I wanted to spend some time for those who are new or newer to the Reformed faith looking at what it is that makes us Reformed. What is the Reformed faith’s reason for existence and why should we continue to exist?

Clearly the answer to that is multitudinous. But we want to begin to answer those questions by considering the doctrine of Predestination this morning. Except for the Confessionally Reformed folks in the Church world nobody holds to predestination. In point of fact everyone else, explicitly or implicitly decries it.

Except for a very tiny genus of Reformed Baptists everybody else except the Reformed hate biblical predestination. The Baptist’s hate it, the Methodist’s hate it, the Nazarene’s hate it, the Assemblies of God hate it, the Wesleyan’s hate it, the Lutherans hate it, the Roman Catholics hate it. Typically the Anglican’s hate it even though it is in their 39 articles. The Reformed stand alone in embracing Biblical Predestination and so one reason for the necessity of us to continue to exist is to uphold this central doctrine without which Christianity is no longer Christianity.

Clearly God has seen fit to distribute His predestined blessings unequally among both individual men and different races of men. This reality is of deepest insult to the carnal man and the immature Christian man.

As regards matters eternal touching the inequality of salvation in terms of God’s determination of who and who will not be saved we call those who resist and pillory this predestination doctrine Arminians;

In matters temporal touching the inequality of men in terms of God’s pre-determining who and who will be gifted and not gifted in particular ways we call them Alienists.

Both sets object to God’s unequal predestination of men, if merely on different occasions.

But let us not get ahead of ourselves here. Turning to the Scripture.

Isaiah 46

8 “Remember this, and [a]show yourselves men;
Recall to mind, O you transgressors.
9 Remember the former things of old,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like Me,
10 Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure,’

14:24 The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying,
“Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass,
And as I have purposed, so it shall stand:
25 That I will break the Assyrian in My land,
And on My mountains tread him underfoot.
Then his yoke shall be removed from them,
And his burden removed from their shoulders.
26 This is the purpose that is purposed against the whole earth,
And this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations.
27 For the Lord of hosts has purposed,
And who will annul it?
His hand is stretched out,
And who will turn it back?”

Is. 37:26 “Did you not hear long ago
How I made it,
From ancient times that I formed it?
Now I have brought it to pass,
That you should be
For crushing fortified cities into heaps of ruins.

As it pertains to a definition, which I trust you will find supported throughout the message this morning, we would say that Scripture teaches that Biblical predestination is the idea that a personal God has a purpose for all things that He pre-determined from the foundations of the world and so as all things come to pass they come to pass by the necessity that our personal God determined from eternity that they come to pass. Predestination presupposes that God is capable by His omnipotence of such planning from the beginning all that will be and that God is capable by His sovereign providence to carry it all out to the most minute degree. This is what the Scripture teaches us regarding predestination.

The impact of predestination is that we do not live in a time + chance + circumstance world. Predestination is so all encompassing that it includes the roll of the dice

The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD. Prov. 16:33

and the falling of the sparrow.

29Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.

Divine predestination is so particular it includes not only the raising up of a people to be saved by God’s predestinating grace, which we shall see next week, but it includes raising up opposition to God’s predestination. God predestines people to oppose His predestination.

Ex. 9:16 – “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

God’s predestination includes predestinating those who will object to His predestination. Like an author writing a character into his novel that rails at the author from inside the novel God predestines Pharaoh’s throughout history to rail against His predestination.

So we see that Divine Predestination is exhaustive.

“The determination of the existence of all things to be created, or what is to be camellia or buttercup, nightingale or crow, hart or swine, and equally among men, the determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as boy or girl, rich or poor, dull or clever, white or colored or even as Abel and Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth; and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality; our entire existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all-embracing predestination, the Calvinist places, not in the hands of man, and still less in the hand of blind natural force, but in the hand of Almighty God, sovereign Creator and Possessor of heaven and earth; and it is in the figure of the potter and the clay that Scripture has from the time of the prophets expounded to us this all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature.”

