In the last 24 hours or so, I’ve seen both Tucker Carlson and Gary DeMar argue that what is going on in America is not about a Racial divide but rather is about class warfare. I view this as a false dichotomy. It can be both a race war and class warfare. Clearly, as the Cultural Marxists advocated long ago, Minorities have been recruited to be the new proletariat in their neo-Marxist scheme. However, combined with majority swaths of minorities we also find white perverts, feminists, academics, and Talmudists. This combination allows enough white people in that it can be argued that this isn’t really about race. However, that is not accurate. The White people described, as part of the new proletariat, have the same interests as the minority element in this new proletariat coalition. Indeed, one could easily argue that the white element are themselves what was once called vanilla oreos — they are white on the outside but chocolate in the creme filling. So, the current Revolution does remain a matter of race.

However, that being said, it is clearly at the same time a matter of class warfare. The mega-Corportists are using the new proletariat to make war on America’s middle class with the goal of eliminating the middle class so that we have a have and have not society. The irony of this is found in that many in the Revolutionary new proletariat vanguard will end up remaining among the have nots so that the Revolution they are chanting and rioting for will not advance their economic standing one whit.

We can see all this as existing in the base of each party. The Democrats are appealing to both the minority base while at the same time being bankrolled by the mega-Corporatist of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street.
The Republican party in the meantime is appealing to white voters and is hearkening to middle class issues (Payroll Tax cuts, Law & Order, America First, etc.).

So, what we see brewing here is the worst of all storms. The Revolution in our streets is both a race war and the pursuit of class warfare and anybody who tells you it is one to the neglect of the other just hasn’t pondered long enough on the matter.

We remember that we are spending some time looking at what is called “the Doctrines of Grace,” as nicely packaged for us in the acrostic “TULIP.” Further we remember that this acrostic was developed in response to the theology we are swimming in today in the West and that is religious humanism known as Arminianism. There was a confab in the Netherlands in 1618 to settle the issue between religious humanism and Biblical Christianity. Which one would the Church support? That International conference in the Netherlands spent seven months and 154 sessions to hammer out their decisions on various subjects. The result of this Synod of Dordt is the Canons of Dordt which is contained in our Blue Psalter hymnbooks and is one of three Confessions that this Church embraces.

We also remember that last week we noted that the reason these matters need considered is because too often the Modern American church has misidentified the problem of man. The modern church, when it thinks about these matters at all, tends to think that man is misguided… or even perhaps gravely wounded, but it does not really believe that fallen man is dead.

As such having misidentified the problem the solution likewise is all bollixed up. Listen to J. C. Ryle on this point,

“There are very few errors and false doctrines of which the beginning may not be traced up to unsound views about the corruption of human nature. Wrong views of the disease will always bring with the wrong views of the remedy. Wrong views of the corruption of human nature will always bring with them wrong views of the grand antidote and cure of that corruption.”

We want to note as we start this morning that even though we look at these various doctrines of grace that has come to us as TULIP, that the doctrines that we examine week by week rise and fall together. That is to say that though there are five points, the fact of the matter is that these five points are so integrated that they rise and fall together. This is not a matter of picking and choosing like some kind of smorgasbord buffet. A thousand times “no.” If one buys the T (total depravity) that we examined last week then one is committed to ULIP. There is no way to get off the TULIP train once it leaves the Total Depravity station. At least one can’t get off the TULIP train without being a walking contradiction.

This means that there is no such thing as a 3 point or 4 or 4.5 point embracing of TULIP. It is all or nothing. If one says, for example, that they refuse Limited Atonement as part of their understanding of the Bible then they have told me that they refuse all of TULIP. One simply cannot reject any part of the doctrines of Grace without rejecting all the doctrines of Grace. There is a unbreakable connection between each of them and all of them.

Now, Lutherans, for example as famous for breaking TULIP, but then Lutherans will tell you that the problem with Calvinists is that Calvinists use “human logic,” and that “we just have to have a mystery box for matters like this.” Which is just another way of saying, “We are in contradiction without ourselves and we don’t care.”

