a way as to preserve certain body parts in order to sell those parts on the market? On this point alone Dr. Lucas’ happiness is mind boggling for a follower of Christ to consider.

Secondly, I’m sure unemployed Mississippians in Dr. Sean Michael Lucas’ Church would like to have some of those jobs that Dr. Sean Michael Lucas finds happiness in via the majority that is governing.

I could go on here to mention how the Department of Education is destroying America and ask how the increase of funding of that Department is reason for anyone to be happy about governing majorities. I could ask how a Doctor of the Church (in this case Dr. Sean Michael Lucas) finds happiness in governing majorities when those governing majorities vote to increase the Stasi like surveillance culture in which we currently live. I could ask many more questions here of Dr. Sean Michael Lucas.

However, what I really want to pursue here is how it is that someone like Dr. Sean Michael Lucas can be reputed to be Theologically conservative while appearing to be politically liberal. (I mean how else should I take this quote above except as coming from someone who sanctions the liberal agenda which the omnibus bill represents?) It seems to me that a person’s Theology is expressed via everything they weigh in on, including politics. I promise you, that politically speaking, this quote is either very liberal or was written while having some kind of physical episode. Aside from the art of contradiction, how can one be theologically conservative while politically liberal?

Did Dr. Sean Michael Lucas ever consider that there might have been a reason why the “freedom caucus bolted” from Speaker Ryan. Maybe that reason was because the omnibus bill didn’t represent … oh, let’s say …. freedom? One more thing, Dr. Sean Michael Lucas, when it comes to shutting down the Government that is something the President does, not Ted Cruz or the House. The President, by vetoing appropriation bills sent to him at that point chooses to shut down the Government. A little civics 101 on the cheap there Dr. Sean Michael Lucas.

And about the compromise which Dr. Sean Michael Lucas says governance is about, just ask yourself, if you’re a Christian, when is the last time the pagan left ever compromised? Did the pagan left compromise on Obamacare? Did the pagan left compromise on the stimulus package? Did the pagan left compromise on “fast and furious”? Did the pagan left compromise in the IRS Lois Lerner scandal? Did they compromise in being forthright with the Benghazi disaster? When has the pagan left ever compromised Dr. Sean Michael Lucas?

I asked some of these questions to Dr. Sean Michael Lucas but he responded by saying he was not going to engage me and asked me not to take offense. I told him I didn’t take any offense in the slightest, but now you know why Dr. Sean Michael Lucas didn’t want to engage me.

On a different front to Dr. Sean Michael Lucas’ opinions, and pertaining to the politics of what has happened with the omnibus bill it is important to know that Republicans have made a political calculation that they need a new base and as such they are repudiating their former conservative base. They are reasoning that the threat of losing their conservative base is less of a threat than shutting down the Government over conservative principle. Now Doctors of the Church like Dr. Sean Michael Lucas may be happy about this majority governance but I think it portends dark times for the ethic called for in biblical Christianity.

Impact of Obamacare & Obamagration On WASC’s

Obamacare and Obama-Immigration (Obamagration), which are a reflection of New World Order policy, are WASC (White Anglo Saxon Christian) destruction mechanisms against the WASCS aimed at those generationally ahead of me and those generationally behind me. Obamacare will kill the WASC elderly by depriving them of health. My Mother, my Aunts and Uncles are targeted by Obamacare. Deprivation of needed treatment, needed medicines and needed assistance, culminating in eventual death panels are in their future.

Obamagration is planned so as to eliminate the WASC identity of my Grandchildren and great grandchildren. Obamagration is the attempt to wipe out WASC seed to a thousand generations by the means of forcing assimilation upon WASC’s with those coming from non Western, Non-Christian lands. If, in two generations, there remains a WASC presence in America that generation will be treated the way South African Boers are treated now. (See Illiana Ilana Mercer‘s book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot.)

In point of fact, I would argue that both Obamacare and Obamagration, as the cost and impact of each falls negatively, proportionally speaking, on the WASC community, is the attempt to genocide. Obamacare and Obamagration combined are, by the definition of the United Nations, genocide,

“Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

One ironic aspect of all this is that it is WASP’s who will be paying for their own destruction as the transfer of wealth is going from their pockets to the pockets of those being enriched by Obamacare and Obamagration via taxation.

Obama came saying he was going to “fundamentally transform America.” Well, this is happening via his signature legislation of health-care and his criminal activity on immigration. Obama, as a NWO puppet, is seeking to kill off the Christian White majority in this nation.

