Fighting in the Shadow of Short Term Loss

“The ceaseless body blows delivered with increasing power by the allied forces left the German Army breathless and helpless but it is fair to acknowledge that they retreated fighting for every kilometer that they ultimately had to concede. It was not a chase and hardly a pursuit. Chased, decimated, despairing, the German soldiers fought on making us pay a heavy price for every mile we wrestled from them. Throughout the whole war, the Germans had shown themselves doughty fighters but there was nothing finer in their record than the pluck with which they continued to withstand us in the hour of their defeat. They could not but know that they were beaten. At home, their families were starving. Yet in the month of October — the last whole month of the war — The British forces in France suffered 120,000 battle casualties as evidence of the resistance they encountered. Between July 1 and the cessation of hostilities (11-11-18) the British battle casualties from fighting a beaten foe, and a foe who knew he was beaten was on every front totaled 430,000 in killed, wounded, prisoners, and missing. During practically the same period the French lost 531,000 men and the Americans over 200,000. Let us give due honor to a brave people with whom we have had but one deadly quarrel. They fought to the end with desperate valor.”

Llyod George 
Memoirs

The reason I post this here is that, by way of metaphor, the Church known by Christ is now in the same place as the German Army was in July of 1918. Short term we are a beaten foe and we would wage war better if we just came to terms as being, in the short term, a beaten foe. Acknowledging such would go a long way towards eliminating disappointment and give us reasonable expectations. Acknowledging such would deliver us from such a thirst for visible victory that we inch towards calling defeat “victory” because we are so desperate for a visible victory. Acknowledging such would cause us to place our hope in God as opposed to voting patterns, political promises, or social activism.

This is not a call for pessimism, though doubtless, that is what it will be cast as by those who have no ability to fight on when short-term victory is not on the horizon. Instead, this is a call for optimistic post-millennial realism. We work towards the future regardless of what God’s good providence has given us in the present. We work with the expectation that our current labors will, while not bringing instant victory, put us and our seed on a trajectory of future victory.

We still soldier on and fight back and resist with all our might for our great Liege-Lord Jesus Christ. We can still, sticking with the metaphor, inflict casualties and we should pray we are given opportunities to do so. If the Germans of WW I could be brave and fight on in the knowledge of a certain defeat we few — we happy few — can continue to be brave and fight on in the knowledge that we are preparing the ground for future victory. That is victory enough.

Always faithful.

An Older Christianity … An Ancient Opponent

As WASP’s who are we? Are we merely a people who embrace a shared set of noble propositions? Or is there something more which makes “us,” us? Are we a unique, distinct, and separate people who belong to a particular race and clan, with a definable and cherished history, bound by a shared faith, language, and culture? Or to the contrary are we just so many integers and cogs who can be replaced by proposition affirming Tutsis, Hans, or Mongolians? Is particularity among the human species to go into eclipse in favor of a New World Order Universalistic Babel created melange that has declared war on distinction and particularity?
 
Some of the more pious Christian fellow travelers love to point out that our identity is in Christ. Nothing I write here should negate that reality. However, even the inspired Apostle Paul, who gave us more than any writers on our identity in Christ could still affirm distinctions among peoples and even mentioned his own passion for his own distinct people.

Roman 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,

Note what 19th century Charles Hodge offers on this passage,

 
Paul had two classes of brethren; those who were with him the children of God in Christ; these he calls brethren in the Lord, Philip, i. 14, holy brethren, &c. The others were those who belonged to the family of Abraham. These he calls brethren after the flesh, that is, in virtue of natural descent from the same parent. Philemon, he addresses as his brother, both in the flesh and in the Lord. The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles and impulses of our nature. It, therefore, approves of parental and filial affection, and, as is plain from this and other passages, of peculiar love for the people of our own race and country.
 
Charles Hodge
Commentary Romans 9

Hodge, contrary to modern 21st-century leaders, did not suggest that because we were Christians our identity was such that grace destroyed nature so that who we were created by God to be somehow disappeared and was negated once we were redeemed. Grace restores nature. Grace does not destroy nature.

