How The Muslims Take Over

Three stages by which Muslims conquer. This technique has been used for centuries.

Stealth Jihad

Muslim numbers are small percentage wise in a new country where a foothold has been gained. Taqiyya (deception) is a large part of this phase. Muslims falsely befriend the infidel with false friendship. Publicly they put on their “Islam is a religion of peace” nonsense. They advocate for tolerance. They love playing the victim here in order to gain sympathy and in order to give credibility to their diabolical religion.

Defensive Jihad

At this point Islam’s numbers have increased. They continue with both Taqiyya and the victim role. However their numbers percentage wise is greater now and as such they feel safe in denouncing and attacking those who seek to bring to light the history and danger of Islam. Organizations like C.A.I.R. and other Islamic friendly organizations take up the plea for special rights. Sharia Schools and Mosques begin to pop up. Islam begins to bar its teeth while still insisting that it is the other guys fault. If only poor old Islam would be left alone they could live in peace. At this point Islam begins to incipiently attack enemies.

Offensive Jihad

Here the numbers are now in Isalm’s favor and they begin to attack and persecute at every opportunity. The community of Dearborn Michigan is beginning to see Offensive Jihad. Here laws are passed in order to put down the infidel. As this accelerates it becomes illegal to speak out against Islam to denounce it as pagan Anti-Christ. For Islam this is the time to establish their hegemony over all areas of life. As this accelerates the non Muslim people of the book are forced to pay the jizya and become hewers of wood and drawers of water. Non-Muslims who are not people of the book face a far worse eventuality.

These United States are moving towards stage II. Europe is moving towards stage III. There is no stopping Muslims once they gain a toehold.

The below article expands this general outline a bit and deals with concrete numbers.

http://www.islamreview.com/articles/Islam_is_not_a_religion.shtml

The Modern Magnificat

“And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
52 he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.”

Luke 1:46-53

Mary’s song emphasizes how God keeps His promises to His people and by way of implication it emphasizes the humiliation of the Lord Christ who was born in such a lowly situation. However, the left in the Church instead emphasizes Marxist themes. In a recent Tim Keller facebook status we see this. Tim wrote,

“Jesus wasn’t born among heads of state but among those who were at the bottom of the social ladder.”

Tim has flirted with this soft Marxism before. In his book “Generous Justice” he basically advocates a soft Marxist “social justice” approach and re-labels it as “Generous.”

The position of Mary (or Zechariah, or Simeon, or Anna, etc.) is not important because they were low on the social ladder but because they were saints of God despite their poverty and oppression. Poverty as poverty doesn’t score you any points in the Kingdom of God if one doesn’t belong to Christ and the people of God. The antithesis in the Scripture is not between Rich vs. Poor but between the Seed of the Serpent vs. The seed of the woman.

The emphasis in Mary’s Song is that God remembers His people who are being oppressed by the Wicked mighty. The whole thrust of Luke’s songs is to demonstrate that God has not forgotten His people despite the fact it might look that way and despite the fact that they are being oppressed by wickedness in high places (Herod, Augustus Caesar etc.). The fact that the Lord Christ is born among the lowly does not prove that lowliness as lowliness is a virtue. After all Jesus was born of the line of great King David and God includes the High Born in the Nativity story by including visitation from the Kings of the East. In Scripture God esteems those in Covenant, rich or poor, and destroys those outside of covenant, rich or poor.

The point in Luke’s Songs is not that God favors poor wicked people over righteous rich people. The point is that God has remembered Israel and that despite her captivity and the low status she has sunken into. This is Redemptive History and what is being accentuated is God remembering His promise to raise up a Messiah. The character of God is what is being put on display, not the status of those whom He is remembering. What is not being accentuated is that God is social class conscious. Believe me, if the story were written today, given how much the Wealthy are hated by the Communist Clergy, God would have His Messiah born among the rich and royal to add the factor of “isn’t God amazing that He brought His Messiah among such ignoble filthy rich people.” However, we don’t see in the nativity narrative of the Marxist clergy is the amazing God who keeps His promises no matter what. No, what we see are the amazing poor people who, “naturally enough” are lifted up. Given their noble poverty they deserve it after all.

