“The nations are bound to recognize the Bible as the supreme law of the land; as the standard of civil legislation. God’s law as recorded in the Bible, reaches all the possible relations of humanity; extends to every duty that can be performed, and fastens its claims on associated bodies of men, as well as upon individual persons. Were this not true, we should have this monstrous anomaly in Jehovah’s government, that while men, as individuals, are bound by the laws recorded in the Bible, in their congregated capacities, they may set these laws at defiance, and even contemn as citizens, what as Christians they are bound to honor and obey. If we admit that kings, as such, are not bound by the laws contained in the Bible, they commit no sin in acting contrary to them, while they act in their official capacity. The moral laws recorded in the Holy Scriptures, are but a fairer copy, and more full and explicit declaration of the eternal and immutable principles of righteousness, which are contained in the law of nature.”
–James R. Wilson
THE SUBJECTION OF KINGS AND NATIONS TO MESSIAHA SERMON, PREACHED ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1819,
IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DISPENSATION OF THE LORD’S SUPPER,
IN THE REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
The Program Of Religious Humanists
www.amazon.com/The-City-Man-Declaration-Democracy/dp/B000EO93EQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350069999&sr=8-1&keywords=The+City+of+man+A+declaration+on+World+Democracy
The book linked above was written in 1940. It is but one book of many document of humanism that reveals the world-view and agenda of the religious humanists. (Sometimes mistakenly referred to as secular humanists.) One could easily compare the Humanist manifesto I and II with the The City of Man; A Declaration on World Democracy,” and find a common motif. The religious humanists today still have much the same agenda and goals as those in this book who openly expressed the desire for a World Government animated by a type of Democracy that has been apotheosized into a unitary world religion. According to those who affixed their signatures to this manifesto,
“Democracy is nothing more and nothing less than humanism in theocracy and rational theocracy in universal humanism.”
That in this religious humanism envisioned a one world order that would create a kind of multi-faithism can be seen by their acknowledgement that democracy, as the highest all embracing religion is a,
“universal religion of the Spirit acknowledging with reverence the incorruptible substance of truth which lies under the surface and errors of the separate confessions risen from the common ground of ancient and medieval civilization — democracy, in the catholicity of its language, interprets and justifies the separate creeds as its own universal vernacular.”
Of course what we get here is a Democracy that champions not only the brotherhood of all men but also the brotherhood of the faiths of all men, as long as those faiths are reinterpreted through the prism of humanist theo-democracy. Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, Islam, Judaism all speak the same truths as those truths are filtered through our undoubted holy Democratic faith and because there is only one faith, there will only be one amalgamated people and one World order.
The day comes when the heresy of nationalism is conquered …. Then above the teeming manifold life of free communities … there will be a Universal Parliament representing peoples, not states, — a fundamental body of law prevailing throughout the planet in all those matters that involve interregional interests … an elected President, the President of Mankind — no crowned emperor, no hereditary king … embodying for a limited term the common authority and the common law; and a federal force ready to strike at a anarchy and felony.”
Of course anarchy and felony will be defined as whatever runs contrary to the theo-democracy of world-view religious humanism that is supported by a multi-faithism that has a universal meaning given to it by religious humanism.
In the book “City of Man,” we are given a thirteen point program for achieving the new world order.
1.) The Promise of Utopianism — One of the integral components of any world-view is a teleology. The humanist teleology (end goal) is some kind of promised Kingdom of Man — Utopia.
In the religious humanist world-view some sort of salvation for all lies in the future and every piece of legislation is a building block to craft the coming salvific age of man. The latest building block being put into place is universal health care.
Of course this teleology is taken as a article of faith as religious humanism has no evidence whatsoever for the flowering of a Utopian New World Order.
2.) Planning — According to the book, “Planning is implicit in the spirit of Democracy.” Of course this planning is Statist planning and not individual planning. In point of fact the Statist Democracy planning obviates the need for individual planning. Freedom for individual planning is eliminated in favor of planning by the democratic elite.
