The Lazarus Chronicles #2

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Mark Twain
Text of a cable sent from London to the US press after his obituary had been mistakenly published.

What’s a noteworthy main event without a quality curtain call? Why, it’s like a gourmet meal without something to cleanse the palate.

With that in mind 36 hours or so after dying I decided to “do it again jack.”

Thursday had been a gangbusters day following surgery. I was hitting all the markers. I was already walking up and down the hallways tethered to God only knows how many tubes and lines. It was a good day and the hospital staff seemed pleased.

And then the bear jumped on my back. The heart pace-makery gadgetry that had failed initially due to a circuit coming undone, failed again. This time it was because the internal piece had worked its way out of my heart and so once again my heartbeats per minute began to dive. This reality was combined with the fact that I was being given heart drugs to support the heart but had a side-effect of slowing the BPM down a wee bit and my body over-reacted to those drugs and instead of slowing down a wee bit it decided to go on holiday.

The wizards of the heart tried to set the pacemaker at a higher rate but the only effect, given that the gadgetry was no longer where it belonged internally, was to give me a decidedly noticeable mini shock. And as the wizards of the heart were bound and determined to get their machine to work, the consequence is that I endured these repeating delightful mini-shocks. Each different wizard of the heart who showed up to try and get their gadgetry running thought that if they just shocked me once again like the previous wizard of the heart had done the machine would start working.

Now, that more than a few wizards of the heart have taken their turns learning that their gadgetry no longer worked it became obvious that there was a real problem. My heart beat had been steady but had steadily dropped. When Jane left Thursday night on 18th May the BPM was in the 50’s. When she returned in the morning it was in the 40’s. Before the morning was to far spent it would be in the 30’s. Now, I’d like to have the heartbeat of a world class marathon runner but my body was beginning to protest. I began retching. (Fortunately for all parties concerned my stomach was empty.) The heartbeat monitor slipped to 27 and I distinctly remember lifting my head and looking around at the now numerous staff and saying, “hey, am I dying here?” They all resounded with a definite “no.” I hardly shared their confidence.

At one point I flatlined. Now I had always thought that flatlining meant you were dead. (Great classic film with Julia Roberts — Flatliners.) However, later I learned that flatlining does not mean one is dead it only means that one is kind of dead.

Shades of “The Princess Bride” came instantly to mind;

Billy Crystal as Miracle Max — Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.

Now, that is a distinction you need to keep stored away in your mind for future reference. So, I was not dead a second time. I had only flatlined. I found a great deal of comfort in later learning that distinction existed.

At this point the wizards of the heart accepted the defeat of their gadgetry and decided to go with another technology. So, up in my hospital bed I go, and some chap sweeps in and announces that it has been decided that a “floating pacemaker” is going to be dropped through my jugular vein. What they did is they made an incision in the jugular and dropped a pacemaker via the jugular vein into my (marginally) beating heart.

During this surgical procedure one of the staff determined that Jane could not be present at my bedside while Jane had determined that her determination to stay would be greater than the determination of one staff member to remove her. My last memory of those contretemps  was the surgeon saying … “It’s ok. The wife can stay.” It was kind of irrelevant because Jane wasn’t leaving. Keep in mind folks, my wife is a retired nurse who throughout her career worked in just about every aspect of nursing imaginable. I was glad she was there. I held on to her hand for the whole time.

I was given the anesthetic — the kind that doesn’t necessarily put one to sleep but does necessarily make you not care or feel about matters touching being cut. The floating pacemaker was dropped down the vein. Sometime later I regained cognizance from not being dead a second time and that portable pacemaker was working like a charm. My heartbeat was back up to 89 beats per minute. And I went from feeling like Chuck Wepner in the 15th round to feeling like Muhammad Ali in that same round against Wepner. The change was dramatic.

