Christianity & Civil Liberty

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Gen. 1:1

You alone are the LORD. You created the heavens, the highest heavens with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to all things, and the host of heaven worships You. Neh. 9:6

The Scripture teaches here that God is. This of course immediately means that materialism, which teaches that God isn’t, is not true. It is this simple truth that God is that leads to so much when it comes to this issue of Christian Liberty/Freedom.

The fact “God is” answers the question; “Why is it that only Christianity can support social orders that can be described as genuinely having liberty.”

And the answer to that is it is only Christianity that provides the religious and ideological framework wherein liberty can be nurtured. It is only Christianity that consistently repudiates the notion of materialism that is so prevalent in the West.

Read your dystopian novels and the one thing you see consistent about them is that the dystopia being described has no place for a personal extra-mundane spiritual being. In brief they are materialistic. When you have materialism for your worldview — when you deny the God of the Bible then only humanist force can provide the principle of order and regulated or ordered liberty as informed by transcendent non-material truth is crushed. Sisley Huddleston caught this in his little record called “France; The Tragic Years.” Huddleston wrote,

Not only had Russia fallen a victim to the conception of a purely materialist universe, in which force alone counted, not only had Russia become a vast prison in which all the liberties of which we were wont to boast were suppressed, in which a group of men, sitting in the Kremlin, had forged a system of terrorism, of totalitarianism, dependent on an army of police and spies, but outside Russia, in almost every country, the missionaries of Bolshevism had made large numbers of converts.

Sisley Huddleston

A generation prior to Huddleston the great Christian theologian and Churchmen J. Gresham Machen could write touching also on the relation to materialism and liberty;

“Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.”

J. Gresham Machen
Christianity & Liberalism

Materialism is the wench mother of all slave orders because materialism is the idea that all that is, is matter and that a personal extra-mundane God does not exist. This materialism in turn leads to the civil bondage that Huddleston speaks of as being directed by “force alone” and Machen doubts, that where present, the remnants of liberty can subsist.Where materialism gains footing then humans are just matter in motion and have no significant meaning. As such the idea that little instantiations of matter in motion should have freedom or liberty is irrelevant to those who see themselves as bringing in the materialist Utopia.

In the kind of world where there is no being who is situated in or relating to a region beyond the material world to whom we will all one day be answerable and to whom alone can provide order, meaning, and definition by His revelation the only option left is Orwell’s boot stamping on a face forever.

So, here we see the connection between spiritual freedom and civil freedom. Men who are in rebellion against God are in bondage to themselves as their own gods. The consequence is the bondage that they have in themselves they translate into everything they touch. Men in spiritual bondage create social orders that are characterized by the killing of liberty and so civil bondage.

R. J. Rushdoony says much the same;

“Society changes only as the members of society change, only as men and women are regenerated by Jesus Christ. Apart from regeneration, a society can have some material progress, but no real advantage or freedom for most men as a rule. The areas of freedom have been the areas of Christian faith, and, as that faith wanes, freedom wanes….

Freedom has only come to a people, as they have become, one by one, free men in Jesus Christ. As a people advance into freedom in Christ, they move their society and country into that freedom, and as a people drift into unbelief and sin, their country declines into slavery.”

R. J. Rushdoony

… as a people drift into unbelief and sin, their country declines into slavery.”

And that is because spiritual slavery translates into civil bondage.

One more from a different voice so that you can see that there is a wide testimony supporting my contention that spiritual bondage always leads to civil bondage. This one from the masterful wordsmith Malcolm Muggeridge;

People, that is to say, are never enslaved unless they have become slaves already. They swim into the Great Leviathan’s mouth (a reference to the Statist Tyrant) He does not need to chase them.”

Malcolm Muggeridge

Farewell to Freedom?

So how can we summarize so far as to the last two weeks?

We have noted that only Christianity can support liberty and this is because only Christianity gives us a extra-mundane personal God who has made Himself and His will known so that we have an authority outside of us by which we can know what ordered-liberty looks like.

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible

We have noted that absent this what the West has, generally speaking, adopted are forms of Materialism. Materialism insists that man is not made in the image of God but rather is just matter in motion. Man therefore has no intrinsic value that has to be honored by those who have captured social-orders as gods to run the social order to the end of building a Utopia. Man having no intrinsic value has no need to be given liberty/freedom as authorized and defined by God.

As such all social orders where men are in spiritual bondage will result in civil bondage as sure as night follows day.

Though civil bondage may be the rule, genuine Christians who have been set free from their sin and misery can never have their spiritual freedom/liberty taken away. Their sin no longer masters them and so they are free indeed.