Because this is true as anchored, united, and grounded in Christ we still retain our creational categories. We are still male or female. Still, retain our patronymic last names. Still belong to race, ethnicity, clan, tribe, and family. Calvin underscores this point when he offered,

“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regard policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”

Calvin
Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3

When Calvin writes about “flighty and scatterbrained dreamers” he is referring to the Anabaptists of his time who had the tendency and desire to flatten all creational distinctions so that the result was a kind of social order that resembled a box of melted crayons.

The Anabaptists have returned with a vengeance. They or their intellectually sympathetic fellow travelers — The Cultural Marxists — are at the controls of our Churches, our Universities, our Families, our Corporations, and our Social Order and culture. Everywhere there is the push of “scatterbrained dreamers” to insist that grace destroys nature. Everywhere is the push of “scatterbrained dreamers” to adulterate and water down the distinctions that God ordained to make us, “us.”  Everywhere is the push of “scatterbrained dreamers” to

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

Allow me to submit that Social Justice Warrior Christianity that is now doing the work of Calvin’s “scatterbrained dreamers” is just the 40 proof version of the 100 proof version of the Frankfort school which has done so much damage to Western Civilization.

So because of how the cankerworm has eaten away at the reality of divinely intended distinctions we lesser sons of the greater fathers of the West are left to ask ourselves;  Will the historically distinct Christian and Anglo-Saxon quality of resisting tyranny which Kipling immortalized in poetry rise again to meet the challenge of the International Money Interest who would involve the globe in a liberty snuffing mass amalgamation that throws race, ethnicity, religion, and culture into a giant Marxist blender? Or will the Christian WASP go quietly into the dark night of religion, race, and culture mixing?

The chips pushed in the middle of this poker table is Western civilization itself and more than that the stake is the existence of Biblical Christianity. A loss here would include a dark age which may take a millennium before a light flickers again.
 
Around this poker table sits the New World Order, the Social Justice Warrior Christian Left, and the Ideological classical liberal Christian “Conservative.” The fourth party at the table has the greatest stake in the results but is playing with the least visible leverage. Let us call him the dissident Biblical Christian. If the fourth party loses he loses Biblical patriarchy, Biblical marriage, Biblical family, Biblical social order and culture, and the Biblical visible Church. If he loses, he loses everything. If he loses he loses everything that has made civilization decent, estimable, and praiseworthy. The other three win no matter which of the other three win… at least for a time, though in the end, they lose as well because their winnings mean the return of chaos and dark night.
 
Choose ye this day whom you will support.

Expansionism Islam

I’ve done some reading on the Muslim expansion in history and over the past few years. Below is a list of some books I have read that you might want to consider if you are interested in becoming informed on this important subject. Muslims do not belong in the West but the International Money Power has Babel-like New World Order vision to turn the whole world into a cash register and so they are pushing Muslim third world migration into the West with the purpose of amalgamating and so destroying all distinct nations, peoples, and races. It is all part of the plan to homogenize the worlds peoples, religions, and races. Multiculturalism necessitates multi-faithism and multiracialism. This is one reason why Ayatollah McDurmon’s thinking and his recent Fatwas is contributing to the destruction of Christianity and the West. Also part of this plan is the push for worldwide legislative acceptance of global warming as well as the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, bricks of which are already being implemented in this country.

The expansion of Islam is but one tentacle in this New World Order push.

1.) Stealth Invasion — Leo Hohmann

2.) Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West — Christopher Caldwell

3.) The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) — Robert Spencer

4.) The Sword of the Prophet: Islam; History, Theology, Impact on the World –Serge Trifkovic

5.) Refugee Resettlement and the Hijra to America — Ann Corcoran

6.) Shariah in American Courts: The Expanding Incursion of Islamic Law in the U.S. Legal System

7.) The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America — James Simpson

8.) The Concise History of the Crusades (Critical Issues in World and International History) — Thomas F. Madden

9.) God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades — Rodney Stark

Lord’s Resurrection Day I

2.) Q — Since then the resurrection is true what certainties do we who rightly believe receive from this doctrine of Christ?