Does God bring down all the “Mighty” from their thrones? Did God bring down Job? Abraham? David? Are Zaccheus or Joseph of Arimathea to be counted as less saints in the New and Better covenant because they were wealthy? Is the New and Better covenant characterized now by God hating all rich and loving all poor regardless of their faith or lack of faith in Christ? Has lack of wealth become the new standard of inherent righteousness? Is God now for the proletariat and against the Bourgeois? Did God inspire Das Kapital?

This preoccupation of the Church in the West with Marxist categories completely flummoxes me. God loves the righteous in Christ regardless of their socio-economic status and he hates the wicked outside of Christ regardless of their socio-economic status… even if they are as poor and wretched Dicken’s Artful Dodger.

Why is it that we seem to think that God loves the impoverished more than the Wealthy simply on the basis of their impoverishment? God loves His people in Christ. The Wealthy saints have a charge to keep in terms of their brethren of low estate but those of low estate are not superior to those of wealth if they are both looking to Christ and resting in him, just as the wealthy are not superior to those of poverty in terms of status before God just because they are wealthy.

God hates the unrighteous wealthy wicked because they do tend to oppress the poor but he equally hates the unrighteous impoverished wicked because they do tend to envy the rich. It strikes me that we have made the envious unrighteous wicked poor some kind of gold standard to aspire to. It is all very strange.

Contrasting Gnostic Spiritual With Scriptural Spiritual

“The spiritual is that which is of or by the Spirit. It is not the same thing as spirit, which is invisible and non-physical (i.e. like “breath”). Spiritual is that which is empowered by or shaped by the Spirit. The original creation was spiritual in this way in that Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep and formed and filled the formless and empty world. The creation which comes under the effects of the curse of sin is re-created by the Spirit so that it might fulfill God’s original intentions for it as creation. So, for instance, when God promises to Abraham that in him all the families of the earth will be blessed (Gen 12.3), I believe that he is promising that families as families will be brought into a state of blessedness. They will have to go through death and resurrection through the waters of baptism (cf. e.g., Rom 6.1ff.), being transformed as a families. But they will be transformed as families, fulfilling God’s intention for the family in creation. Spiritual, in my understanding, is not, then, the opposite of or to be sharply distinguished from physical or material creation. It is not that which parallels but stands outside of the physical. Rather, spiritual has to do with the Spirit empowering and shaping and transforming a very material creation.”

Bill Smith
INFANT BAPTISM, THE NEW MAN, AND THE NEW CREATION: A Response to Stephen J. Wellum’s “Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants” in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ

Given Smith’s observation above we can seee that “Spiritual” in the NT does not mean ephemeral, invisible, or incorporeal. A spiritual reality is not a non-corporeal reality. Conversely, when we are told that “our weapons are not carnal” we are not being told there that our weapons are not corporeal. We are being told that our very real corporeal weapons are to be handled in a way that is in keeping with the Spirit empowering and shaping and transforming a very material instrument — whether that instrument is a protest sign or a evening gown.

“Spiritual” thus has more to do with that which animates the behavior or actions of the actor. Spiritual is the afflatus that animates the Christian in whatever they do in this corporeal world. The Christian, when animated by the Holy Spirit, so as to be walking according to God’s precepts, while full of faith in Christ, is at that moment the “Spiritual Man” — and that status of Spiritual applies whether the Christian is on their knees in prayer or in a foxhole fighting God’s enemies.