There are many other like people who like to break up TULIP.

This week we see an example of TULIP rises and falls as a unit. We noted last week that man is dead in his trespasses and sins. That is heart is deceitfully wicked above all things. That any freedom man has is a freedom to act consistent with his dead in sin nature.

Now this week, we begin to ask… “What is the solution for this graveyard of spiritually dead in sin people?”

Well, the text tells us in Ephesians

2 And you He made alive,who were dead in trespasses and sins

and is repeated by St. Paul.

4But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! 

So clearly we see that Michelangelo in his Sistine chapel is wrong. You remember…. We see Adam sitting and Adam is weakly lifting his hand so that God may touch him to give him life. No, Michelangelo when God makes us alive we are not reaching out to Him.

But even if we agree here that God is the one who makes us alive we are forced to ask why did God bring me to life and not the chap next door? It is in the answering of this question whereupon we alight on the U in TULIP and begin speak in keeping with God the Spirit upon Unconditional Election.

Why did God choose some Pervasively Depraved dead people and not others? The answer is that from eternity past God determined who would stay dead and would be made alive and then sent forth the Son, per a Trinitarian covenantal arrangement, to be the one who would pay the sin price for those dead chosen by God from eternity past to be made alive.

We call this “Unconditional Election.” The idea of “election” is just that God does the electing (choosing) and He does so quite apart from any condition set upon those chosen (elected). We see it everywhere in Scripture. Here are a few examples.

Ephesians 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love

Acts 13:48 Now when the Gentiles heard this (that Salvation was coming to the ends of the earth), they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

II Thess. 2:13 But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,

II Timothy 1:9 He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,

There you have it. Unconditional election is the idea that God chose a distinct people from eternity past who were dead in their sins. Unconditional Election teaches apart from God choosing us, we would have never chosen God.

Let us contrast this with the doctrine of Conditional Election that we get from religious humanism (Arminianism) … from 9.9 churches out of 10 that you might visit today. In those Churches where we find religious humanism (Arminianism) God’s electing us is conditional upon an “independent from God arrived at” faith. Faith becomes a good work done on our part, that God foresaw and foreknew that we would have and so on the basis of God seeing through the tunnels of time that we would one day exercise faith He elected us to salvation.

But you see the problems here don’t you?

The problems are

1.) Faith is never described as a work that we do that requires God to give us Salvation. God says in Ephesians that faith is a gift

8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Faith is passive… it receives. (Ill. – Prongs on a diamond)

Remember, people who are totally depraved and so dead can’t meet any conditions for salvation. Consequently in Biblical Christianity God Elects us, Christ dies for the Elect and the Spirit regenerates with the consequence that we have faith.

In “Conditional Election” the condition God places on man is faith and man then uses faith as a work to offer up to God as an exchange for salvation. Faith becomes a work that man can glory in.

2.) The spotlight is on man’s meeting God’s condition and so the spotlight is on man’s performance of the work necessary to receive salvation. Man is glorified for meeting the condition that allowed God to elect him.

3.) In this arrangement man takes the initiative and God responds. God looks down the tunnels of time to see which men elect him God and then as a result elects man. Whereas in Biblical faith God does all the electing and man responds.

4.) And again remember … people dead in trespasses and sins can’t meet conditions.

This is the difference between Biblical Christianity which teaches unconditional election and unbiblical non-Christianity which teaches conditional election.

Of course we must bring out the other side of this. If God discriminates and so chooses some that means that He does not choose others. This is the teaching of Scripture,|

John 10:25 Jesus answered them, (the Pharisees) “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. 26 But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, [e]as I said to you.

You see it don’t you? There it is plainly said … “You do not believe, because you are not of my sheep.” You don’t belong to me. I am not laying down my life for you because the good shepherd gives his life only for the sheep. (John 10:11)

11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.

If there is a connection between hearing because one is one of His elect sheep and the idea that in order to hear Christ has to give His life for the elect sheep then those not hearing are also those who were not those for whom He laid down His life.