People who can not or will not see this are not wise or worse yet, contributors to their own deaths and to the death of a whole people group.

Obama and NWO … thy name is DEATH for the Christian white man

Critical Theory

Having co-opted, if not actually invented, the “social sciences”, cultural Marxism and Critical theory seek to legitimize their attempted murder of beautiful facts with a gang of brutal theorems, each one more beguiling than the last, iron fists in velvet gloves, grimacing skulls beneath seductive skins.

Michael Walsh
The Devil’s Pleasure Palace — pg. 49

Cultural Marxist, “Critical theory,” was first practiced by Satan in Genesis 3 when Satan, later to be echoed by Herbert Marcuse, diabolically asked Eve, “hath God really said,” thus implying that God’s legislative Word was not authoritative. As such Critical theory, in its origin, is the methodology of regions sulfuric. The Frankfurt school’s “Critical Theory,” exists to challenge existing Western civilization traditional standards by means of questioning what it styles as the “power structures” which hold sway just by means of longstanding dictatorial and tyrannical authority. “Critical theory,” seldom offers anything constructive, preferring instead just to point out the “unfairness,” of existing cultural arrangements. Critical theory, thus, holds that there is no received civilizational tenet that should not be questioned and attacked. All the former totems, shibboleths, and taboos having descended from the Christian West are challenged as completely arbitrary, or are the result of a conspiracy of power to keep the perverted, the feminist, and the anti-Christ down.

The lie in “Critical theory” is found the fact that it refuses to hold itself to the same standard that it holds all that it beats down. Critical theory complains about the unfair power structures that provide hegemonic control over culture but it fails to note that Critical theory itself has become the supportive tool of a power structure that desire to establish a new hegemony. Critical theory props up a sodomite agenda, a feminist dominance, and a satanic culture in the name of an egalitarianism that favors the hegemony of nihilism.

It’s methodology is just to criticize the hell out of whatever it desires to pull down. If it desires to pull down classical literature it will complain about the prevalence of White Christian males in the corpus of great Western Literature and will offer, in place of a standard cultural literacy, unheard of Lesbian amputees who wrote as members of some pygmy tribe in Africa. If it desires to pull down historic legal-theory it will complain that law order has presupposed an oppressive transcendent Christian god and that other law orders reflective of Totem Pole Aztecs who were wrongly shunted ought to be considered as just as legitimate as that law order that has been in the ascendancy in the Christian West for centuries. If it desires to pull down the Christian model of the biblical and traditional family it will first mis-characterize patriarchy by faulting it in Adorno’s “Authoritarian Personality,” as being unhealthy, insane, and dysfunctional by definition. Once the Christian family was deconstructed all other family forms could be introduced as legitimate. The consequence is family is no longer defined with the consequence that every imaginable perverted combination is introduced as “family.” Whatever the target the secret in Critical theory is just to rip and tear down.

Cultural Marxism and Critical theory has been so successful due to the fact that they never go on the defensive. The mode of the this school of thought is to attack, attack, attack. It excels in putting its opponents on the defensive by screaming injustice, while often mocking its opponents view. The reason it has been so successful as a tactic is because the West has forgotten the whys and wherefores of its belief system. Having for so long assumed its position, it no longer has the means and arguments to defend its position let alone go on the attack against Cultural Marxism and Critical theory pointing out and mocking its own contradictions and sheer utter silliness. Critical theory is a foundational-less and toothless paper tiger and if handled rightly it can be exposed as absurd almost instantaneously.

Until Christianity can produce apologists and worldview thinkers again the consequence will be that Cultural Marxism with its Critical theory will sweep everything in its path.

Revelation 12:1-5f Advent #1 Sermon — 2015

And so we come to Advent. The word “Advent” is the English version of the Latin word “Adventus,” which is in turn a word Translated from the Greek world Parousia.” Taken literally they all mean “coming.” In Western Churches this has traditionally been a time where there emphasis is on waiting and preparation as we recall the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the West Advent has largely become a matter of Aesthetics and contemplation accompanied by certain traditions. And of course both Aesthetics and contemplation, as well as Traditions are important in the life of the Church and the individual believer.

In Church History Advent was a time when new Christians would prepare themselves for their coming Baptism which was held during the January feast of Epiphany. As such Christians, who were to be baptized during Epiphany spent the 40 days of Advent in penance, prayer and fasting to prepare to be clothed with Christ in Baptism.

