McAtee Queries Piper

“Jesus strikes the note that the dominant (not the only) way Christians will show the supreme value of our treasure in heaven is by being so freed from the love of this world and so satisfied with the hope of glory that we are able to love our enemies and not return evil for evil, even as we expect to be wronged in this world.”

Dr. John Piper
Should Christians Be Encouraged to Arm Themselves? — 
2015

Bret responds,

a.) Why would Dr. Piper suppose that self defense means that those defending themselves no longer have as their supreme value our treasure in heaven? All because we take the 6th commandment seriously does it, therefore, mean that we are not freed from the love of this world?

b.) Why would Dr. Piper think, that firing a weapon in defense of the judicially innocent against the wicked, who would unjustly and without biblical warrant take the life of children and women, be an example of returning evil for evil?

c.) Why would Dr. Piper think that because we expect to be wronged in this world therefore we should do everything we can to facilitate being wronged in this world? When Dr. Piper is wrongly accused of some heinous crime he committed while doing counseling does he not defend himself against such accusations because he expects to be wronged in this world?

d.) I would insist, in keeping with the 6th commandment, that when we return fire upon evil men seeking to take the lives of the judicially innocent we are at that point most certainly not returning evil for evil but are returning good for evil.

Barth on Genesis & Unhistorical History

“When the Bible speaks of the creation of man it does not refer to history as such. The relationship between object and subject that obtains in ordinary history does not obtain in the Genesis account. So we have to speak of unhistorical history.”

Karl Barth
From CVT — The New Modernism — pg. 407

Now the obvious question is; ‘Why does it not obtain?’

And the answer per Barth and all neo-orthodox is because Genesis is Geschichte and not Historie. One must understand that when reading the modern liberal Geschichte is non-temporal saga history that is not history as we normally understand it.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends … Enter Rev. Sacha Walicord

File Under; There remain 7000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
Also; This is pointed at R2K.

“The Greek term used for ‘all nations’ in the Great Commission (I mention this because there is so much hostility against optimism.) The term used (in Matt. 28) is ‘ethne.’ The word that you use in the English word ‘ethnic.’ It is, by no means, to be understood, in the sense of a few individuals from every nation. but in the sense of cultures. This term is used in the Greek language regularly to denote masses or aggregates of people bound together by a cultural identity. So instead of all nations, it would probably be good to read ‘all cultures.’ All of them. Christ’s claim here is extremely counter-cultural. It is not individualistic. It is not geared towards some individuals here or there. No, he is speaking about aggregates, about cultures, about masses of people bound together by a common culture. He is also not only speaking about governments or states. No, He is throwing, He is spreading His net far broader … cultures. Not some of them but all of them. With ‘all nations,’ He means the conversion and the discipling of the whole human race and all of its cultural and social endeavors and not just to getting a few individual decisions for Jesus, here and there and the third place. Christ hereby directly contradicts the common pessimism and defeatism that we see among so many Christians today.

I am telling you, it is the worst disease that we are facing right now in our churches — pessimism — constant pessimism as if optimism would be somewhat unholy … somewhat un-pious. It reminds me of the old ladies in my homeland who are Roman Catholics. They think that they always have to look sad because it is somehow more pious if you are sad. And if you are pessimistic you are humbler.

‘Oh, everything is so bad.’

‘Oh, come soon Lord Jesus.’

Of course, that is a comfortable way out isn’t it? Because the moment that my eschatology looks disastrous like this I stop fighting. I stop witnessing. I stop the mission’s endeavor. I stop everything. I have a wonderful cop out all the while feeling extra holy too.

Whose old man wouldn’t like that? And that is why it is so popular in our circles. Always to talk hell into the world. Always to look very sad and very very tortured.

And as soon as somebody sticks his head out and says, ‘NO, we have got to fight for Jesus Christ,’ they say, ‘O you’re a triumphalist.’ Call it what you want. It is biblical because if Jesus Christ sits on the throne then I am a justified triumphalist, because — and I ask you again — who rules in heaven and on earth? Not Satan. Not politicians but Jesus Christ.

You have to explain to me how it can be that with the coming of Jesus Christ things start going suddenly downhill. Everything goes bad? Why wouldn’t it have been better if he never was enthroned if everything was better before His coming?

NO! He sits there because He was enthroned and before He leaves this world He gives us this Great Commission and says, ‘go fight, don’t wimp out.’