There are those who are elect and those who are not elect. This is the testimony of Scripture. Romans 9

13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” 16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

Now here is where Biblical Christianity sometimes loses people. Here the Religious Humanist will raise the cry that this idea of Unconditional Election is not fair. It is the same protest that Paul anticipates above. Is there unrighteousness with God because God elected Jacob and not Esau? The answer is the strongest possible negation. GOD FORBID.

We need to keep in mind here that this is not unfair in the slightest. Fairness here would mean that God leaves everyone (Jacob and Esau) eternally damned since all fell in Adam’s fall and since all have pursued rebellion against God. Because of this, outside of His own merciful character God was under no compulsion to save anyone. Fairness then would be for all men to be damned. So, let us be done with the accusation of God not being fair.

God is in Election merciful and just. He is merciful because He delivers and preserves from damnation all the elect whom God has, in His eternal and unchangeable counsel of mere goodness has elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, completely apart from any consideration of their good works. God is just (fair) in reprobation in leaving others in the fall wherein they involved themselves. This is the testimony of our own Belgic Confession of faith,

ARTICLE 16 DIVINE ELECTION We believe that, when the entire offspring of Adam plunged into perdition and ruin by the transgression of the first man,1 God manifested Himself to be as He is: merciful and just. Merciful, in rescuing and saving from this perdition those whom in His eternal and unchangeable counsel2 He has elected3 in Jesus Christ our Lord4 by His pure goodness, without any consideration of their works.5 Just, in leaving the others in the fall and perdition into which they have plunged themselves.6

1 Rom 3:12.

2 Jn 6:37, 44; Jn 10:29; Jn 17:2, 9, 12; Jn 18:9.

3 1 Sam 12:22; Ps 65:4; Acts 13:48; Rom 9:16; Rom 11:5; Tit 1:1.

4 Jn 15:16, 19; Rom 8:29; Eph 1:4, 5.

5 Mal 1:2, 3; Rom 9:11-13; 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 3:4, 5.

6 Rom 9:19-22; 1 Pet 2:8.

Secondly, on this score even if God were unfair (something we are in no way conceding) what makes anyone think that the Creator is answerable to the creature? God doesn’t have to answer to man. As Romans 9 asks, “Who is man to question God?” This is one of the lessons of the book of Job. We don’t get to question the Creator. To often,

We speak of a cruel and unfair God
As if man were the true Transcendent;
As if man were judge of all the earth,
And God the poor defendant.
As if God were arraigned with a very black case,
And on the skill of His lawyer dependent,
And “I wouldn’t like to be God,” we say,
“For His record is not resplendent.”

So… following Scripture we believe that God Unconditionally elects. We believe that must be the case because if man really is dead and so can’t do anything to contribute to his salvation then God must be the one who Unconditionally elects.

And… following Scripture we believe that God discriminates in His electing. He chooses some to eternal life and leaves others to remain dead in their trespasses and sins where they love abiding and where they would, if asked, testify that they never want to leave.

Here we quote Calvin,

“Indeed, many, as if they wished to avert a reproach from God, accept Election in such terms as to deny that anyone is condemned. But they do this very ignorantly and childishly, since Election itself could not stand except as over against reprobation.”

God elects some to salvation and so by necessity doesn’t elect others.

We must not miss the character of God that is set forth in this doctrine of
Unconditional election. We see His Eternality…. Aseity … Ominipotence… Goodness…Immutability. When we study the Doctrines of Grace then we see the Character of God. This is particularly true of Unconditional election. God’s eternality is seen inasmuch as there was never a time when the Elect were not Chosen by God. We see God’s aseity because being completely self sufficient in and of Himself he chose whom He would choose quite independent of us or anything about us. We see God’s goodness inasmuch as God freely chose to elect a great host when there was no necessity laid upon Him to do so. We see God’s immutability inasmuch as what God foreordained to happen has indeed happened in marking out generations and centuries of the Elect who have indeed been honored by Him.

And so this Unconditional Election is not merely a matter of learning about Soteriology. Soteriology is not abstracted from the rest of our theology. Rather when we look at the doctrine of salvation in the doctrines of Grace we also, if we pay attention, are learning theology proper. We are learning of the character of God.

