Category: Uncategorized

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John takes up this theme in his epistle as well

4:2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess [a]that Jesus [b]Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.

These passages are where we get the term “Incarnation.” The English word Incarnation comes from the Latin word Incarnatio which is in turn a translation of the Greek which literally says;

“Kai ho Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο – And the Word flesh became

The word “sark” you heard there means “flesh,” and the Latin word “incarnatio” means taking or being flesh. So, even though like the word “trinity” we don’t find the word “incarnatio” in the Bible the word “Incarnation” certainly properly encapsulates the Greek idea of God becoming flesh.

This idea of the incarnation refers both to the act in which the eternal Son became flesh as well as the whole experience of human life into which He entered.

Of course, we have more than just John’s testimony concerning the incarnation. It is a doctrine testified to by Paul as well as other Holy Spirit inspired men. Here are just a few of the more obvious ones.

Hebrews 2:14 – Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,

Gal. 4:4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman

Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh …

I Tim. 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:  God was manifested in the flesh…

This is the universal testimony of Scripture. That the Word became flesh.

John’s testimony in vs. 1 is that this Word that became flesh was God. This testifies that the He who became flesh pre-existed before His incarnation. In short John is telling us that the Creator Himself enters into our world as a creature.

This is one of the realities that make Christianity sui generis … unique … one of a kind.

In Christianity God condescends to man. In the incarnation, God does all. Mary is merely a passive and willing vessel. If man is to be reclaimed by God then God must do all the reclaiming for man being fallen cannot rise to God and therefore God must condescend to man and in the incarnation, God stoops low, in the incarnation, in order to repair what man had destroyed, in order to bring in the recreation, in order to take the sting out of death.

Indeed, so central is the incarnation that we would say that it is the pivotal point of history. Before the incarnation, there was only anticipation of restoration. With the incarnation, the restoration has arrived.

Dutch Theologian Herman Bavinck agrees with us;

“If, however, Christ is the incarnate Word, then the incarnation is the central fact of the entire history of the world; then, too, it must have been prepared from before the ages and have its effects through history.”

Make no mistake, apart from the Word becoming flesh there is no Christianity and if there is no Christianity then Hobbes was correct in saying that life is solitary, poor, nasty and short and that with or without civil government. Because of this, we must always be vigilant to retain the incarnation for from the beginning through the centuries the incarnation has been denied in one clever way or another and cleverness still denies it today.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

When John wrote vs. 14 and testified that the pre-existent Logos became flesh he shocked his religious world at the time. The idea that God became flesh was considered blasphemy by the professional religious community as we see in John 10:33

³² Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? ³³ The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

So, the idea of the Word becoming flesh was not accepted among the professional religious class and this provides just one reason why Jesus the Christ was so hated by the professional religious class.

Now having made these introductory remarks on the incarnation let us spend just a little bit of time teasing out how the incarnation touches upon other key doctrines of our undoubted catholic Christian faith.

What we are doing here is looking at how the incarnation is involved in other central pillars of the Christian faith so that we see that Christianity can not exist as Christianity apart from the reality of the incarnation

For our purposes this morning we want to note that the incarnation, obviously enough has Trinitarian implications.

If all we had was the OT we could build a case for plurality in God but it would be a case based upon deduction. The OT gives us every reason to expect God with us but in the NT the legitimate anticipation becomes reality.

The NT, with the incarnation of Jesus Christ, screams that God is not only one but He is many. This idea of God being Trinitarian — being both one and many — makes Christianity Christianity. If we drop the incarnation we at that very moment drop the Trinitarian nature of God and so embrace an absurdity.

In this passage teaching us about the incarnation we can begin to limn out the reality of the doctrine of the Trinity. Which can be simply stated as

1.  ”There is but one God.”
2. “The Father and the Son and the Spirit is each God.”
3. “The Father and the Son and the Spirit is each a distinct person.”

1.) ”There is but one God.”

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word Was God”

Note the singularity in John  1:1. There is nothing here that denies the great Hebrew Shema … “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” Though there is a plurality in the Godhead God is still referred to as singular. It is very God of very God who has taken upon Himself very man of very man.

2.) “The Father and the Son and the Spirit is each God.”