The only thing that can reverse civil bondage is Reformation characterized by heralding Jesus Christ. Political rallies, activism and/or voting campaigns have their place as a “hold my beer” kind of rear guard action. They are useful in delaying the tyrant but they can never of themselves usher in civil order freedom because they are dealing with symptoms and not the disease.

Listen to RJR in support of that statement;

The ballot box has a very important function in a free society, but it can never be expected to do anything more than to reflect the character, the desires, and the will of the people. If the people who vote are of weak or bad character, if their desires are larcenous and envious, and if their will be perverse and evil, the election results will merely reflect their own nature on a broader scope.
This means too that people who expect to reform the state or country by means of the vote, by elections, are headed for failure and disillusionment. Reformation must begin in the lives of the people in order to show up in the ballot box.

RJR

Elsewhere he noted;

Freedom is not a natural fact but a religious principle, and the decline of Freedom is an aspect of the rise of false faiths, false forms of “Christianity,” as well as other varieties of faith…. For all too long, those who have believed the most have been Marxists, Keyensians, fascists, and humanists generally. Their ‘freedom’ has been slavery, for ‘the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel (Prov. 12:10)…. If Christians lose their freedom, they will only have themselves to blame, and their indifference to the Author of true liberty, the Lord our King.

RJR
Roots of Reconstruction — pg. 55

Written in 1980

However, let us say again that where spiritual freedom begins to multiply in a social order there you can be sure that civil order freedom will soon follow. This is in defiance to R2K reasoning who wants to suggest that though men can be spiritually free their spiritual freedom dare not translate into the civil realm breathing Christian defined liberty into all social order institutions. How do I know this? They tell us.

“I asked David Van Drunen a question that I believe goes right to the heart of this issue. I asked him what God would think of a nation whose magistrate and people had become overwhelmingly (and sincerely) Christian, and who decided to confess Christ in the common realm, in the formerly secular realm. I asked if God would be displeased with that, and Van Drunen said yes, he thought God would be displeased with that. “

Doug Wilson

Talk about the problem of fifth columnists.

Let us add something here. Of course all of this is worldview warfare. Materialism vs. Christianity;

Bertrand Russell has not exaggerated in summing up the present significance of Marxism somewhat as follows: dialectical materialism is God; Marx the Messiah; Lenin and Stalin the apostles; the proletariat the elect; the Communist party the Church; Moscow the seat of Church; the Revolution the second coming; the punishment of capitalism hell; Trotsky the devil; and the communist commonwealth kingdom come.”

― Robert A. Nisbet

The Quest For Community: A Study In The Ethics Of Order And Freedom

So, yes it can be argued that the Scriptures are primarily about how God has provided the means for fallen man to be rescued from their sin and misery. Yes, the Scriptures are primarily about the finished work of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it can even be said that the Scripture weren’t written primarily to be a cookbook that if followed will give you your “best life now.”

However, having admitted all that we would still say that if people are indeed rescued by so great a salvation Scripture also teaches that people who embrace the whole of Christianity are a people who thirst for ordered liberty in their personal life, their family lives, their church lives, their community lives and their social-order lives.

Christians who are content with civil order bondage should be thought of as being either immature Christians or not Christians at all. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

Conclusion:

 

“The Scriptures clearly teach that human government is of divine ordination and does not have its origin in any social compact or contract, as Hobbes and Locke taught, nor was it created by man himself to meet the needs of his society. Rather does Christian theism insist that government was ordained of God for man and that its just powers come from Him and not from man. Government is not ordained primarily to defend human liberty but to ensure that kind of society necessary for man to carry out those duties which he owes to God alone.”

C. Gregg Singer

We would only add that any society where man is free to carry out those duties which he owes to God alone is a society that is defined by regulated freedom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Shapiro Has Advice For How “Christian Nationalism” Should Roll

“This is why when people on the right use the phrase Christian nationalism, people on the left hear, ‘ah, we’re talking about religious fascism.’ Well, no, when people say Christian nationalism typically what they mean is not that the official church of the United States should be the Catholic Church, or that the church of the United States should dictate terms of service in the United States. What it means instead, when people say Christian nationalism is that undergirding the values of the United States are a set of Judeo-Christian values, and when you jettison those values you destroy the United States.”

Ben Shapiro
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/09/30/ben_shapiro_when_people_say_christian_nationalism_they_are_talking_about_judeo-christian_values.html

1.) I agree that Christian Nationalists are not and should not be looking for an official Church of these united States. In my estimation Christian Nationalists should be looking that the nation should swear allegiance to Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords and then be ruled consistent with His Law-Word. We should be done with the dishonoring pluralism that allows false gods to populate God’s land (“The earth is the Lord‘s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”– Psalm 24:1) with the result of the war of all against all. There is no social order harmony where there are gods owned by the social order who grossly contradict one another in their salvation, character and ethic.