~ Abraham Kuyper
“Lectures on Calvinism”

God has predestined the existence, role, and purpose of races and nations.

Acts 17:26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,

So, we would say that the Biblical view of predestination is that a personal God (as opposed to impersonal fate) who created the universe, sovereignly controls and providentially destines all things that come to pass.

However, most men, even most Christian men do not like this doctrine. We are seeing it today. Kuyper rightly notes that God predestines whether we are boy or girl but man has invented gender fluidity to seize God’s predestination so as to claim he has the right to predestine his boyishness or girlishness. Kuyper rightly notes that God predestines whether we will be “white or colored,” but fallen man insists that “race is a social construct” and so can’t be predestined.

HUMAN FREEDOM AND GOD’S PREDESTINATING

Now of course one typical response to this is that such a high view of God’s predestinating sovereignty reduces men to stocks and blocks. That men aren’t responsible because God predestines all.

Here we must add that God’s predestinating work does not relieve men of the free will to act according to their nature. Men are free to act consistently with their nature. Birds fly … fish swim … groundhogs burrow and fallen men sin. That is the nature of each and they are free to act consistent with their nature.

And so because men are free to act according to their nature men remain responsible. We just cited that passage from Exodus. God raises Pharaoh up to do exactly what He knew and determined that Pharaoh would do. Yet Pharaoh was free and so responsible and desired to do what he did and yet God predestined it all.

As to whether or not men are responsible for their particular sins men are responsible simply because God says they are responsible. Ask yourself this… If predestined man isn’t responsible for His sin then who is to blame for man’s sin? If you answer that the predestinating God is responsible in the sense of blame the question that then must be answered is … “To whom?” Whom is God responsible to for predestined man’s particular sin? Is God responsible to man for predestined man’s sin?

19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

If man is not responsible for man’s predestined sin then the only person left to be responsible is God but if God is responsible for man’s predestined sin in the sense of being blamed for it then God has been placed in the dock by man to be charged with wrongdoing and Scripture explicitly says that man the creature is in no place to blame the creator. Job learned this when God spoke to him out of the whirlwind.

In this matter between God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom we agree with Lorraine Boettner who put it this way,

“God so presents the outside inducements that man acts in accordance to his nature, yet does exactly what God has planned for him to do.”

Loraine Boettner
The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination — pg.38

So God predestines without forcing humans against their will, as consistent with their nature, to do what he has predestined them to do. God predestines in such a way that man remains both free to act according to his nature and so responsible for his own sin.

God’s sovereignty and man’s free will is not a contradiction. God’s predestinating free-will is primary and man’s will operating consistent with his creaturely fallen nature is secondary and they operate in the sweetest of harmony.

Perhaps this illustration will help. I have found it helpful.

Storytelling reflects the Christian God and His providential determination of the free act of human beings. Just as authors determine every single word, every single act — good and evil — of all the characters in their novel so God predestined every single word, every single act — good and evil — of all the characters of His story, inclusive of every jot an tittle.

Brian Godawa tells us in his book, “Hollywood and Worldviews,”

Films find everything in the film dedicated to telling the exact story that the screen writer desires. Everything in the film from the costumes to the colors to the insignificant background busyness to the foods eaten to the hairdos is purposely placed in the film by the producer / director to serve as a vehicle to communicate what the film is intended to communicate. Nothing on the set is left to chance. Just so our world finds everything in the world dedicated to tell the exact story that God desires. Nothing is left to what we call “chance.”

As we said earlier, even if the author of a novel writes in a character in his novel that rages at the author of the novel from inside the novel the character raging can not rage at the author apart from the author of the novel authoring that rage.

There is a plan and purpose to it all, even if the characters in the novel don’t know it at the time or even if they don’t like it.

GOD’S OMNISCIENCE AND PREDESTINATION

Now I grew up in a tradition that did not like this kind of Predestination and so instead of speaking a great deal about Predestination they would say things like “God knew it all in advance.” They would appeal to God’s foreknowledge to ward off what they believe were negative implications of Predestination. But God’s foreknowledge is no refuge against Predestination.