We see the inspired John write repeatedly that the incarnate Son was God incarnate. Indeed this idea that Jesus is God is one of John’s labors in His gospel. He says it explicitly. His accounts note it implicitly. He demonstrates it in his unfolding narrative over and over again. The Gospel of John, right from vs. 1 teaches that Jesus is God and keeps teaching it over and over again ad nauseaum…. “The Word was God.”

If Jesus is not God then there is no Trinity and no incarnation and if there is no Trinity and no incarnation there is no Christianity whatever what might be left might be called.

3.) “The Father and the Son and the Spirit is each a distinct person.”

In Matthew & Luke we see the role of the Spirit in the incarnation so that we are taught the three distinct persons in the one God.

And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.

So, the incarnation implies the Trinitarian nature of God and were we to explore this further we would see what is called the “personal properties” which distinguish the divine persons from one another, namely:

1. The Father’s eternal begetting of the Son (“paternity”).
2. The Son’s eternal generation from the Father (“filiation”).
3. The Spirit’s eternal procession from the Father and the Son (“spiration”).

   But that is a sermon series by itself. However, we did want to note that this morning.

   There is another dynamic on this point that we desire to bring out on this distinctly Christian doctrine of the incarnation. We have already noted that the incarnation is distinctly Christian as a doctrine because it is consistent with God condescending to man since man can not arise to God. We said this truth makes Christianity absolutely unique.

   Now we say that the incarnation is distinctly Christian as a doctrine because no other belief system can provide the possibility of an incarnation.

   There are really only three types of religions … and two of those three if one boils enough can be reduced to two. But for our purposes this morning lets us contemplate three types of religions.

   Those three are Deism, Pantheism, and Christianity. In Deism, one has the absent God. In Pantheism, one has the God is not distinct God.

   The incarnation sets Christianity apart because in Deism and Pantheism there is no room for the incarnation of God. In Deism, God has wandered off and is separate from humanity there can be no incarnation. In Pantheism God loses his distinctiveness in his creatures so that everything and nothing is an incarnation. Only with a Trinitarian God can we have an incarnation whereby God can be both God transcendent and at the same time God immanent — God with us.

   Citing Bavinck again,

   “The masters of these religions of Deism and Pantheism have scoffed at the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. In history, the Socinians, who were Deists called the incarnation a ‘human fantasy and a monstrous dogma and deemed it easier for a human to become a donkey than for God to become a man.’ On the other end, the pantheist Spinoza commented that the incarnation was as absurd as saying that “a circle assumes the nature of a square.”

   So, only Christianity, with its Trinitarian character can provide an incarnation … a “God with us.”

   Before we close however let us consider the incarnation as an act of the one Triune God. Here we lean on Dr. Mark Jones book “Knowing Christ.”

   The Scriptures teach that the Father was responsible as the Master Architect for designing and preparing the body of the Son. Hebrews 10:5 draws on the Psalm we read this morning (Ps. 40:6)

   ⁵ Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:

   “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
       but a body you prepared for me;

   Here Christ is speaking to the Father and He says to the Father “a body you have prepared for me.” In this speech, we learn that the body that the Son offered up as a sacrifice for man’s sin was prepared by the Father. John 1:14 teaches that the Word became flesh — took on the whole human nature body and soul — and that flesh that the Word took on was prepared by the Father.

   Said simply, “The Father prepared the body which the Son would offer up.”

   The Puritan Thomas Brooks chimes in here,

   The Father “ordained, formed, and made fit and able Christ’s human nature to undergo suffer, and fulfill that for which He was sent into the world.”

   However we also see the work of the Person of the Spirit in the incarnation. If the Father was the architect of the incarnate body, the Spirit was the Master builder as the one who was responsible for the actual formation of the human nature of Christ.

   “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called^[a] the Son of God. (Luke 1:35)

   The Holy Spirit as the Master builder of the human nature of Christ bears the responsibility for the physical and spiritual life of Jesus.

    

   ^{Matthew 1:18} This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about^[d]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit 

   ²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

   The Puritan Ussher speaks at this point of Mary’s womb as the ‘bride chamber’ where the Spirit knit the indissoluble knot between our human nature and His deity.

   Then of course, the Trinitarian work of the incarnation is made complete in the second person of the Trinity gladly embracing adding to His divine nature human nature. The intense love of the Son for the Father and for His people worked in Him a glad willingness to take on Adam’s manhood sin excepted.