A few hours later there was some debate about how the portable pacemaker worked. I don’t understand the details of the debate. I do understand that the “Queen of the pacemakers” arrived to resolve the dispute. However, not all the nursing staff were as confident as the Queen of the pacemakers was confident about what she was doing. The Queen came in and started doing this and that and one of the Nurse Practitioners, much to my consternation, suddenly said with emphasis and alarm, “Queeney, don’t do that.” The Queen replied that there was no worry. Maybe not but given that response of the Nurse practitioner (who was a woman who knew her trade) I was beginning to worry. Fortunately, they did not call here the “Queen of the Pacemakers” without reason. Whatever she did was the right call.

The downside of this temporary pacemaker was the requirement that I would be on complete bedrest until Monday. That was over 48 hours away. I was not sure I could go 48 hours with only squirming in a hospital bed allowed. Fortunately, that did not come to pass. Saturday the surgical Doc showed up and proclaimed that I should be walking.

Sigh….

And here we come across perhaps one of the chief frustrations with my hospital tenure. It was not untypical for one Doc to say one thing, only to be told a short time later by a different Doc that what the previous Doc said was irrelevant. I learned to quit listening until I heard what I wanted to hear and then I would camp on that and tell everyone else .. “Nope, we are going with this version of events.”

So, on Saturday I got to walk the halls again. While walking the halls we passed the Queen of the Pacemakers who began to expostulate that I was not to be up walking. The only thing I could respond to her was to quote the Doc, when she was told that I was told that I couldn’t walk the halls;

“The Doctors make the decisions about these kind of matters.”

And so Saturday, I began to motor through the hallways.

And I noticed a funny thing. There were all kinds of signs everywhere about the necessity to be quiet. Each poster had a face on it and said something like “Be quiet, my daughter is trying to rest,” or, “Be quiet my husband is healing,” or something like that. The odd thing is that of all these various posters urging me to be quiet not one face was a white face. I saw an Indian face beckoning me to be quiet for his daughter. I saw some kind of Arabian face beckoning me to be quiet for her husband but I didn’t see any WASP face imploring me to be quiet. It’s just one of those things I couldn’t help but notice and you can bet the bank that the absence of white faces on those “Be quiet” posters was not an accident.

This brings me to the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) poster board. It is clear that WOKEism is part of medicine. I will delve into that more in a subsequent post.

The Lazarus Chronicles I

When studying Journalism one maxim that floats to the surface quite quickly is the injunction to, “Never Bury the Lead.” As such the lead in this series is;

“For three to four minutes I was dead.”

Even now a week later typing out those words strike me as spooky and surreal at the same time.

The surgery to repair my genetically deformed heart valve problems was a success. However, upon the return from surgery to post-op the still completely unexplained happened. The methodology in this procedure is to create a electrical circuit to help the heart beat after it has been un-naturally handled. In the creation of this electrical circuit three small posts are placed in the body to close the circuit and drive the beating of the heart. Somewhere between the operating room and the post-op room one of those electrical posts was no longer doing its job and for some reason that post could not be found in order to be re-established. The missing post meant that my heart would not beat. A code was called. Th code itself lasted approximately 10 minutes. During part of that time the missing electrical post was being furiously sought for so as to re-establish the closed circuit that would drive the beating of my heart. Bandages were ripped off rather unceremoniously (I have the burn scars on my skin where those bandages were ripped off). Finally, in what I can only imagine might have been a scene out of an old silent film where the keystone cops finally shout “Eureka” a very attentive someone finally solved “The Case of the Missing electrical circuit” and my heart went back “online.”

There is some question why it took so long to find the electrical lead since the first instinct should have been to look for the second lead and check it. When pressed as to what precisely happened the answer we were met with was “sometimes these things happen.” Well, sure, all kinds of things sometime happen but that is hardly an answer to a legitimate question. Why did that which sometimes happen, happen in this instance? Or, to cut to the chase, “What went wrong.”

