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In Chapters IV and V Dr. Schlebusch in his book “Assailing the Gates of Hell” gives a brief primer on how the current crisis came to be and then wraps up with giving some of a game plan on how Christians and the Church can go about making war on the gates of hell.

Dr. Schlebusch insists that we are in the current crisis we are in because the Church has gone into a Babylonian captivity. It’s pulpits are given over to the enemy with the result that what is ringing from God’s pulpits across the West is a neo-Gnosticism covered in a slimy coat of “Christianity,” or failing that, the completely innovative “Christianity” called “Radical Two Kingdom Theology.”

Dr. Schlebusch’s theory on neo-Gnosticism is that it shares with ancient Gnosticism a despising of the corporeal realm as combined with a reliance on a esoteric human knowledge that is disconnected from God’s revelation. This results not only in materialism but it also yields a dramatic antinomianism. The materialism in the Church is seen in the attempt to marry theistic-evolution to Christianity such is found in such leftist “Christian” homeschooling companies like “Biologos,” as well as the denial of the visible resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead as found in your garden variety mainline liberal “church.” The antinomianism can be found in the Church by the Dispensational idiotic misinterpretation that “we are no longer under law but under grace,” so that the grace blanket can be pulled over our heads to keep us safe from any threatening reality of the ongoing validity of God’s law. Neo-Gnosticism is basically a peeling away of a new innovative “Christianity” from Christianity so that man remains sovereign on the question of “How Shall We Now Live.”

Schlebusch then spends some time on the curious avowed reality that the materialism of Cultural Marxism is running cheek by jowl with the spiritualism (anti-materialism) of Neo-Gnosticism. Dr. Schlebusch takes a stab at how these two opposite realities can be in league together against the Church. After all, these two are supposed to be mutually exclusive. His answer is to insist that a irrational dualism has entered the Church whereupon opposites kiss in their project to destroy the Church. I think we need here to invoke Dr. Cornelius Van Til’s illustration of the two washwomen who take in each other’s laundry. The anti-materialistic Neo-Gnosticism in the Church serves as a limiting concept washwoman who is checking the limiting concept materialistic washwoman of Cultural Marxism, and vice-versus. In order to have one of these irrationalities in the Church both irrationalities are required to get the Christ denying project off the ground. As such the irrationality of anti-materialistic Neo-Gnosticism is being given life by the irrationality of materialistic Cultural Marxism with the opposite being true as well.

Dr. Schlebusch then goes on to insist that this has paved the way for the entry of Radical Two Kingdom theology into the Church. I think this is one place that I would disagree with Dr. Schlebusch. I would insist that R2K is a form of Anabaptist Neo-Gnosticism and that R2K, along with German Pietism of the last 200 plus years have been the main carriers of Neo-Gnosticism in the modern Church.

Dr. Schlebush goes on to describe R2K with its inherent hard dualism between the grace realm and the common realm. He insists that R2K fails at the doctrine of man’s total depravity as seen on its complete reliance on fallen man’s ability to build social order based on a muscular pagan Natural law theory. Dr. Schlebusch rightly indicts the R2K lobby with being practitioners of a sub-Christianity. (And I think sub-Christianity is being generous.)

Dr. Schlebusch ends this chapter by giving a rousing endorsement to the fact that all of life is underneath the authority of God’s revelation. He also mentions the great hope of the Christian faith that all of life will be redeemed precisely because it is being redeemed. This is nothing but the Reformed maxim that grace restores nature — a maxim that R2K denies with its insistence that nature by definition can’t be restored since it is and always will remain “common.”

I pause here to ask once again … “When will the Reformed denominations route R2K out of their presence?” “When will Reformed Pastors grab a Jesuit trained Seminary Doctor and throw him out on his keister along with the rag tag doctorate groupies who have attached themselves to his star?”

In the last chapter Dr. Schlebusch gives us the roadmap to recovery. First, Dr. Schlebusch insists that we need to give up with the idea that because Christians emphasize the “spiritual” therefore we are not to dirty our hands with the “flesh and blood” things of life. Dr. Schlebusch explodes this false dichotomy explaining that “spiritual” does not mean “ethereal,” or “abstract,” or “physically non-existent.” Dr. Schlebusch rips the entrails out of  Dr. Mike Horton’s insistence that spiritual means that there is no such thing as a “Christian nation.” (See earlier discussion on R2K and neo-Gnosticism above.) Removing the idea from Christianity that because we are spiritually renewed and that because we walk in the spirit that therefore means we don’t dirty our hands with the corporeal that God has given us is one way wherein Christians once again bring the aroma of Christ to all reality.

Dr. Schlebush then turns to the Scripture to give a rousing defense to why the Church has been called to be a storming army attacking the very gates of Hell. This was a section I was absolutely delighted with as Dr. Schlebusch  examines the passage where Jesus promise that the “gates of Hell shall not prevail.” Dr. Schlebusch takes the position that the geographic reality of where the encounter took place is the key to understanding the passage.