Our customs for Advent are all rather sentimental. We have our Advent calendars and open the little boxes everyday to read the Scripture verse. We have our various Nativity scenes that we unpack every Advent with the Shepherds, and Three Wisemen, and with one Donkey and one Cow, plus a few hanging Angels over the little framed barn house. We have the lighting of Advent Candles in Church and the Advent decorations in our Churches and I am not opposed to any of that. In point of fact I think these Traditions provide a positive good UNLESS it is forgotten that Advent is also a time to remind ourselves that the Advent of the Lord Christ was the coming of D. Day for all those who oppose the Reign and Rule of the Lord Christ. Advent is not merely about

“Away in the Manger,
No crib for a bed
The little Lord Jesus
Lay down His sweet head.”

It is not merely about a sentimentalized Jesus. It is also about the rightful heir to the throne being born and the subsequent attempts made upon His life in order to try and keep Him coming into His rightful inheritance. It is about the intent of the Great God to incarnate Himself in order to remove all the false pretenders to the Cosmic throne. It is betrayal, battle and bloodshed. It is about apparent defeat followed by certain irresistible victory. It is about the Lord Christ putting His feet upon the neck of His enemies as the Great Triumphant Sovereign overall.

It is about, in the words of the “Dream of the Rood,”

the young hero (who was God Almighty)
Got ready, resolute and strong in heart.
…the warrior embraced the cross

Advent is God’s invasion campaign to finish what He had promised to do in Genesis 3 when He promised the battle that would result as a consequence of His intent to reverse the Fall. Speaking to the Serpent God said,

¹⁵I will put enmity (hatred — warfare) between you and the woman,
and between your offspring^[e] and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”

During this Advent season we want to begin with examining the Advent that is Invasion. We could look @ Genesis 3 for that which we just quoted but let’s return to the passage read this morning.

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter…And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. (vv. 1-5, 7-9)

Philip Yancey, in his book, “The Jesus I Never Knew,” writes, I have never seen this version of the story on a Christmas card. Yet it is the truer story, the rest of the picture of what was going on that fateful night. Yancey calls the coming of Christ, “a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s seat of evil.”

This is why earlier we referred to the Advent of Christ as D-Day.

Yancey continues,

“It is almost beyond my comprehension too, and yet I accept this notion is the key to understanding Christmas and is, in fact, the touchstone of my faith. As a Christian I believe we live in parallel worlds. One world consists of hills and lakes and barns and politicians and shepherds watching their flocks by night. The other consists of angels and sinister forces and the whole spiritual realm. The child is born, the woman escapes and the story continues as we find in Revelation 12:17

Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring – those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (Rev. 12:17)

You see, Advent is a time that pronounces God’s storming of the beaches, as it were, to reclaim, that which is rightly His. But inasmuch as we belong to the Great King we ourselves are caught up in this Warfare. God’s fulfillment of His word in OT prophecy means war and Advent means the coming of War with the coming of the Christ child.

We turn to the Revelation 12 text now, and while most of the rest of the message will concentrate on the Warfare of Christ and His victory we must keep in mind that His Warfare was anticipatory of His people continuance in that same Warfare. In the words of David Chilton from his book, “Days of Vengeance,”

“The Dragon is fighting a losing battle, for he has already been defeated at the Cross and at the Tomb. There is not a square inch of ground in heaven or on earth, or under the earth where there is peace between the Serpent and the seed of the Woman, and Christ has already won overwhelmingly, on every front. Ever since Christ’s ascension, world history has been a mopping up operation. The Church militant, so long as she is the Church obedient, will be the Church Triumphant as well.”

In turning to Revelation 12 we are mindful that we pivot to a distinct change in Revelation. Whereas 1-12 is concerned with the viewpoint from the throne of the King of heaven who avenges His people and conquers His enemies, Chapter 12-22 reveals the Church in conflict with infernal and worldly principalities but who triumphs over her enemies and then appears the wife of the Lamb.

As we read Revelation we keep in mind that Revelation is Apocalyptic literature. It is not History though it touches History. It is not Poetry, though there is poetry in it. It is Apocalyptic literature and that means a great amount of symbolism, most of which is drawn from the Old Testament. Indeed there is no understanding Revelation without knowing your Old Testaments.