2.) Remember, all Nations are headed by some God or God-concept.  Our nation bows the knee to the god of pluralism and that god is ultimately controlled by the FEDS since it is the FEDS who have the final word as to how far any of the gods and/or all of the gods can walk in the public square. The Mormon God says “polygamy” but the FEDS say “no polygamy.” The Christian GOD says “no sodomy” but the FEDS say “sodomy.” The native American God says “smoke peyote as a religious rite” but the FEDS say “no smoking peyote as a religious rite.” The Muslim God says “Sharia Law” the FEDS say “no Sharia law.” You see, in our Pluralism the FEDS are serving as the God over the gods. We are as a religious people, with a religious State, as you can find anywhere else. It just so happens that our God is Pluralism and the God who is pluralism is controlled by the FEDS. So, naturally if the State is going to be religious (and all States are) Christians should desire a Christian Nationalism where the State bows to the authority of Jesus Christ as expressed in the Scripture. If the State is always hopelessly religious (and it always is) than why should Christians be satisfied with anything but Christian Nationalism (they shouldn’t)?

3.) The idea of “Judeo-Christian” values has been a mistake from when it began. We are a Christian people with Christian values. Not a Jewish people. Keep in mind that the Judeo-Christian values that Mr. Shapiro speaks of slams together on one hand the ultimate value of worshiping Jesus from the Christian side while on the other hand the ultimate estimation of the Judeo part of the equation is to affirm that Jesus is burning in hell in excrement for all of eternity. How does one arrive at “Judeo-Christian” values given that reality. No, the values we need are not “Judeo-Christian” but just plain Christian values.

So, by all means a return to Christian Nationalism. A return to the time where nearly all of our State Constitutions had language of loyalty to the Christian God as stated in the documents themselves as requirements for service in the State governments.

4.) I would contend that it is precisely because we have embraced “Judeo-Christian” values we have destroyed these united States.

Ben Shapiro writes again,

Again, I think it’s bad branding because I think it’s exclusive in a way it doesn’t need to be. Specifically because, even if you’re not religious, you can agree with the basic idea, even from a natural law (understanding). I mean, this is Catholic Church doctrine. You don’t have to be Catholic to believe that natural law actually undergirds the idea of family, undergirds the idea of God as an important part of public life. You don’t have to be some sort of crazed conservative nut to believe a country ought to control its own borders and that culture matters. All of these things matter.

Bret responds,

Of course Ben thinks Christian Nationalism is exclusive. It is exclusive and would read out of the movement those who want to continue to embrace the pluralism that comes with the embrace of “liberal democracy.” Liberal Democracy, which Ben supports and which has brought us to the place we are now at cannot be embraced in order to cure what ails us. It is what ails us.

And natural law? In this postmodern climate which classical liberalism has achieved there is no putting the toothpaste of natural law back in the tube to serve as a guide to our social order. Natural law is dead and the only thing that could bring it back to be a governing reality is brute force.

I also disagree with Ben about his “crazed conservative nut” part. I do think in our current climate that many people believe only a crazed conservative nut would think that “a country ought to control its own borders and that culture matters.” For pete’s sake we have scads of people now all around us who believe only a crazed conservative nut would think that there are only two genders and that race is not a merely social construct. If they can think that how much easier is it for them to think that only crazed conservative nuts believe that a country ought to control its own borders and that culture matters.”

No, Ben. Neither Natural Law nor shared Judeo-Christian values are going to save us now.

McAtee Contra Wilson — An Epilogue Touching Ethnic Animosity & Vainglory

One of the sticking points between Doug Wilson and I is the definition of what constitutes ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory. We both agree that ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory is not Christian but as to how to define that, well, the devil is in the details isn’t it?

Before we work on a definition on my end, I have to note that raising the warning to whites of the dangers of ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory, in this cultural moment is, in my estimation, akin to one of Noah’s sons on the ark going bat-snit crazy warning about a coming drought while the rains fell down and the floods came up. “Umm… thanks for the warning son, but for right now could you please just cover that leak in the ark with some pitch?”

We all know of some of the more sensational cases where minority crime on whites is exposed. Eliza Fletcher’s recent kidnapping, rape, and murder is merely the most recent case. Another horror case was that of Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23 in Knoxville, Tennessee. What we may well not know is how common place these kinds of crime are. This booklet pulls back the curtain and forces us to ask Doug Wilson what people group he should be raising a warning to in terms of ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory.

Click to access 2005-Color-of-Crime-Report.pdf

There are whole books dedicated to this ethnic animosity towards white phenomenon. Colin Flaherty’s “White Girl Bleed A Lot,” and “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry,” chronicles ethnic animosity by blacks against whites. We also have the whole recent uprising of “Black Lives Matter.” Yet DW suggests that it is the ethnic animosity/vainglory of white kinists who DW needs to warn the world about?