And we say, ‘No, Lord, we don’t want to sound presumptuous because we are so humble — we are so pessimistic. We think it is really holy Lord. You don’t understand.’

And God says, ‘NO! Fight! Be a man. Act like men, not like babies. The church in our day and age acts like babies. Like such flimmer flammers. Like a bunch of whiners.

And it is not only that they’re (the church) so pessimistic, it’s also that when someone is optimistic he must be shot down. You can deny the trinity and get away with it rather than being optimistic because then you are a triumphalist, you’re presumptuous, and we have become so comfortable in our defeatism.

Christ contradicts here the very truncated missions endeavor of much of contemporary evangelicalism that only focuses, at best, at the conversion of scattered individuals and ignores cultures completely. We are so pessimistic we do not expect the Gospel to have any cultural implications. That is the sin of pietism. Of escapism. Of ‘running-away-ism.”

Rev. Sacha Walicord
Pastor — Walker URC

Note: I quibble only with his definition of nations = cultures preferring to see instead that nations are common cultures because they are common blood. See definition of ethne in Thayers.

Random Thoughts on the Regnant Follies

1.) I’ve been doing more reading on Critical Race Theory while viewing some videos from College Campuses where Critical Race Theory is being touted. I’ve viewed the “Enemies within the Church” film documentary and have listened to some more podcasts on the subject. The thing I am finding amazing is that this stuff is blanketing the heretofore considered Christian Colleges and Universities. Indiana Wesleyan University is down the drain. Calvin College is down the drain. Grove City College is circling the drain. Dort college is circling the drain. Taylor University, Wheaton College, Moody, Southern Baptist Seminary, South-Eastern Baptist Seminary, etc. etc. etc. are all either going, going more, or are gone done the drain.

Now, the interesting thing here is that this is happening regardless of the denominational or theological stripe. It is so bad out on this score that I am convinced that I could instantly switch out and exchange faculties say from Calvin University (putatively Calvinist) and Indiana Wesleyan University (putatively Arminian) and no one would notice the content difference in what would be taught now by the new faculties in their pretend new settings. So, the question that must be raised is … is there any real difference between the worldview created by embracing Calvinism as it touches the humanities and Arminianism as it touches the humanities? Alternately, (and I suspect what is really going on) is it the case that these putative Christian Universities are really agreed despite their denominational and theological labels because what they are really teaching is pure Cultural Marxism in terms of world and life view.

I suspect that a minister trained at Calvin University and a minister trained at Indiana Wesleyan University would be spouting much the same thing in their respective pulpits and I suspect no one would have a clue about whether they are Arminian or Calvinist from their preaching. Same ole, same ole. White privilege blah blah blah. Intersectionality blah blah blah. Critical Race Theory blah blah blah. Racism blah blah blah. Black Lives Matter blah blah blah. And the beat goes on… and the beat goes on ad nauseam.

It has gotten to the point that even though there may be different denominational proclamations on the Church signs it is the case that all of these churches (generally but not universally speaking) are of the same persuasion and so in a defacto sense they are of the same denomination. Whether it is Nazarene, Reformed Baptist, Presbyterian Church of America, Southern Baptist, Christian Reformed  Church, etc. it just doesn’t matter since they are all dishing out the same Cultural Marxist shizer.

2.) In one of the videos I viewed of a chapel service at Grove City College, Jemar Tisby was waxing eloquent on how the issues brought up by Critical Race theory are the new Civil Rights movement. Tisby appealed to the great work of those Civil Rights marchers once upon a time and told the gathered students that the way they treat the Critical Race Theory push would have been the same way that they treated the Civil Rights movement.

Now, the Civil Rights movement has become a touchstone of American orthodoxy for the generations born since 1945 or so. John MacArthur tells stories that give him street cred with the Civil Rights movement.  I’ve also heard other high profile Ministers boast about how they were with the Civil Rights marchers.

Let it be said here that we would not be where we are now with Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter if it had not been for the success of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Let it be said here that the Civil Rights movement was instigated and anchored by the Communist Party USA and sold to the American people by the Marxist media just like that same media is selling the Deep State virus lie and the need for the Great Reset to the American people today. The Civil Rights movement pushing for equality and the push for equity today was never about equality and equity. It was always about first diminishing and now displacing the Christian white man and his world and life view.

Get a copy of “The Bondage of the Free,” by Kent Steffgen if you can and have your eyes opened about the now sainted Civil Rights movement. If people did some digging on the Civil Rights movement they wouldn’t automatically get misty-eyed when Jemar Tisby mentions it.