Consider

Omniscience presupposes predestination. If Man has libertaraian free will and God still has only Foreknowledge this means that whatever man decides to do freely God knew ahead of time. However if God knew it ahead of time and man has to do what God knows he will do then man is still operating in a predestined fashion. Man cannot do anything but what God foreknew he would do and so man in this “foreknowledge but not predestined” scheme remains predestined. In the Arminian world even foreknowledge ends up as predestination. (Don’t tell the Arminians or else they will become “Free Will Theists” in order to avoid Calvinism.)

This reminds us that Predestination is an inescapable concept. There is no avoiding it.

Predestination is inescapable – There will always be a predestinating agent and whoever is one’s predestinating agent is the God of that person.

It is a religious war. Either we will live by God’s predestination or we will live by some other predestination. (Most commonly, the State god’s predestination.)

Modern Western man has denied predestination and replaced it with the State’s womb to the tomb predestination. Just look at our state of affairs. The State has predestined the education of our children. The State has predestined how we will be provided for in our old age. The state has predestined what business will and will not exist. The state has predestined, by their testing in school where people will work after school. (School to Work programs.) The state has become our predestinating agent and we live by the states Predestination.

Ill. — Huxley’s BNW — Social Predestinators.

And so the State has taken on the role of the predestinating God.

Social engineering via the legislative arm of the State is an example of the State seeking to be God as doing God’s predestinating work. Such social engineering is the consequence of giving up on God’s law and abandoning God’s predestination. Non-Reformed people — those who deny predestination — always end up Statists.

Ill. — Archbishop Wm. Laud

Paedo-Calvinists; hating Statism and arguing in favor of God’s predestination since the 16th century.

But it is not only predestination that the State has seized. The State, as God walking on the earth as seized all kinds of God’s perogatives.

God’s reality categories are inescapable. Modern Western man has denied God’s providence and now Modern Western man looks to the State to provide all. Modern Western man has denied God’s Aseity with the consequence that Aseity has been transferred either to the sovereign Individual (Libertarianism) or man in his corporate existence (Totalitarianism). Modern Western man has denied blood atonement but yet blood atonement is the very essence of abortion and euthanasia. Modern Western man has denied the sacraments of Baptism (identity and belonging) and the Eucharist (the promise of forgiveness and Eternal life) and has ushered in the new sacraments of the social security card (identity and belonging) and the high priest psychologist who forgives us of our sins. Modern Western man has denied the catechism and replaced it with Government Education. Modern Western man has denied Election by God and has replaced it with being Elected to attend one of the Ivy League schools. Modern Western man has denied God’s tithe and replaced it paying many times the tithe to the State. Modern Western man has denied the centrality of the Church and has replaced it with the centrality of the Government schools. Modern Western man has denied heaven and has given us Utopias (Dystopias) instead.

You get the idea. God’s reality categories never go away. For those who build idols they retain God’s reality categories while giving them another name.

ANSWERING THE QUESTION OF … WHY PUT FORTH AN EFFORT THEN?

There are those who will say, in light of this high view of God and Predestination … why Bother? If God is ruling so exhaustively why bother…

When I lived in SC I had a Church member who would repeatedly pepper me with that question. Pastor … if predestination is true then why should I bother about anything since God has it all planned. He never did accept, what I am sure were feeble attempts to answer him. But there are are three answers to that.

The first one is “Because He has commanded you.” God’s law for the Christian is a guide to life and we are responsible to live by its precepts. Therefore because we are a blood bought people always zealous to do good works (Titus) therefore, in light of God’s predestination we strive manfully to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God as God defines those in His Law-Word.

The second answer to why bother to strive in light of a God who has predetermined all is because God ordains not only the ends but the means. God predestines His own covenant seed to be born but you can probably guess that God also predestines the means to those predestined babies. God predestines people coming to know Christ but He also predestines you as a means to herald the good news of Jesus Christ murdered as a substitute for sinners.