That “Spiritual” has to do more with the divine afflatus that animates us then it has to do with some kind of gnostic connection to matters non-corporeal or invisible is articulated by Sinclair Ferguson in his book on the Holy Spirit,

“Energy rather than immateriality is what is in view… While in the natural order ruach may occasionally denote a gentle breeze (as in some translations of Gn. 3:8), the dominant idea in the Old Testament is that of power. The parallelism in Micah 3:8 well illustrates this: ‘But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord.’ When used of God (around one third of the Old Testament uses), therefore, ruach does not connote the idea of divine immateriality (spirit, not matter), although doubtless that is implied in the general biblical perspective. The emphasis is, rather, on his overwhelming energy; indeed one might almost speak about the violence of God.” (Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996).

The attempt to make “Spiritual” mean something pietistic so that we are passive or so as to support a quietistic disposition in the Christian life, or something disconnected from our daily living in the public square has been one of the most successful tools at castrating the modern Christian. It’s time we started re-thinking this idea of “Spiritual” so as to be better equipped for the times God has given us.

VanDrunen Taken To The Woodshed In Venerable Westminster Theological Journal

As a minister, one spends his share of time reading Theological Journals and thick theological tomes dealing with theological minutia. Often one comes across in these readings in house debates over particular subject matter between different camps. Usually (though not always), such debate in the Academic tomes is muted in terms of criticism. When an Academic says something like, “my opponent perhaps has not been as thorough as they might otherwise have been,” what one has just read is an explosive polemic for the Academic journal world. Typically Academic Journals and Tomes are not known for their polemical food-fight nature. They are typically restrained and dry as dust.

However, in the Fall 2013 publication of the Westminster Theological Journal ones finds one of the most pointed and denunciatory articles that I’ve ever seen in a Academic Journal. It is still pretty mild by Iron Ink standards but by the standards of Academia it is red hot. I’ve extracted just a few of the quotes below in order to reveal how sizzling this peer review article is.

And of course, the reason I’m doing this is that the peer review article under consideration is an unraveling of Radical Two Kingdom Theology. This peer review article especially zeroes in on R2K guru David VanDrunen’s, “Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought.” The peer review article is written by William D. Dennison, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Covenant College.

For those who are keeping track, this is now at least the third devastating major academic peer review article written surrounding the pseudo-theology called “R2K,” by eminently qualified people. There was a peer review by Kerux. There was a peer review by Dr. Cornelius Venema. And now there is this peer review by Westminster Theological Journal. One can only hope that R2K is running out of friends.

What this post is concerned with is exposing the repeated frustrations of Dr. Dennison at how inadequate Dr. VanDrunen’s work has been. Later post’s here at Iron Ink may go into the substance of Dr. Dennison’s critique. Keep in mind I have been far from exhaustive in noting every expression of frustration by Dr. Dennison in his column in the WTJ.

NL for Dennison = Natural Law. NL2K = R2K (Natural Law Two Kingdom).

“How effectively does VanDrunen accomplish the enormous task he has set out in this volume? The breadth of VanDrunen’s volume and the scholarly material selected convey impressive intentions; the depth of his scholarly analysis, however, remains elementary and exhibits a number of shortcomings ….

In spite of these intentions, however, VanDrunen provides no indication that he grasps the methodological issues gripping the field of interdisciplinary scholarship over the past century. In fact, the work unfolds in a typically amateur manner; it yields to the popular outlook that any study involving more than one area within the academic curriculum qualifies as an interdisciplinary study. In light of this attitude, he exhibits no comprehension of how an approach of interdistiplinarity (moving from particular disciplines to integration) must be viewed and implemented into a final integrated interdisciplinary study. This failure results in serious limitations in his producing a profound academic integrative study….

Although VanDrunen mentions that classical non-Christian writings had an influence on the tradition of NL, nowhere
does he unpack the substance of their effect, a critical omission. VanDrunen teaches at an institution that states her continual devotion to the work of Cornelius Van Til and, yet, in his writing, he exhibits little understanding of Van Til’s transcendental technique….