   All of this once again demonstrates the Christian doctrine of perichoresis which holds that you cannot have one person of the Trinity without having the other two, and you cannot have any person of the Trinity without having the fullness of God. The inter-communion of the persons is reciprocal, and their operations are inseparable. As Augustine put it: “Each are in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all are one.”

   God being one, the work of any one of the persons of God finds all of God working.

    

    

 

 

 

 

“We must stop fooling ourselves and accept the difficult task of facing evil. The documentation in our book makes clear that several hitherto unimaginable realities can no longer be avoided or denied as painful and outlandish as they are:

1.) The Covid-19 attack on America and the world was planned well in advance, at least as far back as 2015-2017. The fundamentals of what would become ‘Operation Warp Speed were put into motion before 2017 with Bill Gates working with CEPI, Pfizer, Moderna, and with corporate/government collaborations characteristic of what would become Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset.

2.) Experiments with mRNA and DNA vaccines for SARS-CoV going back at least to 2006 repeatedly demonstrated that many vaccinated animals become worse and even die, especially when then exposed to a SARS-CoV. Further studies demonstrated that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that the new vaccines make the human body replicate is very toxic to humans. The global predators know that they are inflicting vaccines on humanity that cause serious illness and kill many immune-compromised and older people. Consistent with a eugenic policy, the vaccines especially kill older and sicker people and also target the ovaries, almost certainly reducing fertility in many women.

3.) SARS-CoV-2 was developed through the mutual, combined efforts of American scientists and Chinese Wuhan Institute scientists with the support of Anthony Fauci’s NIAID and also NIH. Thus, Fauci helped the Chinese Communists build multiple SARS-CoV biological weapons and then lied about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to cover his tracks and protect his communist allies. As an act of stealth ‘unrestricted warfare, the Chinese released the weapon.

4.) When the very existence of the global predators and the Chinese Communists was threatened by Donald Trump and his America First policies, the Communists almost certainly released SARS-CoV-2. Then they purposely spread it around the world on passenger flights. In this way, they managed to wreck America’s economic and social life – and to stop President Trump from having a second term. They also achieved the collateral gain of reducing one of their greatest social and economic burdens – their disproportionately large elder population.

5.) With draconian policies and fear tactics, the global predators succeeded in putting America into its current condition of moral and political docility and apathy. The main characteristic of America’s tragic condition is the lack of outrage at censorship of the President and now of anyone who threatens the current evolving one-party system and its global predators.

6.) Most of the world’s great institutions have been infiltrated or taken over by globalists, many with progressive or Chinese Communist agendas, and all of them trying to exploit humanity. Their globalist agendas now control the Democratic Party, most big corporations, universities, the medical and scientific establishments, entertainment, and even sports franchises and leagues. In America, hardly any aspect of our cultural, social, and economic life is free of control by the globalist, predatory elites.”

Breggin & Breggin
C-19 & The Global Predators; We Are The Prey – p. 460

Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary California recently tweeted a link to an older piece of his which contains the following section:

“Through the history of the church there have been two great errors on this question. One is to identify the common realm with the kingdom of God. This was the great error of Constantinianism, in which the civil magistrate was made more than a minister of God (Rom 13:4) authorized to use the sword for the preservation of this-worldly civil peace but in which he was considered to be God’s minister for the advancement of the gospel. There is no evidence in New Testament for such a notion. The advance of the gospel is considered to be a purely spiritual and ecclesiastical matter.” Heidelblog, August 2, 2016

Some observations on 2 highlighted quotes:

1. “…in which he was considered to be God’s minister for the advancement of the gospel. There is no evidence in New Testament for such a notion.”

First of all, note the recurring latent Marcionite hermeneutic used by the R2k sect, which invariably appeals to the New Testament without bringing the Old Testament into view. The O.T. is replete with examples of the magistrate charged with working to advance the Kingdom.

Second, note Clark makes his New Testament appeal with an “argument from silence”, which is fallacious reasoning. By this hermeneutic, one could argue for legalizing bestiality since the New Testament is silent on it. Recall that one R2k WSCAL grad already has made a similar argument.

Rather, Reformed Christians see all of Scripture as useful for instruction and correction, even in the arena of civics/public ethics. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament.