The Church is seen in Revelation 12 as being a Woman clothed with the Sun … (vs.1)

This woman adorned in celestial apparel we believe is the Church as a whole, and Mary as considered individually. The idea of a Woman as being an image for the Church is everywhere seen in Scripture. Sometimes in a flattering way and sometimes in a not so flattering way. This imagery of Woman as Church is something that would have made an immediate connection in the minds of the recipient of this letter for this is the language of the Scripture which they knew so well.

(Cmp. Isaiah 26; 49-50; 54; 66; Jer. 3-4; Lamentations 1; Ezekial 16; Hosea 1-4; Micah 4)

Like a pregnant woman
who writhes and cries out in her pangs
when she is near to giving birth,
so were we because of you, O Lord;

____________

Woman forgetting her nursing child

___________

Micah 4 — Daughter of Zion

__________

So here you have this Woman celestially clothed. I believe the thrust of all this celestially clothing is just to communicate how glorious this Woman is. In the Song of Solomon the Bride is spoken of in a similar vein,

Who is this who looks down like the dawn,
beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun,
awesome as an army with banners?”

And this Woman is with Child.

That all this is published in Heaven I take as a way to communicate that it was done openly for all to see and is consistent with the language that the Lord used when speaking to Ahaz about this self same sigh,

¹⁰Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ¹¹“Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”

Well, here is this “high as heaven” sign that Ahaz refused to ask for and it is in connection to the sign that the Lord God eventually gave to Ahaz … the sign that the virgin would be with child.

The fact that all this is pointed towards the Church as Institution and Mary as individual is apparent in vs. 2.

John is giving us a insight into the Cosmic battle going on that was played out with the birth of the Lord Christ.

And Mary, the Individual Woman here, who stands collectively for the Church, is bringing forth the child who will crush the serpent’s head, just as David prefigured all this in severing the head of Goliath from his serpent scaled armored body. Mary is the embodiment of a Church who through the centuries had birthed deliverers who were themselves types of the anti-type real thing … the Lord Christ. This Woman as sign is ultimately Mary but penultimately she is the Church giving birth to delieverers. She is Eve giving birth to Seth, Sarah giving birth to Isaac, Rebekkah giving birth to Jacob, Rachel giving birth to Benjamin, Jochabed giving birth to Moses, and Hannah giving birth to Samuel.

The Old Testament Church was a church laboring and in pain to give birth to the Messiah and the Messianic age and now that this Messiah comes there is the Dragon present to seek to destroy this Deliverer. The Seven heads and ten horns is consistent with the language used in the book of Daniel to describe world Empires that oppose the Kingdom of God.

The idea of the Dragon as Satan is well known theme in Scripture, but as the Woman has both a collective and individual meaning so the Dragon is individually Satan but collectively all the World Empires that have sought to snuff out the Church and the Messiah. Whether referring to Daniel’s 4 Empires that the Kingdom of God destroys (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greeks, Romans) or the referring to Egypt’s Empire long before that sought to destroy the Holy Seed, or whether it is Herod’s desire for securing Empire to kill the male deliverer, the Dragon is Satan individually but also Empires collectively who seek to be God walking on the Earth. The Dragon is the animating force behind every attempt of God’s enemies to crush God’s people.

It is interesting what we see when we combine OT History with this motif of the Church giving birth to deliverers as combined with God’s enemies both individually and as Empire seeking to crush this Church in labor and pain which ends with the Individuals and World Empires having their heads crushed.

²¹But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him (Sisera) and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.

⁵²And Abimelech came to the tower and fought against it and drew near to the door of the tower to burn it with fire. ⁵³And a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and crushed his skull.

5:1 When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. ²Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. ³And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. ⁴But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him.

David & Goliath, Sheba the son of Birchi,

^{Psalm 68:21}But God will strike the heads of his enemies,
the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.

^{Habakkuk 3:13}You went out for the salvation of your people,
for the salvation of your anointed.
You crushed the head of the house of the wicked,
laying him bare from thigh to neck.

Next St. John tells us about the Dragon’s tail. In the words of Farrer, we need to understand this not as astronomy but as Theology.

In Rev. 1:20 John has already associated with Angels with Stars.

The Dragon sweeps 1/3 of the Angels down from the heavens joining in Lucifer’s rebellion. This is consistent with what we find in the NT.