Planning starts with economic planning (5 year plans) and moves to social engineering done in order to create “New World Order” man. Eventually the theo-democracy ends with planned elections.
3.) Centralization — No planning is possible without centralization, and there is no Utopia without planning. This is the centralization of the hive and the anthill. There is a non-resolvable contradiction here. The religious humanists believe in the inevitability of Utopia, yet in order for the inevitable to come to pass there has to be a humanist plan for it that requires centralization. Centralization as found in the State is God and so rejects any free will except the free will of the elite Centralizers. Man is only free to live and move and have his being in the New World order State.
4.) Identity, Sameness — Individuals are cogs in the machine of the social order. They are interchangeable undifferentiated grains of sand. This is why the term “masses” arose in our lexicon. Individuals do not exist in religious humanism but merely belong to the masses. Religious humanism requires the cult of sameness (sometimes called egalitarianism) where if differences exist they must be dismissed as meaningless. Where differences actually exist they must be explained away. Where difference cause problems to the Utopian plan those differences square pegs must be pounded into round holes. This demand for Identity and Sameness explains our current move towards claiming all sexuality and gender to be equally valuable.
5.) Majoritism — Here we will simply quote Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s analysis written in 1974,
“There are minorities (‘never majorities’) who are obnoxious and are declared to be the real cause of all or at least most iniquities. These conspiratorial and domineering minorities are not content to ‘be like everyone else.’; they crave privileges, thus depriving the ‘underprivileged’ of their rights; they destroy equality, identity, and ‘social harmony.’ The main criminals are the ‘ruling classes,’ composed in the United States of the ‘white Anglo Saxon Protestant minority….’ Leftist ideologies rest on the existence of ‘badmen’ who can be made objects of general hatred.”
6.) Hostility against organized religion — The standard religious humanist reaction to religion that does not bow to the humanist elite establishment in lapdog subservience by reinterpreting its belief system through the prism of humanism is the effort to marginalize and eliminate that religion from the marketplace of ideas and from the public square. We see this today in our culture by the never ending attempt to “otherize,” and “demonize,” the Biblical Christian who dares question the hostility of the humanist world and life view.
7.) Socialist hatred of free enterprise — Free enterprise runs contrary to centralized planning. If individuals are free to be entrepreneurs who plan for their own future and their own goals they get in the way of the humanist elite central planners. Free enterprise also runs contrary to the goals of Identitarianism, Egalitarianism, and sameness since a free economy gives man the opportunity to build up something that might make him unique from the hoi poloi.
8.)Anti-familism — The family as a closed and emotionally marked-off unit is an obstacle to total sameness and worse yet, from the religious humanist point of view, the traditional family contains its own hierarchic structure that is distinct from the hierarchic structure of the World Paternal-State. Progressive taxation, as well as our current Death Inheritance tax, is an attack by the State on the family as the State works to make sure that it is strengthened by its work to weaken the family. This anti-familialism also explains the States propensity to support every type of deviant perversity that demands recognition. When perversity is given sanction the effect is not to raise the perversity up in status but the effect is to drag down the traditional family in esteem.
9.) Intolerance
“Inflexible principles must be stated in a renovated law, beyond which freedom is felony.”
Religious humanism forever moans about tolerance but it is itself one of the most intolerant belief system in existence. Religious humanism (and remember religious humanism comes in various flavors and stripes including the Christian flavor) wants freedom only for the various “isms” that make up its constituency (i.e. — Feminism, Sodomitism, Liberationism, etc.). Because this is so, religious humanism is prone to carrying out all kinds of different inquisitions in the name of “tolerance.” Universities shut down academic freedom when ideas challenge the religious humanist world and life view. Hollywood will shut down people who don’t share their view of tolerance. Politicians will be intolerant towards those ideas that don’t fit their view of toleration. (Witness Obama’s latest speech that those who recently said in a UN speech, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Here we see that Tolerance will not be extended to those who know and say true things about the prophet.