A. — First, that God by the resurrection has again confirmed that He does not speak without keeping His Word. (1)

Secondly, the resurrection proves that the Lord Christ is indeed God, (2) which in turn confirms that the work of Christ on the cross was a payment for sin that truly saves all who rightly believe. (3)

Thirdly, the resurrection makes certain that we have closed with Christ do wear the righteousness of Christ, (4) and thus no longer remain in our sin, (5) since we too have been raised with Christ. (6)

Fourthly, now being clothed in the righteousness of Christ the resurrection power of God working within us (7) promises (8) and enables (9) us to live lives increasingly consistent with the righteousness given to us in Christ.

Fifthly, the resurrection of our Lord Christ is a certain promise that we who have embraced Christ will also resurrect in a like manner and so not remain captive to the grave. (10)

Finally, the resurrection proves that grace does not destroy nature but restores nature as in the resurrection we remain joined to our gender (11), our nation (12), and our bodies with all their earthly scars (13) and capacities (14).

(1) = John 2:19, Hebrews 6:18
(2) = Romans 1:4
(3) = I Corinthians 15:17
(4) = Romans 4:25
(5) = I Corinthians 15:17
(6) = Colossian 3:1
(7) = Ephesians 1:19-20
(8) = Romans 6:4
(9) = Romans 6;10-11
(10) = I Corinthians 15:20-21
(11) = John 20:26-27
(12) = Revelation 21:24, 26, 22:2
(13) = John 20:26-27
(14) = Luke 24:43

Garden & Resurrection

I.) Eden Ruined

The Scripture opens up in a Garden scene. We all know it. The garden of Eden. Man was placed here as God’s stewards to bring dominion to the garden by tending and keeping the garden. The garden was where God and man had fellowship. God would walk with man in the garden in the cool of the evening. The beauty of the garden matched the innocence of man.

Some scholars offer that Eden was a kind of base of operations from which Adam and Eve, operating as faithful to God, would push out the boundaries of the Eden garden so as to cover the whole earth. In other words, their mission was to turn the whole earth into the same garden that Eden was. Ths would be consistent with their calling to have dominion,

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion…”

However, as we know Adam, the Federal head of all humanity… the one who acted as the legal representative of all mankind turned from God’s face and so we learn from Genesis that Adam was tempted and in essence said, “Not thy will, but my will be done.” And with Adam’s fall, all mankind fell in and with him. In the choice to do his own will rather than God’s Adam was constituted a sinner and died spiritually and began to die physically.

In Romans 5, Scripture teaches that because of Adam’ sin we all die.

 “just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”

Adam’s sin in the Garden was imputed to us … put to our account.

“Through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men,”

And so man’s fellowship, intimacy, and peace with God were fractured there in the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, our Covenantal Representative said, “not thy will, but my will be done.”

But God had determined there would be other Gardens and another Adam, the last Adam … and further redemptive drama to be played out in Garden settings.

Jesus Christ is that last Adam… the representative covenantal head of a new humanity placed in a new creation; the Kingdom of God. As the last Adam, come to save His people, a garden setting once again takes center stage in their restoration. The last Adam comes to another garden called Gethsemane, which in Hebrew means “oil press.”

In this Garden, Jesus begins the active penalty stage of undoing what Adam had done in the garden of Eden. Here Christ is pressed down and squeezed.

Ill. — Description of 1st century Olive Press

With the Garden of Gethsemane, we could easily argue that we have,

II.) Eden Revisited

Each gospel writer records the pressure in Gethsemane, and Jesus himself referred to this great trauma when he spoke of his impending death in John 12:27: “Now my heart is troubled. What shall I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.”

 44 And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. 

Why was Jesus distressed?  We must understand that the death of Jesus Christ was unique. He may have been distressed at the horror of the content of the cup of God’s wrath which was extended for him or he may have begun to realize that for the first time that he would be separated from the Father.

Consider that in 2 Corinthians 5:21 St. Paul wrote, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us,” and in Galatians 3:13 he wrote, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”

Here in this Gethsemane garden, the God-Man, the last Adam, is facing what the first Adam faced in the garden of Eden. Would he embrace the Father’s fellowship or would he turn from the Father, like Adam, and embrace His own will?  Adam in the garden disobeyed God by eating of the tree. The last Adam, now in the garden is asked to mount the tree of death to pay the penalty for Adam’s sin. Here in the Gethsemane garden, the Eden is being replayed. Would the last Adam, who was always about the Father’s will, and who claimed that He only did what the Father does, now bow to the will of the Father and so become accounted as a curse in order to be imputed with the sin, misery, and guilt of all of Adam’s sin for all of God’s people?