The third reason is … “We can’t help but bother.” God has given His people the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing that which is to come. If you united to Christ, because you have been given the Spirit of Christ you can’t help but desire to make it your goal to please Him and so you live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Conclusion

We have more to say on this subject but we will save it for next week. Let us round off by noting that Calvin noted that the purpose of this doctrine was for comfort. The idea that God Predestines all was to be a doctrine that the believer could turn to in times of trial and in times of merry.

In trial the believer could turn to the doctrine of Predestination to find comfort in the fact that the world was not being governed by a cruel fate that had turned on him. Predestination would teach him, by already knowing of God’s favor upon him, that God had a purpose in all that the believer may be going through and because of that the believer could entrust himself to God’s wisdom and so bear up under hardship.

In times of merriment the believer could turn to the doctrine of Predestination and be thankful for God’s largess.

Without a Predestining God the individual doesn’t really need God. If God does not completely predestine then why should man entrust himself to a God who is limited by some circumstance beyond God’s control? Better for man to become his own God then to trust a God who is not sovereign over all.

Second the purpose of this doctrine was to make Calvinists men and women of steel. Men and women who believe in a predestinating God, when they are consistent with this belief, are men and women made of old leather and barbed wire. Belief in a God who has predestined all means we do not quail before opposition, we do not collapse in the context of tragedy, we do not surrender before resistance, and we do not look at failure as final, and we never ever compromise God’s truth. After all, the predestining God who has given us challenges is the predestining God who will bring us through those challenges to His glory as we honor Him.

Predestination and the belief thereof works in men an inability to intimidate. If God and His plan is for us, who can be against us?

Is Tim Keller a Cultural Marxist? Let’s ask Tim himself,

“The history and philosophy departments were socially radicalized and were heavily influenced by the Frankfurt school. In 1968 this was heady stuff. THE SOCIAL ACTIVISM WAS PARTICULARLY ATTRACTIVE, AND THEIR CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN BOURGEOIS SOCIETY WAS COMPELLING. But its philosophical underpinnings were confusing to me. I seemed to see two camps before me. And there was something radically wrong with both of them. The people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists. While the morally upright didn’t seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world. I was emotionally drawn to the former path. What young person wouldn’t be? Liberate the oppressed and sleep with who you wanted. But I kept asking the question, if morality is relative, why isn’t social justice as well? This seemed to be a blatant inconsistency in my professors and their followers. Yet, now I saw the stark contradiction in the traditional churches. How could I turn my back to the kind of orthodox Christianity that supported segregation in the South and South Africa? Christianity began to seem very unreal to me, though I was unable to discern a viable alternative way of life and thought.”

Tim Keller
Sermon

Note,

1.) The only fault Tim had with the Frankfurt School, per his own testimony, was its moral relativism. Take away the moral relativism of Cultural Marxism and Tim was good with the Frankfurt school.

2.) Tim says the Frankfurt school’s critique of American Bourgeois soceity was compelling. Please understand that the Frankfurt schools critique of American first assumes a Marxist framework to make this analysis and second assumes that America had a bourgeois society to begin with. Already, with these words, Tim tells us that he is a Cultural Marxist.

3.) Tim assumes that soical justice is what the Cultural Marxists defined it as. No Christian defines social justice in the framework of Cultrual Marxists.

4.) Tim agreeingly speaks of the “oppression going on all over the world.” Now it is possible that there is “oppression going on all over the world” but if there is no Christian would conclude that on the basis of a Frankfurt school paradigm — and that is exactly what Tim is doing.

5.) It is interesting that the chief accusations first brought against each social order was first brought by Marxists. Until the Marxist started screaming about these social orders Christians understood that they were providing a social order, while hardly ideal, was providing stability. Does anyone want to argue that South Africa is more whole now with its Marxist social order than it was before it got rid of Apartheid? Does anyone want to argue that the South is more whole with the elimination of segregation? Has the Communist social order that has replaced Apartheid an improvement? Is the black community in the South in America better off than it was before segregation was forever ended? Statistics regarding the dysfunction in the black community suggest the answer is “no.”