While all that was going on however standard heart compressions were pursued on my now non-living corpse. Keep in mind that heart compressions were being done on a chest that had only very recently been stitched and wired back together after being opened in order operate on the aortic heart valve. During this time, I, of course am completely unconscious (dead people don’t write memoirs) and also my family were not being updated as to the occurrence of any of this. Jane was not (and still is not) pleased at the lack of being updated.  Humorously enough, later, one of the Nurse Practitioners, obviously not knowing that my wife was a retired nurse or that my sister is also a Nurse Practitioner of some 40 years, told them that when my heart beat was gone that, “We patted his chest. Pat, pat pat.” Now, my friends, the blood does not perfuse the body’s organs by doing a chest compression that is characterized as “Pat, pat pat,” as if a patty-cake game is being played. Indeed, it is not uncommon to break ribs while doing heart compressions. But, I get that the impulse likely is to give the family as little startling information as possible, even if that means soft-selling the truth.

There was concern that the lack of perfusion of the organs with oxygen may have affected the brain and so when coming to, after my few hours on the ventilator I was getting peppered with questions,

1.) What is the date today?
2.) What day is it?
3.) Can you tell me the name of your surgeon?
4.) What is a woman?

I thought it was just a part of protocol but later I learned that they were probing as to whether or not I had become half a cucumber (vegetable). That question has not yet been completely resolved and I suspect I will someday die with people unsure whether or not I am some kind of vegetable.

Now as to what I saw while dead, well, its hard to explain. I did find myself being drawn towards a light, ever beckoning me forth to find out what the source of the light was. As I neared the source I heard Words coming out of the center of the light. At first those words were unintelligible. They were coming to me as if they were some kind of hieroglyphic, but eventually I was given ability to interpret those words.

And this was some of what I heard. I don’t remember it all. I heard,

1.) Kinism is my social order designate
2.) I am pleased with postmillennialism
3.) It is either my law (Theonomy) or some other god’s law
4.) I intend to treat Escondido as I once treated Sodom
5.) R2K, FV, Dispensationalism, NPP, are the doctrines of devils
6.) The Synagogue of Satan is alive and well. Oppose them.
7.) Do not concern yourself with those who are forever saying, “Christo-fascism”, “Racism” and “Sexism.” I will take care of them soon enough

There was much more like this. Some of it is still coming back to me. But the words out of the light were distinct and the above is some of what I heard.

While experiencing this, I saw Tim Keller to my right. In one of God’s ironies Keller and McAtee both died on the same day. I heard some muted conversation from the light and finally in a boisterous communication I heard, “We have some things to say to Keller but McAtee goes back. Somebody has to clean up the mess that Keller left behind.” That is the last thing I remember, though, as I said, some of those words from the light are still trickling back to my consciousness and there may be yet more to report in the future. Extra-Biblical revelation is a grand thing and only entrusted to a very few of us.

Keep in mind that for all believer we are told in Colossians 3:3 that for all believers it is the case;

3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Now, this death that St. Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit speaks of here is the death that all believers in Christ experience who are united to Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit. This death is the death of who we were as we were as objectively counted by God as related to our first father Adam. With our looking to Christ as our salvation, that old man dies and who we are now in our living and someday our physical dying is a living and dying that is done as unto Jesus Christ. In dying to the old self we died to living with ourselves at the center of all reality. We died to living only for our selfish glory. We died to self-will, self-aggrandizement, and self-pleading. We died to all these matters of the old self and now God owns us and names us as His own because our lives are now hidden with Christ. When the Father considers, He only sees Christ, because having died to self, our lives are now hidden with Christ in God. All the guilt that is so definitional of who man is, as outside of Christ, is done way, because we are hidden in Christ and His righteousness … His acceptability is now our righteousness and our acceptability. Because of having died with Christ in this sense and because my life is now hidden in Christ, the sting of my future permanent physical death has lost much of its bite. The matter of my living or dying is a matter for me no longer to obsess over because my life continues after this life because I died and my life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Dear reader. Do not let this day pass without knowing that your life is hidden with Christ in God so that when the day comes of your departure you will be able to say with me and all the saints through all the ages;

“O Death where is thy sting.
O grave where is thy victory.”

Note — This article may be slightly updated in the future to get some of the matters regarding cardio-technology more accurate.

Dear Pastor; Why Are You So Ornery?