Dr. Schlebusch ends by saying our current responsibility in the battle royal set before the Church is to attack, siege, and conquer.  He offers the following advice,

1.) Keep your children … prioritize the family (This means homeschooling.)
2.) Stop engaging in commerce with the enemy
3.) Buy land and books
4.) If at all possible start your own business
5.) If there are no Biblical Churches in your area start one

I want to speak to this one briefly. Starting a Church (we actually need whole new denominations) is something that will require self sacrifice in time and money. If Christians are really going to do such a thing then they need to be prepared to start something like a circuit rider dynamic once again. Christians over vast geographic areas who are seeking to start Churches might pool their money to hire someone who would travel among the varied churches to minister to them. This will not be easy but starting denominations from scratch never are easy.

6.) Be familiar with the martial arts
7.) Try to engage the community in order to gather like-minded indviduals
8.) Be done with the long standing “College” model

I might add here that from the moment our children are born we need to be thinking about how to find godly spouses for them. Too many good children raised in good homes are limited by the marriages they end up contracting. Of course all of this must be given over to God in prayer.

Dr. Schlebusch would have the Church once again be an armory as well as a hospital and gymnasium. The Church must see and understand itself as a conquering army. It needs to quit with the quivering cowardly mindset that sees it’s self as a victim locked up here with the Christian devouring world. It needs to own the mindset that pities the world because they are locked up in this world with us. It is the pagan and Christ-hater who is to be pitied.

It is our enemies who will be assimilated and their resistance is futile.

I had just been called to serve my first Church.

It was a small rural church in deeply rural South Carolina. Jane and I used to say that we had moved to a land that time had forgotten. It was like the area was enchanted with the permanent things not only remembered but continuing to thrive. I used to have to drive to Columbia to work at the Airport and even Columbia, which is hardly a trend setting city, seemed like a jump forward in time.

Of course, when I say it was the land time forgot that is intended as a compliment.

However, that is not to say it was perfect. I could not have been there more than a month when I was called to help with a domestic dispute.

One of the chief families in the congregation had adult sons who owned land  that was contiguous with one another and were thus neighbors. One day some kind of disagreement arose and I was called by one of the wife’s of these brothers to referee the dispute. She told me on the phone that “Everett and Delmar are fixin’ to quarrel and it looks to be blowin’ up a storm.”

I was pretty sure that meant there was tension in the air.

“Surely,” her reasoning was, “this is one reason why we have a minister. Ministers help out with these kinds of problems.”

“No problem,” I thought. This shouldn’t take to long.

I arrived and the two brothers were out on their property line yelling at each other. I don’t even remember what the dispute was about. After about an hour of the passage of time I was still trying to interject and call for calm when Delmar just pivots and leaves. I naturally thought that Delmar had finally just had enough of Everett and had given up in frustration. Turned out that I was wrong about that. I remained trying to talk calm into Everette by giving sound pastoral counsel;

“A soft answer turneth away wrath.”
“The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”
“Do not let the sun go down on your wrath.”

I was just beginning to launch on our duties according to the sixth commandment per the Westminster larger catechism when suddenly, I hear the front door open loudly at Delmar’s place and Delmar, with a determined look on his face, is returning boldly to our position.

Carrying his deer-hunting rifle in his hands.

Not to be outdone Everett instantly skedaddles to his house and quickly returns with his own deer-hunting rifle firmly in tow. Now, they are arguing vociferously once again, only this time as equipped with state-of-the-art deer rifles.

My abilities to defuse a hostile situation was working perfectly.

By this time the coon hounds had suspected that something was afoot with their masters and they were baying intermittently as I pled with both Delmar and Everett to calm down and take their rifles back home.

Johnny Cash lyrics suddenly swept through my head,

“Don’t take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don’t take your guns to town.”

I was pretty sure that I had not skipped class the day in my Pastoral theology class from Seminary wherein we young wannabe ministers were instructed on how to handle such a situation where two brothers were vehemently and irrationally arguing nose to nose while holding their loaded firearms.

Now keep in mind that I was not stranger to domestic disputes. I had seen more than a few ugly ones of my own in the home I grew up in. But what I was witnessing now with the dueling loaded deer rifles was taking domestic dispute to a whole new level for me.

Also keep in mind that I couldn’t have been more than 5-7 years older than these arms wielding siblings. It’s not like I was some kind of generational font of wisdom that they would naturally respect. I was just the new “what does he know” minister in town.

And they were right … I didn’t know nothing. At least nothing about how to bring calm between a Hatfield and McCoy type family feud. In retrospect I knew nothing about a lot of things that ministers should know. I was a true green-horn rookie.

I was sure this was going to end badly. You would’ve had to have been there to understand why I felt that bloodshed was imminent. Let’s just say sturm und drang does not do justice to what I was witnessing. I was confident that my first ministerial attempt at resolving a domestic dispute was going to end up with me in some witness stand for a future murder charge against either Delmar or Everett.

I honestly don’t remember what finally found Everett and Delmar returning to their respective corners. I do remember saying something to the Father of the sons some time later. His laconic reply was first a hearty, “I declare,” followed by a “Yes, they do get ginned up that way from time to time.” That was it. The boys were just ginned up a bit.

I’m pretty confident that when my head hit the pillow that night I was more restless about the incident than either Delmar and Everett who very likely slept the sleep of the innocent that night. In retrospect, for them it was just another incident of sibling rivalry. For me it was, “I could’ve been killed.”

I also remember thinking … “Umm, nobody prepared me for this kind of thing.” And of course the charm of the our new environs was tarnished for awhile.

And naturally enough there were many more future surprises — good and not so good — that were in store for the Michigan Hillbilly in Rural Carolina.