10.) Statism — This has already been implied with our categories of “planning,” and “centralization.” Religious humanism believes that everything within the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State. In the State we live and move and have our being. Statism is Hegel’s vision come to pass.
11.) Messianism — Messianism is linked to Utopianism. Every Utopia must have a Messiah that leads men into the great new promised future age. The Messiah is not only a King but a savior. In religious humanism the Messianism can come in the way of the “great leader,” (think of Obama and the Greek Colonnades when he accepted the 2008 Democratic nomination and his language about slowing the rising tides of the oceans, etc.) or it can come in the way of a racial character (think of the Nazi’s and their Aryan vision or James Cone and his vision of Black nationalism) or it can come in the way of some kind of Nationalism that has run off the rails. In whatever way it expresses itself you will always find a element of Messianism is religious humanism.
12.) Colonialism — This Messianism has the task of eventually saving all mankind. As such there will be a push towards Colonialism of one form or another. We have seen this recently with the US led colonizing of Ethiopia. People think that the Arab Spring is about “freedom,” but this isn’t “freedom” we are seeing but religious humanism Colonialism.
13.) Interventionism — Due to its Utopianism, Messianism, and Colonialism, a highly aggressive interventionist and bellicose element in Religious humanism. The “City of Man” Declaration tells us that,
“Peace at any price is peace at the price of submission.”
and so we learn that war is a price that will be paid in order to cause those who disagree with the tenets of religious humanism to submit. Indeed, religious humanists usually love armed conflicts because during war a crisis is created whereby the State can use as excuse to expand its powers of centralization, and Messianism.
That the book, “City of Man” was written in 1940 is irrelevant because it can be clearly seen that the religious humanist agenda has been the same for hundreds of years. The goal is a New World Order Utopianism.
Leddihn On Leftist Identitarianism
“Leftism with its strongly identitarian bent and a non-spiritual, materialistic, enthusiasm either declares race and nationality to be supreme values to which everybody has to conform (as the Nazis did) or they want to ‘explain them away’ and ignore them with iron determination … because they are an obstacle to identitarian uniformity. The Nazis wanted to eliminate by brute force those who did not racially conform, those nationally (ethnically) not conforming by cultural high-pressure methods. The ‘international leftists’ wants us to close our eyes and ignore facts. This is just another process of ‘elimination.’ The rightist, who is a liberal in the genuine (classical) sense of the term, keeps his eyes open and gladly and charitably accepts diversity of mankind. Rejecting egalitarianism (no less than identitarianism), he knows that God’s gifts are distributed in mysterious ways — not only among persons but also among nations and races. Though they cannot be expressed in simple scientific formula and never work out mathematically in time or space, they do not invalidate the rightist principle of suum cuique.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Leftism — pg. 223
Leddihn, Lasch, & Berman On The Decline Of The West
“The French Revolution is still with us in every way. Not only are its ideas ever-present, but there is much in its historic evolution that can teach us — in North America no less than in Europe. Its initial period began with the undermining of traditional values and ideas, coupled with the demand for moderate reforms. With Voltaire a whole series of scoffers, facile critics, and agnostics in the literal sense of the term made their appearance. They subverted religion, convictions, traditions, and the loyalties on which state and society rested. The process of decomposition and putrefaction always starts at the top — in the royal palace, the presidential mansion, among the intellectuals, the aristocracy, the wealthy, the clergy — and then gradually enmeshes the lower social layers. In this process it is interesting to notice how the high and mighty develop a sense of guilt and with it a readiness to abdicate, to yield to expropriation, to submit to the loss of privileges, in other words, to commit suicide politically and economically. For this masochist act, however, they are well prepared by the ideological propaganda coming from their own ranks…. The members of the nobility who took active part in the intellectual or political undermining of the ancien regime and then participated in the Revolution are very numerous, without their support the French Revolution is well-nigh unimaginable…. One is inevitably reminded of the fact that, statistically speaking, the natural death of states and nations as well as of classes and estates, is not murder but suicide. However, this act of suicide is usually preceded by a period of delusions and follies. Quen deus vult perdidi prius dementat.