“Some have complained that Luther was too severe. I will not deny this. But I will answer in the language of Erasmus: Because the sickness was so great, God gave this age a rough doctor … If Luther was severe, it was because of his earnestness for the truth, not because he loved strife or harshness.”

Phillip Melanchthon

Luther’s Funeral Oration

“I was born for this purpose, to fight with the rebels and the devils and to lead the charge. Therefore my books are very stormy and war like. I have to uproot trunks and stumps, hack at the thorns and hedges, and fill the potholes. So I am the crude woodsman who has to clear and make the path. But master Philip comes after me, meticulously and quietly, builds and plants, widows and waters happily according to the talents God richly given him.”

Martin Luther

Recently, a friend told me in a online conversation that I had gotten my orneriness back quickly following surgery. It was a good natured quip that found me replying that “McAtee is Scottish after all.”

Honestly though, his quip did sting a little. It is not my desire to be remembered someday as always being cantankerous, ornery, or curmudgeonly. In point of fact, I think, that most people who know me personally would not reach for those adjective first as descriptors.

Having said that I admit that I can get prickly, but I trust when the prickliness comes out there is some higher and greater principle that I see of being in danger.

God has gifted me with the ability to see the implications of ideas if left unattended. This means that my orneriness quotient rises in direct correlation to otherwise good people championing ideas that will end in bad results if not “nipped in the bud.” (A little Barney Fife lingo there.)

I don’t want to bring tension into relationships among the few of us who are left defending the gates by criticizing too sharply things that are said by my fellow gate defenders. However, I also do not desire for the gate defenders to have ideas that will lead to some bad outcomes if those ideas are allowed to fester.

It is not always easy to decide when to be irenic with the brethren and so let matters pass unspoken to, and when to go all “tomahawk chop” on people that are otherwise on your side. It takes discernment and I freely admit that I likely often fail here.

I do teach my students that one of the dangers of drawing one’s worldview net to tight is that one begins to see embers in thinking that one becomes easily convinced will turn into raging forest fires if not doused.

At the end of it all though, I am convinced that we are living in an age that generally speaking could use a little more orneriness. I’ll work on being irenic if more of you will work a little on being an old cuss like myself.

Feasting and Festivity Over The Announced Death of Rev. Tim Keller

“When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices; And when the wicked perish, there is jubilation.”   Proverbs 11:10

“And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.”

Exodus 15:21

“So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.”

Judges 5:31

“Then they will throw dust on their heads as they weep and mourn and cry out: “Woe, woe to the great city, where all who had ships on the sea were enriched by her wealth! For in a single hour she has been destroyed. ”Rejoice over her, O heaven, O saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced for you His judgment against her.”

Revelation 18:19-20

Here at Iron Ink we have written more than once on the necessity to rejoice in the fall of the wicked. We have cited these same verses and ones like them to substantiate our claim that when the wicked die the response of the God’s people is to pop some corks, pour some champagne, and party.

And of course the wicked do the same thing when the righteous fall. The Papists struck a medal in honor of the murdering of the Huguenots in France. The Papists likewise hoisted a tanker at the death of the great Cromwell.

It is just the nature of reality to rejoice when God’s enemy and your enemy falls dead.

One problem with contemporary Christians is that we try to be “nicer than God.” God doesn’t weep with sorrow when His enemies perish. In point of fact God kills His enemy’s dead.

And so when enemies of God die we should kill the fatted calf, rollout the bubble making machine, and raise up our glasses to our glorious King for defending His Church.

And all of the above, my friends, should be our frame of mind regarding the death of one “Rev.” Timothy Keller (1950 – 2023). With a long and agonizing death stemming from pancreatic cancer Keller’s scourge of God’s Church has finally ended.

Keller’s wickedness is un-challengeable.  I offer the following links to sustain the charge as to Keller’s Ahab like behavior against God and His Church;

CHRISTIANS NEED BETTER HEROS OF THE FAITH -AND LESS CELEBRITY PREACHERS WHO ARE PRODUCTS OF THE GLOBAL ECUMENICAL EVANGELICAL MACHINE.