Ah sweet Unconditional Election. Listen to the Hymn-writer

1 ‘Tis not that I did choose thee,
for, Lord, that could not be;
this heart would still refuse thee,
hadst thou not chosen me.
Thou from the sin that stained me
hast cleansed and set me free;
of old thou hast ordained me,
that I should live to thee.

2 ‘Twas sov’reign mercy called me
and taught my op’ning mind;
the world had else enthralled me,
to heav’nly glories blind.
My heart owns none before thee,
for thy rich grace I thirst;
this knowing, if I love thee,
thou must have loved me first.

And so understanding Unconditional Election more and more the impact that should descend upon is, is incredibly gratitude and then out of gratitude a great desire to praise God and so be His advocate. Likewise the impulse from understanding this doctrine should also be missionary. We understand God’s great grace towards us and so we desire others to be made aware of this magnificent God who’s Electing grace is so vast so as to mark out thousands upon thousands, ten thousand times ten thousand, indeed, a number that no man can count to receive the good news of salvation.

May we be a people who are lost in wonder, love, and awe, because of this doctrine of Unconditional Election and then who are animated by the truth of it to champion God’s name and cause at every turn.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/trump-my-great-honor-to-be-called-the-the-most-pro-gay-president-in-american-history

I know some of you believe in President Trump and are enthusiastic supporters. Others view him as a necessary stopgap measure to keep the Stalinist Democrats at bay. The link above explains in one simple article and video why I do not believe that it is proper for Christians to be casting our vote — a vote that belongs to God in heaven — for Donald Trump.

I’m not going to chide anyone for voting Trump more than what is in the paragraph above. I understand that people view Trump as a hope to forestall the darkness that is descending on both our suburban and urban areas. I understand the pragmatism that insists on voting Trump over Biden and the Marxists. I get the fear that would stampede people to vote for Trump. I share those fears. I would like to vote for him also on one level. However, as long as he courts the sodomite vote I will not join myself, through my vote, to that wickedness.

Some will counter with… “But if Trump isn’t elected you’re going to get sodomy anyway plus abortion, Marxism, more Government over-reach, etc.” That likely is true but I cannot find it within me to use that as an excuse to yoke myself, through my vote, to someone who says it is his great honor to be called the “most pro-sodomite President in History.”

My position on this is accounted for by the fact that I am practicing what is called a deontological ethic while many other Christians pulling levers for Trump seem to be practicing what is called a teleological ethic. In deontological ethics behavior is right or wrong as dependent on a clear set of established rules. The title (deontology) arises from the Greek word “deon” which means “duty.” As Christians we find those “rules” laid down in God’s law and are duty bound to abide by them. When I read in Scripture, “Be ye not unequally yoked,” I understand that I am duty bound not to vote for wickedness since a vote is a yoking of my permission for a candidate to pursue the behavior and policy he will pursue. The result of voting is when the candidate I voted for acts, I act. By my vote, his action, as my political covenant representative, is my action.

In teleological ethics on the other hand is a ethic of pragmatism. It holds that duty or moral obligation is to be pursued consistent with the end goal desired. So, in a teleological ethic right or wrong is dependent upon the outcome desired. From a teleological ethic standpoint voting for Trump, as an example, is considered right because the outcome of not voting for Trump would be bad. You can see the difference here vis-a-vis deontological ethics which insists that voting fro Trump is a matter of following a basic standard for behavior that is independent of the good or evil generated by not voting for Trump resulting from following that standard which is not considering the teleos of the action.

So, it is my conviction that many Christians have decided (understandingly given all that is at stake) to follow a teleological ethic in voting for Trump. I understand it. I don’t agree with it. I have decided that this matter of voting is a deontological ethic.

And there the twain never shall meet.