Here is a lecture on Christianity and apartheid in South Africa that is important to consider on this matter,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOvLDkoGiDc

The Cultural Marxist Hebert Marcuse, in his 1965 paper, “Repressive Tolerance,” proposed setting up a victim coalition of people who could be convinced that they were oppressed. This coalition would comprise those who were previously rightly considered the derelicts and outcasts of society. They were the detritus that always is part of any civilization. These included members of the burgeoning feminist movement, the various sexually perverted and the general criminal class. An additional part of this coalition included the minority community, as the minority community were convinced that they were an aggrieved people who needed to overthrow their oppressors.

This cadre of people would become the new proletariat to accomplish the long march through the Institutions. The previous proletariat (the worker class) had failed in the original vision of Marxism to overthrow the Bourgeois but the Frankfurt School, of which Marcuse was a card carrying member, envisioned a new proletariat (the oppressed) who would overthrow their oppressors.

These new oppressed would be brainwashed into thinking that their oppressors were European Biblical Christians. This strategy included casting White European Christians as narrow-minded bigots who were by nature racists, xenophobes, homophobes, Islamaphobes, misogynists and greedy. All this would be definitional of what it meant to have “White privilege.” This new proletariat was taught the wonders of tolerance for everyone except Christians, against whom, intolerance must be practiced at every turn.

In his 1965 paper Marcuse gave the justification for this new intolerance,

“Liberating tolerance then would mean intolerance against movements from the right and toleration for movements from the left. As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance, it would extend to the stage of action, as well as discussion and propaganda of deed as well as word.”

With this statement, Marcuse provided the methodology by which the new proletariat would march through the Western Institutions changing them so that those Institutions would no longer reflect the worldview of the alleged oppressor but rather would reflect and serve the worldview of the oppressed who hated Christianity and the ethos that characterizes the Christian faith. The new methodology included the ability to criminalize Christian thinking, morality, and behavior. It was Christian thinking, morality, and behavior which would be allowed no tolerance. We are seeing this methodology being played out today in the constant refrain of “White privilege,” and “Systemic Racism.” No tolerance will be allowed for “White privilege,” or “Systemic Racism,” and when one bores down on what these are one discovers that they are simply expressions of Biblical Christianity. It is Biblical Christianity — most commonly embraced by descendants of White-Europeans — that must not be tolerated. Marcuse’s Methodology explains the pulling down of statuary, the changing of names, and the elimination of all things Western Civilization.

When you combine the above with the prevailing Worldview that has been hegemonic since the 1960’s or so one begins to understand why we are at this place in time. The Ascendant worldview in the West today is some form of Existentialism, whether of the postmodern variety, the Nihilism variety or the Deconstructionists variety. All find their roots going back to Existentialism.

In the world of existentialism, a person’s individual freedom is the North Star of the philosophy. As such in that world contradiction is meaningless. The existentialist cares little about being contradictory because the pursuit of non-contradiction would mean a lack of absolute freedom. The existentialist not caring about contradiction therefore must insist that there is no such thing as order, design, or logic to the Universe. As personal freedom is the North Star all is randomness and chance and any determinacy that exists, exists only at the consent of the freedom of the existentialist and only exists as long as they like.

All of this is what Sartre meant when he said “Existence precedes essence.” For the existentialist man’s existence precedes his essence — man exists without any prior essence (nature) or fixed meaning. As such man creates and recreates at his whimsy his own meaning within his essence-less world.

When this worldview of existentialism with its insistence on absolute freedom with no boundaries is combined with Marcuse’s Cultural Marxism and its methodology of no tolerance (then sprinkled with Marx’s Hegelian dialectic) for the descendants of the White European Biblical Christians the end of result is the burning down of the West — a civilizations entity grown in the soil of Biblical Christianity.

“If I do that, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once!”