The Miserable State of the Clergy Seen in the Words of Tim Keller

Tim Keller’s Doctrine of No Doctrine

Tim Keller Channels George Orwell

If the reader desires more chronicling of Tim Keller’s wickedness they only have to punch in the name “Tim Keller” in the search link at Iron Ink.

Keller had spoken repeatedly of how the Frankfurt school had profoundly influenced him. Keller’s vision was a Christianity which had the soteriology of scripture as combined with the morality of Gramsci. Anyone with a mere smattering of knowledge about the “Frankfurt school” knew immediately that Keller was, intentionally or unintentionally, a Marxist change agent leading a fifth columnists insurrection inside the visible Reformed Church to the end of redefining Christianity through a Cultural Marxist prism. This is why I have hated Tim Keller for decades now. I was not fooled by his “clever” rhetoric and Straussian writing methodology wherein clarity of meaning is purposefully avoided by the means of excessive nuance and qualification. I was not fooled by his slick presentation and charming personality. I was not fooled by his appeal to the cultural elites. The man was the very incarnation of what we might expect of a modern Mephistopheles. Tim Keller was C. S. Lewis’ “Uncle Screwtape” all dressed up.

So, because of all of the above and a host more of others, I am rejoicing at the news of Tim Keller’s death, which I heard while I was myself only clinging to life. I do weep at the same time that Tim rejected the demand that all men everywhere repent. How can grace saved sinners not weep, in this sense, at the death of each of the wicked? I weep because Tim rejected Christ and now it is too late for Keller to repent, but I rejoice that his wickedness is mercifully and finally at the end. No longer will Keller scourge the Church.

Still, we who remain are now left in cleaning up the mess that Keller left behind. We who remain are left having to slay all the Kellerite acolytes who are manning PCA pulpits across the land. We who remain are left having to explain that Christianity can’t be read through the prism of the ne0-Marxist Frankfurt school. We few who are left have the gargantuan task of preaching the Kellerites out of the Reformed Churches. The Kellerites control the PCA and have a large voice in other Reformed Institutions. So, we have a fight on our hands because these lesser spawn of Mordor is not going to simply walk away any more than Keller did.

In closing allow me again to have a personal word. Keller was a Marxist change agent but understand that the dialectical way these agents of change are working in the Reformed churches right now. On the one hand we have the dominionists change agents like Keller who believe that the Church should definitely engage in culture to bring change but the change that the dopes following Keller desire a change in the direction of cultural Marxism. At the same time the “anti-domininionists” school embodied by R2K is working to clear opposition for the Kellerite dominionionists. R2K teaches that the Church should be silent regarding cultural issues. This silences any biblical dominionists who would see the pulpit ring with “thus saith the Lord” on any number of issues. The effect of the silencing accomplished by R2K on Biblical dominionists in the Church is to give more leverage and power to Frankfurt school dominionists in the Church.

 

 

 

Of Studies and the Grace that Turns on the Lights

I’ve never been a Math and Science (STEM) kind of chap. All of my interests and abilities have been in what has been questionably dubbed “the humanities” — you know, History, Philosophy, Theology, Literature and even Sociology. It wasn’t that I didn’t make an effort at Math and Science its just that it took me too much time to que up to a speed where I could be in the middle of the pack. Because of this reality, languages were a struggle for me as well. In Undergrad I tried Accounting and failed miserably. I also took a twirl in Economics but unfortunately my Economics classes were long on the Mathematical equations in order to come with GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and GNP (Gross Net Product) and very short on Economic theory. I only later learned that I had some proficiency at Economics as theory. However, I had precious little proficiency at Economics as Mathematics. This reality explains how I struggled to get through the required statistics class in undergrad.