I just finished Nesta Webster’s “The French Revolution; A Study in Democracy.” Now I find myself wondering how people can become experts in Revolution without breaking their own souls? I’ve read extensively on the French and Russian Revolutions, and a wee bit less on the Chinese Revolution. To sit there and absorb the millions and millions of countless deaths of people just like me — people with the same aspirations, the same hopes and dreams, the same relationships, and the same desire to live long and live well is injurious to the soul. I stood with Webster and read of the September Massacres — so infamous that the French turned September into a verb; “Septemberize.” I watched with Webster the perversions of the dead at Vendee, the cannonade of the judicially innocent due to the need to kill people more efficiently and faster, and the regicide of the man taken for villain who made the Mountain Men (Jacobins) look like saints. I stood with the crowd for the relentless lifting and lowering of Madame la Guillotine. And 230 years later I closed the book horrified.

And then on top of that the amazing and incredible cruelty visited upon those murdered. The creative and crazed torture implemented by the madmen assigned the duty of the actual killing. When one sits passively reading of the Noyades at Nantes, and then connects that to the prison camps run by the Yankees during the 2nd American Revolution, and then the Gulags in Russia, and the re-education camps in China how can one ever again be light-hearted afterwards? The things that I have witnessed in my reading should make the strongest man just weep for days on end and cry out … “O Lord How Long?”

Yet, not only unspeakable sadness but also unquenchable fury. The desire to go back in time to rescue the judicially innocent by justly killing the killers before they can soak the earth with blood. The desire to strangle Hebert and Carrier in their cribs so they may never visit hell upon the French. This rage can only find its outlet in being maniacal in hating the ideological descendants of the Revolutionaries. Goodness knows there is plenty of them out there to rage against. This rage is a rage in favor of the judicially innocent who will surely be swallowed again in the maw of the Marxist Jacobinist if it is ever allowed again to have the whip hand. There is nothing holy about being calm and reasonable in the face of this whole thing being repeated yet again. Love of God and others demands that these demons be hated and repelled.

Then comes the resolve of “never again,” combined with the realization that we may well right now be in another Jacobin cycle as pursued by the ideological descendants of Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. Do these people ever die or do they just comeback in some kind of evil karma as Lincoln, Butler and Sherman, or as Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, or as Mao, Chou En-Lai, and Pol Pot?

And then one asks…. “Why them and not us?” Why are we so special that we should not have this kind of thing visited upon us? God in heaven knows that we deserve it. The blood of the unborn cries out from under the altar asking justice upon the West. Mercy Lord … just a wee bit more mercy that we or our descendants after us should not have to live in such times where we are visited again by the Jacobins.

Yet, doubtless those in the French, Chinese, and Bolshevik Revolutions and every other Revolution likewise prayed the same thing and yet were not delivered from the Robespierre, the Marat, the Stalin, the Trotsky, the Mao, and the Himmler.

God’s ways are inscrutable.

Lord, in your good pleasure should you ever visit us as a people what you visited upon those now occupying their eternal assigned abode grant me grace to meet the enemy with courage and to not quail at the deaths that some of them died.”

During this week 100 years ago our Nation took its next another step into what was already, now looking back, an irretrievable decline. During this week 100 years ago women were given the right to vote. Historically, in marking the decline of this Republic this unfortunate event certainly ranks right up there with Mr. Lincoln’s War, the creation of the Federal Reserve, FDR’s “New Deal” legislation, Breton Woods, the Civil Rights Act, the Immigration Act of 1965 and Nixon’s closing of the Gold Window. With each of these and many others the united States as a Republic continued to slide into eclipse.

Prior to women’s suffrage, women had already been primed in claiming independence from their husbands and family. World War I had pushed larger numbers of them into the workforce thus giving them independence they had never known before. What was a rivulet in World War I became a mighty river in World War II with the advent of Rosie the Riveter. Women’s right to vote was also almost assured by the extending of the vote to the African-American after the Jacobin War Against the Constitution and the following Reconstruction (1861 – 1877). White women especially were going to feel cheated as they watched a constituency vote who they believed were not as capable and qualified as they in having the franchise.

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835-1930), first female member of U.S. Senate (1922), supported female suffrage because the right to vote had been given to negro men, most of whom were unable to read. She reasoned, “The negro carriage driver of the wealthiest woman in America had the right to vote, but not his female employer.”