2. “The advance of the gospel is considered to be a purely spiritual and ecclesiastical matter.”
This recurrent feature of the R2k sectarians is to ignore Belgic Confession Article 36 which states that the magistrate is charged with “removing every obstacle to the preaching of the gospel and to every divine aspect of worship” and does so “in order that the Word of God may have free course, the kingdom of Christ may make progress, and every anti-Christian power may be resisted.” It should be clear that the magistrate, in its designated sphere, has a coordinate protective role around the church, so that through the preaching of the gospel the Kingdom of Christ may advance. The means employed by the church and the magistrate are different, but the God-honoring goal is the same. This should not be hard to see.

The R2k folks have a choice: either write an overture to amend/delete Belgic 36 or submit themselves to the Reformed confession they subscribed to uphold. If they choose neither of these options and continue on their present deconstruction project to segregate Christian principles from the civil realm, then the churches have a choice to make.

———–

McAtee’s Addendum

There is a third option that Van Der Molen failed to mention. The R2K boys could try and pass what is called a “gravamen.” This would be the attempt to write in a permanent exception to the Belgic Confession of Faith — Article 36.

“Many people who become very rich, full of themselves, and powerful are, or rapidly become, morally defective, and remote from anything like empathy or fellow feelings for ‘humanity.’ They simply do not consider the suffering their grandiose plans will inflict on others. This, of course, is characteristic of global predators and, to some extent, all predators — failure to feel concerned for their prey. It is probably impossible to exploit people without crushing your capacity for empathy and caring.”

Breggin & Breggin
C-19 & The Global Predators; We Are the Prey — p. 360

This quote reinforces what I have long said about the Globalists who I call “Lizard people.” They are not like normal people living in the context of Christian categories of thought and behavior.

I have noticed the truth of this quote throughout the years in the ministry with individuals but this is especially true in our whole social order since we are a culture that enshrines manipulation and exploitation. From dodgy salesman of all stripes to ministers who build their “ministry” in order to advance their personal well-being to politicians who only exist by selling themselves like soap thus manipulating and exploiting people into purchasing a product (their election to the office) that is not really in the electors best interests American culture is one grand adventure in manipulating and exploiting. It is ubiquitous. The more someone goes down the manipulation and/or exploitation of others path the more they become non-human as seen in their general lack of compassion, sympathy, empathy, and potential to experience shame or guilt. Living the manipulative and/or the exploitive life is a sure way to harden your soul against any divine commands.

The Lizard People who are the cultural gatekeepers don’t care about people. They care about pleasing and advancing themselves and they will use all means to do just that. They will flood the homogeneous nation with the alien and the stranger just so they can advance and enrich themselves and then will cynically argue the necessity of compassion quite dismissing the question of how much compassion is involved in disinheriting one’s children and grandchildren. The Lizard people are themselves cosmopolitans and have no attachment to a people or place and so the third-worldizing of the West is thought of only in terms of how much it will increase their bottom line of profit.

The Lizard people who are the cultural gatekeepers don’t care about people. If they cared about people they wouldn’t be pushing the normalization of perversity. They wouldn’t be preying upon our children by the policies that Lizard people support. They wouldn’t support Drag Queen Story Hour. They wouldn’t support Critical Race Theory in public schools. They wouldn’t support school libraries stocked with books supporting and advancing sexual perversity.

Sad to say as a minister of the Gospel this Lizard People phenomenon is true in spades in the modern “Conservative Reformed Churches” in America and the West. Odds are your pastor is a Lizard person of one degree or another. They don’t really care about the flock — they are the hirelings Jesus warned about. If they cared about the flock they wouldn’t be repackaging cultural Marxism and then telling you that that repackaged cultural Marxism is really Christianity. They wouldn’t be announcing in Church this grand program to help relocate refugees and illegal immigrants from around the world thus also announcing (though this is never said) that they are aiding in the process of disinheriting and replacing the children of their WASP congregants. They wouldn’t be telling you from Reformed pulpits all across the land that “the Church is silent on moral issues in the broader culture because it would compromise the Church’s mission if it held up God’s moral standard as the canon that measures all behavior.” Their primary passion would not be to climb the Deep Church “Evangelical” ladder of success if their primary passion was tending the flock of Jesus Christ.

As the quote notes above our clergy as well as the other cultural gatekeepers, exceptions notwithstanding, are morally defective, and if they are doing all this and are not morally defective then they are stupid and on that basis also people have no business listening to a ruddy thing they say.