President Abraham Lincoln
In response to the suggestion by the Virginian Commissioners to abandon the custom house of Fort Sumter. Housekeeping is a euphemism for federal spending, in other words, taxing consumers to subsidize special interests, or what we would call today, corporate welfare.

““But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery [meaning the Confederate constitutional convention]? Am I to let them go on… [a]nd open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?”

President Abraham Lincoln to Colonel John B. Baldwin
Baldwin was deputized by the Virginian Commissioners to determine whether Lincoln would use force, April 4, 1861

Following the fact that North and South were each serving a different God what was the most significant underlying cause of what is called “The Civil War?” Hint — It wasn’t slavery.

The simple fact of the matter is that the North was using the South as a milch cow to sustain its ever burgeoning Henry Clay “American system” of government Centralization and government spending on internal improvements that primarily profited the North.

There were many important people in the North upon hearing of the South’s departure were initially glad to see them go and encouraged the willing release of the South. Horace Greely, Editor of the influential “New York Tribune” wrote, “The South has as good a right to secede from the Union as the colonies had to secede from Great Britain.” The Newspaper, “The Albany Atlas and Argus” encouraged, “We must separate from them peacefully,” and then admonished the Republicans for being responsible for South Carolina’s departure. The pro-Lincoln newspaper outlet, “The Indianapolis Daily Journal,” editorialized “We are well rid of South Carolina,” and went on several sentences expressing how fortunate the Union was for her leaving ending with “If all the South follows her, let it.” The “New York Journal of Commerce” opined along the line that it was time to stop assigning blame and to face facts: “The Union is already dissolved,” and went on to admonish Washington that it was time to adopt a policy of limiting the secession, and to not go about raising and arming men to butcher their friends in the South. “The Detroit Free Press” in a matter of fact fashion offered; “The people of these States, driven to desperation by the incessant warfare of abolitionism upon their most cherished rights, have withdrawn themselves from among us…” This pro-Douglas newspaper went on to say that Washington should recognize the Confederacy or go to war and finally opined that if there was war the blame would be with the Republican party. Finally, even the pro-Republican, pro-Lincoln, “Northwest Daily Tribune” wrote that if the South opted to form an independent nation “they [would] have a clear moral right to do so.”

We see in many quarters of the North the attitude was to allow the South to leave. The North, having no fondness for the Black man would not go to war to stop the South with its slavery from leaving.

However, in other quarters in the North there was a building understanding such as recognized by Lincoln in the opening quotes that if the South was to leave the Nation to form its own Nation that the results would be the impoverishment and so diminishing of the North. Newspapers like “The Manchester Daily Mirror” connected the dots by offering: “The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping [worth] without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more ships than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process [secession], and we lose. NO — we must not ‘let the South go.'” The pro-Lincoln “New York Evening Post” added that if the Lincoln government could not collect revenues from the seceded states, “the nation will become bankrupt.”

Here is the point that we realize what the Civil War was about, after it was about the reality that each section was serving different gods, was a matter of money. Lincoln understood this as well, as the opening quotes above by Lincoln demonstrate. The Civil war being about slavery or black men in chains was way down on the list of reasons why white men on this continent began to fight and kill one another. The Civil war, being theological in its beginnings was thus eventually economic. It was simply a matter of following the money.

The North came to the realization that it was either kill Southerners in bloody fratricidal war or it was a matter of slowing dying themselves from a severe constriction in wealth. It was true that the North had the industrial base of the nation. However, it was also true that the North needed the material goods (especially Cotton) from the South in order for the industrial base to keep whirring and humming. The North understood that other nations would be using the Southern ports of Savannah, Charleston, and New Orleans to bring their goods in where they would only have to pay 10% rate of tariff as opposed to the 47% tariff rate that the Northern ports of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia would be charging. In brief, the Yankee industrial movers and shakers began to realize that they would be left impoverished if the South was allowed to depart.