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Lefism — pg. 88
I would only add here that before political and economic suicide can be committed that theological suicide must first be committed, since politics and economics descends from Theology. I would also observe that when Leddihn speaks of “ideological propaganda,” as Christians we should understand that such ideological propaganda is but a form of theological propaganda.
Leddhin’s observation in this quote supports Christopher Lasch’s, inked 20 years after Leddihn, in his book, “Revolt of the Elites.” In that book Lasch lays the deterioration and decline of the West squarely at the feet of the cultural elite. Lasch cites chapter and verse on how the cultural elite had become the cultural despisers of Western tradition and values. Lasch contends that the overthrow of the West was not orchestrated by the masses, contra Ortega y Gasset’s, “Revolt of the Masses,” but that we have been damaged from within by our cultural gatekeepers.
Morris Berman’s book, “The Twilight of American Culture,” also factors into this theme. Berman, like both Lasch and Leddihn, sees the unraveling of American culture although Berman is inclined to lay the fault at the feet of mass-produced cutlure. Still, that mass-produced culture that Berman speaks of, I would contend, comes from those elites that Lasch excoriates and that Leddihn puts in the dock.
Our problem in the West today is that our best and brightest no longer believe in what made the West the West. Leddihn teaches us that the “Un-Westing” of the West began with the French Revolution and has continued unchecked as Biblical Christianity has lost its power to challenge the various incarnations of the French Revolution that have propelled its agenda of “anti-Reformation,” for each subsequent generation.
Berman, in his book mentioned above, believed it was too late for the West to recover.
I hope he was wrong. I fear he is right.
I Believe In A Place Called Hope
I.) We Have A Problem — Hope is Deferred
Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But desire [a]fulfilled is a tree of life.
We have this Hope found in Scripture that
I Corinthians 15:25 Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
Notice the “Now … not yet” Aaron.
In this I Cor. 15 passage we note that the end is contingent: it will come whenever it is that he delivers up the kingdom to the Father. But this will not occur until “after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.” (I Cor. 15:24) Consequently, “the end” will not occur, Christ will not turn the kingdom over to the Father, until after He has abolished His opposition. Here is the certain hope (the divinely orchestrated abolishment of God’s opposition) that is currently deferred that, as the writer to the Proverbs inks, “make our heart sick.”
As God’s people we have this sure and certain hope that Christ reigning now, Christ will continue to demonstrably put His enemies under His feet, and yet if we only judge progress by the short term and by the immediate circumstance we might begin to doubt of this certain hope of Christ subduing of His enemies in space, time and History.
After all, if we look around us it seems we are beset on all sides.
Economics
I have repeatedly made it clear, in internal Federal Open Market Committee deliberations and in public speeches, that I believe that with each program we undertake to venture further in that direction, we are sailing deeper into uncharted waters…. The truth, however, is that nobody on the committee, nor on our staffs at the Board of Governors and the 12 Banks, really knows what is holding back the economy. Nobody really knows what will work to get the economy back on course. And nobody—in fact, no central bank anywhere on the planet—has the experience of successfully navigating a return home from the place in which we now find ourselves. No central bank—not, at least, the Federal Reserve—has ever been on this cruise before.
Richard Fisher is the President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
One of the enemies that Christ will put under His feet is the enemy of Humanistic – Marxist – Corporatist economics which currently conspires against Christ’s Lordship in the market place.
And so Hope is deferred in the realm of economics.