It was only when I took Theology courses I began to realize that here was something that I could excel at. For whatever reason Theology just clicked and made sense. In point of fact, in short time fellow students were coming to me for help with their theology. Theology clicked faster than even politics history and philosophy — all subjects for which I finally received a BS degree. However, that was due to the fact that I was also being taught presuppositionalism (epistemology) at the same time and it took a few years before lights turned on. I remember to this day being assigned as a Freshman to read Francis Schaeffer’s “Escape From Reason.” Some of you may recall that this small book is less than one hundred pages. As I read each word and turned each page I had no idea what I was reading. It may was well have been as been written in French. Still, I was bound and determined to read it cover to cover despite not understanding a single word I was reading. I wanted at least to be able to say that I had tried. When the exam came I was ready to walk away from College. All my course work was beyond me. I was not ready for College. I told the Lord that if I failed the Schaeffer exam (and I had already failed more than a few exams and classes at this point) that I was walking away from College. So, I went in like a trooper and took the exam and fumbled my way through it the best I could and just knew I had failed miserably. I was sure that I was finished with this whole college thing.

However, as the Professor (Dr. Martin) graded his Freshman classes on a curve, the fact that the rest of my peers were even more bumfuzzled than me rescued the day. I went to look at the grade curve, posted on Martin’s door, and there I discovered that my failure in understanding was a average failure of understanding. I had not failed but had received a “C” on the exam and I said to the Lord, “apparently you don’t want me leaving here,” and so I stayed and pressed on. It took a couple years of failing more than a few classes before I began to get a grip on matters, but that grip never included math and science. (Though in biology and the pig dissection with its pure memory work, I aced.)

All of this to set up what I am learning now on the intricacies of the human body. With my surgical procedure on the horizon I have been required to learn about the human heart. I have been reading on the subjects and listening to lectures and I have to admit that I am stunned at the precision and order there is about the human body. A Presbyterian would say that “everything in the human body is decent and in order.” There is nothing about the human heart that bespeaks chaos or happenstance. I keep muttering to myself over and over again, “We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made,” and “What is man that thou are mindful of him. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor.”

In my learning I have come away asking myself, “How can anybody who studies all this as a career and living not believe in design and a designer?” “How can any medical Doctor not be a servant of Christ?” How can they study all this and not fall on their faces before their Creator God?

Then I was reminded again that the natural man is at warfare with God (Romans 8:7). It all came forcefully upon me of the power of the fallen mind to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Then I was reminded again what grace and privilege it has been to have been sent the Spirit of the living God so as to be able to see and interpret all of life in light of the reality of God. There is no difference between me and any genius surgeon who does not see that the human body screams DESIGN and so DESIGNER except for the fact that sovereign grace has arrested me and opened my eyes while the genius surgeon continues to suppress the truth in unrighteousness and so can only see time plus chance plus circumstance.

There are a few truths I’m pressing with this entry. The obvious one is how all of creation screams a Creator God. The second one is the necessity of gratitude that the Spirit of the living Christ has turned on lights so that the Christ believer is living in a illuminated world that is bright with the reality and glory of God. Everything proclaims the handiwork of God. Our prayer is that we would, over time, see that more and more clearly. The third truth I’m trying to push in this entry is for the person who may think that they don’t have the ability to understand theology, philosophy, history and academics in general. Don’t give up. Keep pressing on. Make it a matter of prayer. If God could turn on lights for me so that a kid who graduated High School with a 1.9 GPA and who was jagged and broken around the edges then His grace can turn the lights on for any one upon whom His grace is given. However, lets me honest, ignorance, like demons, is not cast out except by prayer and fasting. (Not to mention a stubborn refusal to allow the material to conquer you.) There has to be a willingness to be seen as stupid by your peers who are ahead of you initially. (My stories here are the stuff books are made of.) There has to be a willingness to suffer the dismissal of professors who are hinting that “you’re not college (seminary, ministry) material.” (More stories and more books.)

The mindset of people who are in the position that I was in and remain in is to take the mindset of the tortoise in his race with the hare. People like you and I just need to keep praying and plugging away morning, noon, and night in order to get to the finish line.

You may not think you have it in you and it may be the case that your talents lie elsewhere but all of God’s people are called at some level to “study to show thyself approved, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed.”