3.) She teaches your kiddies at Calvin University

“I should have a better answer but for me, it wasn’t one source (that brought me to this point) but years spent reading social & cultural histories … histories of gender (from authors like) Foucault, Gramsci, Adorno, Habermas, learning to be curious how the works, works.”

Kristin Du Mez

Author — Jesus & John Wayne; How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

For those not familiar with those names Ms. Du Mez cites allow me to inform you that they are each and all, saving Foucault, Cultural Marxists and Foucault is one of the chiefs among the pomos.

Christian college students forced to sit through chapel services that find CRT speakers in the pulpit should stand and denounce the chapel speaker and the subject. They should keep doing so once one student is removed for standing and denouncing. Once one is removed and order restored another immediately pops up and says the speaker is Anti-Christ.

If enough of that happens combined with parent pressure the smell of change will be in the air on campus.

4.) Mass formation Psychosis (you’re going to be hearing that phrase more and more) is the logical outcome of any social order which is increasingly consistent with their anti-Christ presuppositions. Social order insanity is the norm for any people who abandon the God of the Bible. If we continue, as a people, to rebel against God you can expect things to get more and more bizarre.

Mass formation psychosis is when a significant percentage of societies, so the theory goes, come under a kind of mass hypnosis that does not allow them to change their mind about hypnotic deceptions that they are being fed by mass media which is bombarding them with a landslide of constant bushwah. It is akin to what Gustav LeBon wrote about in his classic book “The Crowd.” Once Mass formation psychosis begins the significant percentage begins to find their identity in clinging to the false narrative so much that they are willing to cut off family, previous close friends, and social circles that would dare question the official narrative. The igniting moment is the presence of some ubiquitous fear that those afflicted begin to strongly identify with. The maintenance of the psychosis is by the absorption and owning of the bigger and bigger lies that are needed to prop up the false narrative. At some point, the mass formation psychosis will descend into violence against those who refuse to wear the uniform of the psychotic.

Those interested can access not only LeB on (previously mentioned) but Hannah Arendt as well in some of her works. (Note; neither LeBon nor Arendt use the phrase “mass formation psychosis.”)

5.) “Well Karen, that dovetails with this right-wing conspiracy theory that used to be part of the fringe called the great replacement. The idea that whites are being replaced. This idea is also that the Democratic Party is doing this deliberately. Well, that idea now is voiced by mainstream political leaders, by mainstream media figures, embraced full throttle.”

Academic Egghead being interviewed

Who Can’t read the decline of % of Whites to total US Population over the past 4 decades

6.) The best medicine for all this is pure unadulterated laughter. If we can’t laugh at the world going insane then we have lost our ability to cope. Try to envision it all as a giant satire of normalcy and rationality.

Secondly, keep in mind that God laughs at all this (see Psalm 2). These plotters against God with their legion of Kool-aide drinker useful idiots should be met with our laughter — The non-Pentecostal version of “Holy laughter.” Think about it … if God can laugh at all this then why shouldn’t we be laughing with Him?

Also, nothing will fill these people with more rage than laughing at them. People of this stripe lost their sense of humor in the birth canal and they absolutely become unhinged when you laugh at them or make jokes at their expense.

So … laugh away and keep in mind that the current darkness is only temporary. Insanity can’t win.

The Main Presupposition of the Historical-Critical Hermeneutic — The Supernatural can not be True

The Historical-critical hermeneutical method of reading the Biblical text, per Ernst Troeltsch, sits upon three tenants.

1.) Skepticism — This means one must read the Scripture as any ancient Near Eastern text. No special consideration is given to the reality that the text is divinely inspired.

2.) Analogy — This means testing the text against the analogy of modern experience. So, for example, if modern people do not experience virgins getting pregnant or the world being created or dead men rising to life again that means those things cannot have happened in the past.

3.) Coherence — This means that every event has a natural, and historical cause and so there is no need to posit divine intervention.

Note that all of this can be reduced to one idea. The Historical-critical method reduces to reading the Biblical text with an anti-supernatural presupposition. To read the text “historically-critically” is to read the text presupposing Naturalism. No God, except as that god is subjectively projected so as to create reality. No inspiration, except as inspiration is subjectively spoken of. And so really no reason to even bother with the text at all except for some residual silly idea that the text is sacrosanct.