So, being primed in the direction of the Franchise the next step into egalitarianism came to the fore and women were deemed just as fit as men to enter the voting booth. Not all women believed that this egalitarian move was a good idea. A couple decades prior, when this debate was beginning, Susan Fenimore Cooper (daughter of American author James Fenimore Cooper) could write,

“First. Woman in natural physical strength is so greatly inferior to man that she is entirely in his power, quite incapable of self- defense, trusting to his generosity for protection. In savage life this great superiority of physical strength makes man the absolute master, woman the abject slave. And, although every successive step in civilisation lessens the distance between the sexes, and renders the situation of woman safer and easier, still, in no state of society, however highly cultivated, has perfect equality yet existed. This difference in physical strength must, in itself, always prevent such perfect equality, since woman is compelled every day of her life to appeal to man for protection, and for support.

Secondly. Woman is also, though in a very much less degree, inferior to man in intellect. The difference in this particular may very probably be only a consequence of greater physical strength, giving greater power of endurance and increase of force to the intellectual faculty connected with it. In many cases, as between the best individual minds of both sexes, the difference is no doubt very slight. There have been women of a very high order of genius; there have been very many women of great talent; and, as regards what is commonly called cleverness, a general quickness and clearness of mind within limited bounds, the number of clever women may possibly have been even larger than that of clever men. But, taking the one infallible rule for our guide, judging of the tree by its fruits, we are met by the fact that the greatest achievements of the race in every field of intellectual culture have been the work of man.

(The rest of this worthy and highly recommended essay can be found here.)

https://jfcoopersociety.org/SUSAN/SUFFRAGE.HTML


Giving women the right to vote was an attack on the family because it allowed the wife to vote in such a way as to negate the leadership (covenant headship) of her husband. Women voting allowed women to seize authority from men thus overturning God’s required patriarchal social order. Women voting was an attack on the patriarchal family because over the course of time it allowed women to vote in such a way as to make the state her husband and then after that, through her vote, she could do successfully what many women could not do successfully in the home and that is to nag the new husband (the State) to do her bidding. And as women are selfish (as are men) her bidding was to create a social order that would allow her to putatively flourish without her husband.

Giving the women the right to vote moved woman’s chief concern from hearth and home and the raising of the next generation and placed her into the public domain where she could rough and tumble with men over the pressing social issues of the times. This reality combined with the pressing of women into the workforce had the effect of diminishing the natural characteristics of women found in kindness and gentleness and yielded to them a male hardness that was not present in the generations of their Mothers before them. As such not only was the nature of the family attacked with the achievement of women’s suffrage but also attacked was the nature of women themselves. Giving women the right to vote presaged the subsequent shift of females becoming more male-like. This shift of women become more male like was then continued with the sexual revolution which found women being allowed to be just as sexually perverse as the most perverse man and with the fashion revolution which allowed women to dress like men. From voting to sexual habits to fashion to placement in the work force the egalitarian movement has resulted in women becoming more like men and men become more like women. Of course this is the ultimate goal of gender blender egalitarianism – the creation of man as woman as egalitarian cogs with no differentiation between the two.

One objection of course that will immediately arise is the idea that having voting restricted to land owning Christian men over 25 only is that it is not fair. Obviously the retort here is “fair by whose or what standard?” Clearly from what I have said above restricting the right to vote is fair to the family, and fair to the nature and roles of men and women. Any lack of fairness that is discovered in women not voting is only found in an egalitarian worldview. In the Christian worldview it is not fair to women, family, and the biblically required patriarchal social order for women to vote.

We should note that given the situation we are in now if our Biblically Christian women don’t vote then it is clear that the country will slide even faster and deeper into the rat hole it is in already. Therefore it is my recommendation that Biblically Christian women do vote but only as they are instructed to by their husbands or fathers. In this way women are supporting a Biblical patriarchal social order, are supporting the clearly delineated nature and roles of men and women in Scripture and are supporting the Christian family.

You want to understand the destruction of the extended family as well as destruction of women themselves? One place to start is looking at giving women the right to vote.