This latter domain of natural rights is crucial in connecting NL from the medieval period to the Enlightenment, but VanDrunen ignores it entirely in its medieval construction. Simply put, natural rights are sometimes attributed by scholars solely to the seventeenth century (e.g., rights of property, permissive rights of government, rights of self-protection, marriage rights), but these rights in fact have their roots m the medieval era, specifically the canonists of the twelfth century. In this regard, VanDrunen provides no evidence that he has any scholarly comprehension of the patterns of constitutional thought that tie together the canonists (twelfth century), the conciliarists (fifteenth century), and the constitutionalists (seventeenth century)….

… VanDrunen’s volume provides no credible reason to adopt his thesis that NL is a necessary canon to relate to the civil kingdom (culture). After all, nowhere in the volume does VanDrunen provide his reader with a precise and concrete definition of NL from the Reformed tradition….

With this explanation of sin missing, VanDrunen’s study has done nothing to differentiate itself fully from medieval Roman Catholic scholasticism and what Van Til calls “less-than-consistent Calvinism,” a form of Calvinism that traces its theological roots to a classical synthesis between reason influenced by antiquity and Christian revelation (e.g., Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield at Old Princeton). VanDrunen may try to deny this, but any close reading of the corpuses of Kuyper, Bavinck, and Van Til will clearly demonstrate that VanDrunen’s construct of NL fails to sidestep the pitfalls described by these three premiere Dutch thinkers regarding the extension of medieval scholastic thought through Old Princeton. In fact, this reviewer is certain that Van Til would view VanDrunen’s assessment of NL serving as a common point of contact to discuss ethical responsibility in the context of a common culture as having compatibility with Roman Catholic Scholastic thought….

VanDrunen has failed to display the transcendental or interdisciplinary work necessary to claim that the Reformed tradition only accepted from the pagans those ideas that, through common grace, had affinities with the truth of biblical revelation. Until VanDrunen exhibits that he has done this work in examining the concepts of reason and nature in Greek and Roman thought, his claim that autonomy has had no place in the Reformed tradition with respect to NL is, at best, worthy of skepticism (p. 133)….

VanDrunen’s failure to contend with the inner effects of sin within the construct of NL in the Western tradition leads to two further problems in his work….

Although VanDrunen realizes that the present conception of NL functions within a fallen world, ironically he does not seem to grasp the practical interdisciplinary ramifications of that fact….

Only one who is truly enclosed within an academic ivory tower or who naively isolates the immediate life of the church could suggest that the 2K doctrine can truly serve as a serious directive for the Christian’s relationship with culture. In the providence of God over four centuries, we have already witnessed the horrifying results of this doctrine in the hands of sinful believers. To even suggest that a consistent application of principles found in Meredith Kline’s view of the covenant as well as his view of common grace—whether correctly or wrongly represented by VanDrunen— can present the Christian with a fitting path to follow in responding to culture is further evidence of a naive understanding of a fallen world….

VanDrunen is either ignorant of this state of affairs or willingly avoids the issue which would challenge the theoretical construct of his 2K thesis….

Specifically, VanDrunen’s study shows no familiarity with Kuyper’s Romantic appeal to the Calvinistic appeal to the Calvinist roots of the Republic….

Again, VanDrunen’s failure to apply a transcendental critique upon the historiography in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought prevents him from elucidating the dynamics a” work in Kuyper’s philosophy of history….

Surprisingly, however, VanDrunen’s volume never really deals with this key figure (Herman Bavinck — BLMc) in the contemporary agenda of his thesis. Finally, perhaps, one of the most serious and problematic contentions of
VanDrunen’s thesis appears in his assessment of the 2K doctrine as an essential component of confessional Reformed orthodoxy as portrayed in the West minster Confession of Faith (pp. 189-92)….

In the overview of this section of the Confession (chs. 20-23), however, VanDrunen makes some questionable dogmatic statements…

In the judgment of this reviewer, VanDrunen is here superimposing his understanding of the 2K doctrine on the
Confessional Standards….