There was one more twist to the almost certain financial demise of the North if the South was allowed to leave and that was the reality that the Central government in DC would also be severely financially hamstrung. By 1860, 80-90% of federal revenue came from the Southern export trade, which was largely built on slavery. If the North was to lose the South the funds that operated the Federal Government would dry up. This fact also explains why Northern politicians sought to keep their distance from movement abolitionists. The North understood that they not only had to keep the South but they also could not touch slavery as an institution since the Southern export trade (and so their revenues) was built on the Southern slavery economy. This explain why Lincoln painstakingly went out of his way to promise the South that he had no intent on ending slavery per his first inaugural address,

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Financially speaking, if the South was going to continue to be the North’s milch cow then the North needed to make sure Southern slavery did not go in to abeyance. What the North wanted was the South to be restricted to its geographic area to continue to be the source of revenue for the North so that the North could expand Westward as developed by Clay’s (and now Lincoln’s) American System. The South would be the North’s money base as its influence would be forever diminished in DC due to the influx of new States beholden to the North’s American System.

The war was not about slavery. If anything the Northern Titans of industry desired for slavery to continue in the South. The North hated the black man as seen by many of its state codes touching the presence of the black man in their states.

Again, I say… the war was not about slavery. Slavery was only eventually used as an excuse for the War in order to add a moral window dressing to Lincoln’s raping, murdering, and pillaging of the South. It is easy to justify a war that has the grand moral purpose of “freeing the black man.” It makes a far less inspiring motto to say “We are going to war to steal their stuff.”

We have a problem.

Actually, we are deluged with problems. The problem I’m speaking of here is the instinct to “return to chaos,” based on the belief that out of chaos order comes. This belief is the creed of the Revolutionary. It is the watchword of those who want to make the world anew and make it anew overnight. It was a motto of the Scottish Rite Masons preferring to use the Latin, “Ordo Ab Chao.”

Order out of chaos is the belief that the only way that disorder can be rectified is to return to chaos believing that out of chaos a order will arise Phoenix like from the ashes of what has been burnt to the ground. Order out of chaos was the guiding motif of the French Revolution with its guillotine , the War of Northern Aggression with its total war on civilians, and the Bolshevik Revolution with its gulag system. It is the guiding motif of Mardi Gras with its night of debauchery preceding Ash Wednesday and Lent. It was present in the ancient world with its Bacchanalian festivals. It was the theme behind Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Order out of chaos presupposes the absence of God and if there is no God and all there is, is matter in motion then the distaste for the present order requires throwing the dice of chance again in order to roll a reality that is more to one’s liking. Return to chaos in hopes of birthing a better order.

We well can see that such a conviction is present with our current Revolutionaries trolling the streets of our major cities. Oh, they may not be able to articulate it has we have done in the first two paragraphs above but it is this conviction that animates them even if they themselves don’t understand it. One sees it in the irrational pulling down of statuary, the burning and looting, the gang assault on random vehicles. In all this is the attempt to return to chaos.

However, the suggested problem we began with is that now we are beginning to see, in some quarters, this desire to “return to chaos” in what were formerly conservative, or, at least more conservative quarters. There is a mind set developing that looks at the present social order, and rightly disgusted with our governmental structures and our current bent towards anarcho-tyranny desires to join hands with the Revolutionaries among us in their avowed techniques and agree to just burn it all down. Understand they do not agree with the Black Lives Matter club on the new order they hope chaos to produce but they do agree with the Black Lives Matter narrative that it all has to burn in order for something better to arise in its stead. Black Lives Matter envisions a new order with the Black Marxist as top rail. The self-identified anarchist-capitalists, minarchists, and neo-Libertarians instead envision a night watchmen state at best in order to afford maximum liberty. However, for both of them the way to gain their envisioned narratives is to return to chaos.