Political
“Voters are confused about political cause and effect. They think of a Presidential candidate as their man. In fact, they are his people. They exist so as to get his branch of the CFR elected. Fanatically loyal party voters are the party’s hip pocket voters. The party can safely pay no attention to them. The party must court voters who are not committed to the ideals of its core supporters, who in turn overlook the fact that their man will sell them out on every major issue that did not have support from the CFR. Most of them have never heard of the CFR.”
Dr. Gary North
One of the enemies that Christ will put under His feet is the enemy of Humanistic – Marxist – Democracy which currently so conspires against Christ’s Lordship.
And so Hope is deferred in the realm of Politics.
Educational
The most controversial issues of the 21st century will pertain to the ends and means of modifying human behavior and who shall determine them. The first educational question will not be “what knowledge is of the most worth?” but “what kinds of human beings do we wish to produce?” The possibilities virtually defy our imagination.
Dr. John Goodlad –1969
Nation’s Premier Change Agent
Receiving Federal and Tax Exempt foundation grants for 30 years
From C. Iserbyt’s “the Deliberate Dumbing Down of America”
You can be sure that the human beings that the humanists like Goodlad are attempting to produce are not human beings who Love the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
One of the enemies that Christ will put under His feet is the enemy which is humanist Education which currently so conspires against Christ’s Lordship.
And so Hope is deferred in the realm of Education
Family
“Consequently, we are directly bound to reach the conclusion that unless some unforeseen renaissance occurs, the family system will continue headlong its present trend toward nihilism. There is of yet no force with sufficient power, knowledge, and interest to prevent this current trend. National states … have seemingly little interest in preserving the family. Their social processes are in the hands of bureaucrats and the atomists.”
Carle C. Zimmerman
Family & Civilization
One of the enemies that Christ will put under His feet, before He returns, is the enemy which is Atmomism which seeks to destroy the Biblical family at every turn.
And so Hope is deferred in the realm of family life.
Ecclesiastical
“In dealing with organized religion Leftism knows of two widely divergent procedures. One is a form of separation of church and state which eliminates religion from the marketplace and tries to atrophy it by not permitting it to exist anywhere outside the sacred precincts. The other is the transformation of the Church into a fully state controlled establishment. Under these circumstances the Church is asphyxiated, not starved to death. The Nazis and the Soviets used the former method; Czechoslovakia employed the latter.”
Erik von Kuehnelt – Leddihn
Leftism
What is interesting is that in our current epoch here is that in some quarters the Church is not having separation of church and state forced on them but is willingly embracing it. Similarly, the Church in many quarters is not being forced to be a fully state controlled establishment but is willingly embracing it if only because that is how one draws a citizenry that has become fully state controlled.
One of the enemies that Christ will put under His feet, before He returns, is the enemy which is a wayward Church which has lost its savor and has a bushel over its light.
And so Hope is deferred in the realm of the Church.
II.) And Yet We Still Have Hope
Scripture refers consistently to his Hope that we have. In the book of Romans alone,
Romans 5:2-5 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 8:24-25 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Romans 12:12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
Romans 15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
What is all this Hope based upon?
A.) Scriptural Promises
Matthew 16:18 “I also say to you that you are [b]Peter, and upon this [c]rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”
Yes, we are surrounded but we have Hope because the promise here is that the gates of Hell will not be able to overpower the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Eeardmans commentary,
The gates suggest the picture of a fortress or prison which lock in the dead and lock out their rescuers. This would imply that the church is on the offensive, and its Master will plunder the domain of Satan (cf. 12:29; 1 Pet. 3:18-20).
The Reign of the Lord’s Anointed
2 Why do the nations rage[a]
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break[b] them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Here clearly is the promise that Christ ruling the Nations will rule the Nations. They will Kiss the Son or Perish in the way. And so while our hope may be deferred it is nonetheless a certain Hope.
I Corinthians 15:25 — For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
This passage may be a reference to Psalm 110
The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
2 The Lord sends forth from Zion
your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your enemies!