As VanDrunen superimposes his dogmatic view of the 2K upon the West minster Standards, his evaluation and interpretation of the Confession for the life of the church should raise enough alarm that anyone intending serious
scholarly use of his volume should proceed with grave caution. This review has offered serious questions about whether VanDrunen truly understands the concrete historical, cultural, and interdisciplinary context of the thinkers and writers to whom he refers in his analysis of NL2K. Although he has shown adequate dependency upon English editions of primary texts, questions remain about whether he grasps these authors’ intentions. In addition, doubts linger as to whether VanDrunen has examined enough of the corpus of various individuals’ writings to present a fair and correct assessment of those investigated. From Augustine and the Epistle to Diognetus to Van Til and the Van Tilians, VanDrunen to a certain degree has imposed upon almost every individual with whom he deals his own analysis of NL2K. For this reason, anyone consulting VanDrunen’s work must add their own primary document investigation to test VanDrunen’s often revisionist scholarship. We still await, therefore, a definitive work on NL2K in light of Reformed orthodoxy; at best, VanDrunen’s study serves as a minor footnote to any sincere historical study of the subject.”

The French Revolution & The Modern Church

“By Revolution I do not mean one of the many events whereby a Government is overthrown. Nor do I just mean by it the storm of upheaval that has raged in France. Rather, by Revolution I mean the whole inversion of the general spirit and mode of thinking that is now manifest in all Christendom.

By Revolution ideas I mean the basic maxims of liberty and equality, popular sovereignty, social contract, the artificial construction of society by common consent, — notions which today are venerated as the cornerstone of constitutional law and the political order….

The consequences of the Revolutionary ideas cannot be combated with any success unless one places himself outside their influence, on the ground of the anti-revolutionary principles. This ground is beyond reach, however, so long as one refuses to acknowledge that the foundation of justice lies in the law the ordinances of God. Bonald has expressed this truth in the concise and pregnant words, ‘The Revolution began with the declaration of the rights of man; it will end only with the declaration of the right of God.'”

Groen Van Prinesterer
Unbelief and Revolution — Lecture I — Introduction

The Revolution that Gr.v. Pr. speaks of we call “modernity.” It is the unfolding of a whole scale skepticism wherein God’s Word and Law are overthrown in favor of autonomous man’s fiat word and law. Modernity, is the social order and cultural filth that all of us have been swimming in for our whole lives, as our Parents, Grandparents and Great Grandparents swam in it for their whole lives. Because we have swam in it our whole lives we cannot envision anything else. Indeed, when someone comes to us championing the overturn of modernity we rail and scream because modernity, as Van Prinsterer describes it as become our mother’s milk and our way of life. Indeed, it is so much our way of life that it is actually championed as the norm in most “Christian” Churches. This is evidenced by the fact that most of our clergy corps dedicate themselves to helping the rank and file laity fit in and adopt to Modernity as if the worldview of Revolution is the norm of the Christian.

Quite to the contrary I would contend that our Christian Churches should be training centers for identifying the Revolution worldview that Van Prinsterer puts his finger on. As ministers we need to be teaching God’s people the anti-Revolutionary principles that Gr. v. Pr. speaks of. This can not be done apart from returning to the foundation of justice which lies in the ordinances and law of God. As ministers we need to be teaching God’s people the art of successful protest and resistance against the Revolutionary principles that have seized the day.

Gr. v. Pr. was not the only one who recognized this problem. Writing over 100 years later after Gr. v. Pr, Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn could write in a very similar vein,

“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 and which first started with the French Revolution.

Our problem in the West today is that our best and brightest no longer believe in what made the West the West. Groen van Prinsterer, and 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.

The Christian church in the West is failing its calling when it refuses to identify at every turn how our current culture is but the successful incarnation of the anti-Christ principles of the French Revolution. That the Church has not figured this out is seen in its inviting the enemy into its bosom via the music we play during worship, its embrace of the whole concept of “social justice,” the way we divide up our families in worship and in a host of other ways.

If we desire Reformation we must first understand that it will never come to pass until we first put off the worldview of the French Revolution.