The ironic thing about all this neo-Anarchism (by whatever name) ends up being merely Communism for the individual. So the Black Lives desires to have a traditional communism while the neo-anarchists desire to have private individual communism. But communism by any other name remains communism. Historically, Marx’s most severe venom (and Marx could be venomous) was saved for Max Stirner who might be labeled the father of philosophical anarchism. Stirner convincingly, in ” The Ego and Its Own,” unraveled Marx’s communism proving that he and it were inconsistent with Marx’s own principles. Stirner demonstrated that Marx’s communism only made sense when embraced on a private individual basis. If Stirner was right then, the neo-anarchists who want to see it all burn so order can come out of chaos and the Black Lives Matter who want to see it all burn so order can come out of chaos are all drinking from the same philosophical well. Maybe it makes sense that they both desire to pull the house down around their own heads?

The Christian does not believe that order arises out of chaos believing that change comes with line upon line and precept upon precept. As such, the Christian may well oppose the Government when it is going all anarcho-tyranny but it does so hoping to retain the best of the system that already exists. The Christian, not being pagan, does not desire to see it all just burn without discriminating about what should and should not be given to the flames. It is the difference between a Cromwell and a Robespierre.

The solution to our present quandary is not to burn it all down in hopes that order will arise out of chaos. The solution is,

1.) A return to self-governing consistent with God’s Law-Word

Unless we are granted a Reformation characterized by the preaching of Christ crucified with the consequent life of grateful obedience to His Word all we can expect is the growth of the conviction that the solution is return to chaos.

Keep in mind that unless men are self-regulated and self-governed by some objective law then the only answer to regulating and governing men is a top down solution which will inevitably become tyrannical.

Muscular Christianity must return. A Christianity that preaches the law to the unbeliever as a preparation for grace and then preaches a grace to the believer that speaks up walking in terms of the law as gratitude for grace.

2.) Should God be pleased to grant Reformation to a large enough percentage of the population then that percentage of population as to fight to overthrow the wickedness that would otherwise pull down Christ and His faithful Church.

There are those among the putative Christian community who are calling for Christians to withdraw from the public square in order to concentrate on those things that matter most. Listen to one of the leaders of the Liberal Gospel Coalition, Rev. Kevin DeYoung,

“Maybe there are more important ways to promote Christian virtue and preserve Christian orthodoxy in our world (than winning political victories)….

To marshal our energies as if political victories were more important than strengthening the family is a decidedly un-conservative position. I’m not calling for abandoning politics, but I am asking the question, “What does it profit a man if he gets textualists on the Supreme Court but loses his own children? …”

Here’s a culture war strategy conservative Christians should get behind: have more children and disciple them like crazy.“

Rev. DeYoung in this is in no way advocating a order from chaos philosophy for cultural renewal. However he is advocating a cultural renewal philosophy that is not far-sighted in the least. Why does Rev. DeYoung believe that Christian parents will be allowed to pass on the Christian faith to their seed? If Christian parents will not be allowed to forbid their children from the State forcing vaccines upon their children why does Rev. DeYoung believe that in a social order where Christianity has not triumphed in the Culture wars will be allowed to disciple their own children like crazy? Voices like DeYoung don’t seem to realize that should Christians lose the public square they are not going to allowed to concentrate on the things that matter most and so keep their children.

I have lived through the homeschooling regimen. Let me just say that looking over the wreckage that was the intent to disciple children like crazy hasn’t gone well and the reason for that, in part, is because we have not fought effectively the culture wars from which DeYoung wants to retire in some measure.

In brief, I see little evidence that we are keeping our own children despite countless people thinking they were discipling their own children like crazy.

3.) To start guarding our pulpits more zealously.

Right now the pulpit in American is manned by those embracing worldviews foreign to our Fathers and more importantly foreign to the Bible. We have everything from the heresis of R2K to Dispensationalism to New Perspective on Paul to Federal Vision to Cultural Marxism in our pulpits all across the country. Seeking to find a plain old fashioned historic Calvinist minister is like searching for a left-handed smoke-bender. We cannot expect Reformation as long as the pulpit in America is innovative. A mist in the pulpit always results in a fog in the pew.

Neither the Revolutionary Ordo Ab Chao nor withdrawing from the public square is going to solve our social order problems.