In John 8:29 Jesus said, “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” In the Garden of Gethsemane, He now must choose to be alone, desolate, forsaken, and abandoned by all. He must choose to bear God’s curse.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, He knows He is to be forsaken especially of his Father, whose fellowship he cherished as the Son of God.

In the Gethsemane garden, Jesus considers the cup of God’s wrath and in His praying we see, and I say this with all the reverence I can muster … a Holy stutter.

All of this teaches the severity of what Adam did in the garden of Eden. We learn that story from the tenderest of ages and it becomes something of a familiar tale that we grow comfortable with. But the Garden of Gethsemane reminds us that the Garden of Eden was the greatest disaster in World History because Adam’s failure in the Garden of Eden required Christ’s agony … Christ’s sweating as great drops of blood… Christ’s heart being troubled, in order to reverse the curse. Because of the failure in Eden, He who knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

And the active penalty phase of all that began as where the initial failure began. In a garden.

But we are not yet finished with Redemptive history and Gardens for in a few short days we have,

III.) Eden Re-established

We are not finished with the Garden motif yet though.

40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. 41 At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. 42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

A little later we learn from John’s Gospel (Ch. 20) that Mary mistook Jesus for the Gardener. Jesus speaks to Mary

  “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Garden and Gardeners. This time in the context of the Resurrection. Man fell in the context of a Garden. Man’s temptation was re-visited in the Garden of Gethsemane, and now Eden is re-established with the resurrection of Christ happening in a Garden.

Theologians labor to demonstrate that with the Resurrection Christ brought in the new creation.  The Old Testament supports this line of thought as it anticipated that the Messiah would,

  comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places. And her wilderness He will make like Eden, And her desert like the garden of the LORD; Joy and gladness will be found in her, Thanksgiving and sound of a melody. (Is. 51:3)

The wilderness and the desert will be glad, And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom; Like the crocus (Is. 35:1)

The idea here is that Christ is indeed the Gardener who brings with His resurrection the new Creation…. the garden of God. All those who are found in Christ are themselves then part of that new garden creation,

 I Cor. 5:17Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!

Christ resurrects in a garden setting. He has brought in the new creation which is described as a garden in the OT and He brings that in because He is the new creation… Christ is the garden of God.  In Him, we have been translated from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear son.

We now share in His resurrection life.  We are reconciled. We are redeemed.  We are justified. We are regenerated. We have peace with God. We are more than conquerors. We are God’s dominion men who walk in terms of God’s law-word. We work again to make everything we touch… our families, our careers, our churches, our relationships, into gardens of God in order to beautify the glory of God which can never be increased in beauty.

With the work of Christ men who trust in Christ are once again put in the garden that they were removed from in the fall and forbidden from in the shadow covenant.

The Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane had been Gardens of defeat and despair but now with the resurrection of Christ, the garden takes on a new meaning. The garden is the place of life, it is the place where there is abundance, the place where there is hope. The place that is characteristic of the new creation.

And this is emphasized with our final glimpse this morning of the Garden motif in the context of Redemptive history.

IV.) Eden Restored

Rev. 22:22 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

Some of your Bibles even subhead this section as “Eden Restored.”

While the book of Revelation can speak of the new heavens and new earth as a city there is also talk in Revelation of the Garden of God. Here in Revelation 22 the description sounds very garden-like. In Rev. 2:7 it is even more explicit

Rev. 2:7 — To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.’

Paradise “Παράδεισος [Paradeisos] was originally a Persian word, denoting an enclosed garden, especially a royal park.

So, the new heavens and the new earth can be rightly described as a garden. And it is there that we will live the resurrection with the resurrected one. In that Garden, the nations will be healed, the curse will be obliterated, life will pulsate as the river flows, the curse we struggle with so mightly here will be gone and the presence of God will be our delight. We will still do the bidding of God. We will still be builders of Godly culture and social order, for in the aggregate that is what we were created to be. We will still keep and tend the Garden and this time without failure. Our resurrection will know no end.

And keeping garden will be our project.