^{II Peter 2:4}For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell^[a]and committed them to chains^[b] of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

Jude 6⁶And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—

The fact that the 2 are saved for every three that falls is in harmony with the idea that Christ, as God’s firstborn, receives a double portion.

¹⁷but he shall acknowledge the firstborn … by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his.

So, we have this Dragon waiting to devour the son of the Woman. This time the Dragon “waiting to devour” the seed is Herod the megalomaniac. Herod’s devouring lust, as the pseudo King of Jews, is seen in his slaughter of the innocent. Another attempt to snuff out, God’s invasion to reclaim His own.

The fact that this is seen as invasion by John and is about displacement of usurpers to the throne in favor of the rightful heir to the throne is seen in the next verse.

⁵She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,

The Church, in Mary, gives birth to the long expected child, who has come to, not only displace the servants of the Dragon, but also to crush the heads of those Dragon Representatives who will not accede to the Crown Rights of the legitimate King.

In explaining this John goes back to the OT.

^{Psalm 2:7}I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
    today I have begotten you.
⁸Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
    and the ends of the earth your possession.
⁹You shall break^[b] them with a rod of iron
    and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Here in vs. 4 St. John collapses the redemptive work of Christ into the incarnation and ascension. The point here is not to bypass the Cross and the Resurrection (those have been mentioned earlier). The point here is to accentuate the failure of the Dragon to consume the Son and the corresponding success of the Son to bridle and rule the Dragon.

John follows the pattern of Psalm 2 where we go from Birth to Victory over the Nations. We learn from this that the goal of the incarnation — the Humility of Christ, was the Ascension — the Exaltation of Christ.

Here we have the inspiration of every successful Western fairy tale. The rightful is King displaced by a usurper. The long rule of tyranny by this wicked usurper King and his line is supported by necromancy and black magic. We see the arising of the rightful King from a line long since thought obliterated. The contest between the seemingly over-matched and overwhelmed true King and his vagabond and unimpressive people — all supported by prophecies of long dead oracles and desert prophets. Victory finally snatched when defeat was thought certain.The enthronement of the True King to rule over His rightful domain and the witness of all the Cosmos to former enemies either kissing the Son or perishing in their way.

Vs, 17,

“Alone of all the Creed, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.”

Civil Marriages and Religious Marriages … An Examination of the Concept

E. Comments and cautions

Before turning to the body of the report, the committee makes the following observations and issues the accompanying cautions about its report: 1. Marriage—Until recently the term marriage could be used without qualifying adjectives to describe at one and the same time a legal status recognized by the state and an ecclesiastically approved covenantal relationship. The two concepts were conflated—not surprisingly, since a single ceremony, often presided over by a minister, initiated and solemnized both relationships.

Our report will distinguish between civil marriage and religious marriage because there is increasing awareness of the distinction between these concepts. Some may question whether it is proper to use the term marriage in the context of monogamous, covenanted same-sex relationships. This report will follow Synod 2013’s use of the term same-sex marriage in its mandate to the committee as well as legal usage in Canada and the United States.

CRC — Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage
(majority report)

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

Lewis Carroll
Alice In Wonderland

1.) Marriage is what God says it is. There is no where in Scripture where we find taught that there are God free zones where man can redefine reality and take up a godlike authority to create via a anthropocentric fiat word.

2.) Hence the artificial and contrived invention of a category designated “civil marriage,” apart from religious premises, is a surd … a no thing.

3.) Keep in mind that where this kind of reasoning lands us is the possibility of all kinds of “civil marriage” which we would be required to accept. Does the State recognize marriage between a Father and his daughter? Then Christians must recognize that in the God absent Civil realm. Does the State recognize marriage between a Farmer and his prize Holstein? Then Christians must recognize that in the God absent civil realm.

4.) What religious authority gives the committee the authority to distinguish between civil marriage and religious marriage? To create such a separate sphere is saturated with religious premises. A “non religious” marriage in a putatively religiously naked civil square is drenched in religious presuppositions and driven by religious considerations. What God, except the God State, authorizes a God free zone?

5.) And yes, all Christians question how the word “Marriage,” which denotes a static meaning of one man and one woman entering a covenantal bond that God has established, can be used instead of one man and one man entering a covenantal bond that God has nowhere established. If the word “Marriage” can be used to mean everything from one man and one woman entering into a covenantal bond that God has established to various and sundry numbers of people having warm fuzzy feelings towards one another wanting a party recognizing their warm fuzzy then the word “Marriage” means nothing.