Dr. Ken Gentry offers here,
References elsewhere to the Psalm 110 passage specifically mention His sitting at God’s right hand. Sitting at the right hand entails active ruling and reigning, not passive resignation. He is now actively “the ruler over the kings of the earth” who “has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever” (Rev. 1:5).
Here in 1 Corinthians 15:25 we learn that he must continue to reign, He must continue to put His enemies under His feet—but until when? The answer is identical to that which has already been concluded: it is expected before the end of history. Earlier it was awaiting the abolishing of all rule, authority and power; here it delayed until “He has put all His enemies under His feet.” The repetition of the expectation of His sure conquest before the end is significant. Furthermore, the last enemy that will be subdued is death, which is subdued in conjunction with the Resurrection that occurs at His coming. But the subduing of His other enemies occurs before this, before the Resurrection.
But as Christians we have this certain hope from vs. 25, that Christ, reigning now, will continue to exercise that reign that is already established.
In verse 27 it is clear that He has the title to rule, for the Father “has put everything under His feet.” This is the Pauline expression (borrowed from Psa. 8:6) that is equivalent to Christ’s declaration that “all authority has been given Me.” Christ has the promise of victory and He has the right to victory. Psalm 110, especially as expounded by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, shows He will have the historical, pre-consummation victory as His own before His coming.
B.) The Character & Nature of Biblical Hope
The majority of secular writers in the ancient world did not see hope as being a particular virtue. Paul was accurate when he could write in Ephesians 4:12 that those without God were without Hope. The same remains true for pagans today. Those who have embraced a materialistic worldview live in a closed universe and those who are able to be honest with themselves realize that hoping is largely reduced to wishing.
However “Hope” in the Christian worldview is not reduced to wishing. In the Christian worldview Hope is based upon the Character of God and the fact that the universe is open to God of the Christian who can intervene at any moment.
Because of what God has done in the past in orchestrating world history to the point of the incarnation of Christ and because of what God is now doing in gathering His Church because of Christ’s work and through the Spirit, the Christian as a hope, that is characterized by certitude based on God’s promises and God’s past actions, that future promised blessings yet unseen will come to pass.
The Apostle gives an example of this kind of Hope of which we speak in II Cor. 1:10
10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.
Christian Hope therefore is not something, or at least, ought not to be something, that varies with the changing winds of circumstance. Rather Biblical hope, as Hebrews 6 teaches is,
19 … a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, (i.e. — eternal invisible world).
Because of this kind of Hope we can say with Lowell,
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
This is the Hope that Paul speaks of in Romans 15
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
God is the one who gives Hope. C.E.B. Cranfield writes in his commentary,
“The double reference to “hope” in this verse is especially significant. An essential characteristic of the believer, as this epistle has very clearly shown hope is perhaps that characteristic which has at all periods most strikingly distinguished the authentic Christian from his pagan neighbors.”
One thing we want to note here is that this hope is grace given. Note in vs. 13 it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we may abound in hope.
So, we are faced with these matters we spoke earlier of and yet, because of the Grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit we have hope.
Why even in the midst of our tribulation we can have Hope because we know that there is some kind of correlation between the our afflictions and our eventual eternal weight of glory.
17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Conclusion,
We can have Biblical Hope by remembering
This Is My Father’s World
This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done;
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and heaven be one.
We can have Biblical hope by remembering,
“History has never been dominated by majorities, but only by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally on their faith.” R. J. Rushdoony
Who could have ever envisioned that the ancient pagan world would have been conquered by Christianity?
Who could have ever envisioned that despite all the odds, and all the previous setbacks that God would deign to grant Reformation to the West in the 16th century?
Only those who were familiar with Biblical Hope.
The Church’s One Foundation
The church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain and cherish
Is with her to the end;
Though there be those that hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against our foes or traitors
She ever shall prevail.