One wonders if DW would call it ethnic vainglory or animosity if the white kinists brought to the attention of people what Jesse Jackson said a few years ago;

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps… then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Per the United Nations definition of genocide it is white people who are being genocided. Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as,

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group (see “Color of Crime” stats); causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (government school attendance); deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part1 (current Immigration crisis) ; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

And yet what we get from DW lecturing white Christians is, “no ethnic animosity/vainglory please.” This is like lecturing Custer at the Little Big Horn to“take it easy on the Sioux please.”I mean, “yes, of course, ethnic animosity is sinful and to practice it is sin, however how about some warnings against suicidal altruism Doug?” That would seem more appropriate to the season.

If I could I would ask DW; if he counts it racial animosity/vainglory for  men, for example, to engage in the natural tendency to associate with those of their own race and culture? Is it racial animosity/vainglory to prefer the company of one’s own people?

As to what exactly defines ethnic animosity/ vainglory perhaps we might consider the wisdom of the past on what it is not. I mean DW is always reminding us (following Chesterton) not to tear down a boundary marker before we first know why it was put up to begin with. There has been boundary markers in the past of what does and does not constitute ethnic animosity/vainglory.

“If the Mosaic code, so far as it is adapted to our country, age, and religion, were followed; one half of the miseries of society and the whole of the blunders of politicians would be averted. Under this code, the love of the Hebrew was first to be expended in the bosom of his own family, next upon his own tribe, and finally, upon his nation. Marriages were strictly forbidden with other nations, and to some extent interdicted with other tribes. The Hebrew woman marrying in another tribe forfeited her inheritance. Marriages of that kind were rare. Each tribe was desirous to excel in numbers, as well as in the arts of war and peace. So it became a reproach to be barren.

The whole Mosaic economy fostered and promoted sectional love and sectional pride. It had none of the hypocritical cant of modern philanthropy about “the great heart of humanity” and “knowing no North, no South, no East, no West.” — [see Melville’s Redburn]. On the contrary, it taught most distinctly that the boundaries of each tribe must be recognized, and that the duty and the love of each Hebrew belonged specially to his own tribe.”

W.L. Faison 
‘The Land We Love’, Vol. 2 — p. 366.

“Every sinner, as he is a sinner, is to be hated; every man, as he is a man, is to be loved. Let us love men so that we love not their sins; and love them for that which God made them, not that which by sin they made themselves. For degrees, one man is nearer than another. It is certain there are degrees; for to omit our duties towards our parents is worse than to omit the same duties towards a stranger. The order of our love must be thus: to God, to our own souls, to the souls of our brethren before our own bodies, to our own bodies before other men’s, to the bodies of our neighbors.

[Of the bodies of our neighbors there are also degrees to be followed]: first, to them that have need; and of those, first to the household of faith (Gal. 6:10); and of them, first to our countrymen, brethren and companions (Ps. 122:8); and of these, first them that are our friends and acquaintances; and of them, first to them of our own household and kindred (1 Tim. 5:8); and of our kindred, first the wife (Gen. 2:24, 1 Sam. 1:8).

Of the manner of our love: ‘not so much as thyself, but after the same manner.’ Because thou lovest God, (and therefore all things which are God’s), for this cause love thy brother. pp. 172-3. The rule is that the love to myself must be the rule of the love to my neighbor, and so it is not required that I should do any more for my neighbor than I would do for myself.” p. 209.

Lancelot Andrewes
Chair of the KJV Translation work
‘Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine and Other Minor Works’

We all need to remember a foundational tactic of the Marxists here on this subject. The Marxists discredit something wholesome and natural by inextricably linking it to something sinful. So, if you like to socialize with other whites, its because you hate minorities. If you prefer to provide for your own family, it reveals that you hate immigrants, or “image bearers.” If you prefer that this country be primarily for people of the West it reveals that you are just stuffed to the gills with racial animosity. And if you commit the sin of noticing racial/ethnic patterns — even in the context of raising a sound and necessary warning — you are guilty of committing the sin of racial animosity/vainglory.

If I have to choose between being wrongly charged with racial animosity/vainglory or being rightly charged with attempting to avoid genocide, “I’ll take two of the latter in a to go bag please.”

 

McAtee & Wilson Converse on Kinism — And you are Privy — Part VI

DW ends on a playful note (BLM loves to play).

In a different article, Bret McAtee complains about the Leftist press anointing me as the titular head of the Christian Nationalism movement, and argues that I am going to use my immense powers the same way that William F. Buckley did when he “cleansed” the conservative movement, first of the Birchers, followed by others like Brimelow and Sobran.

BLM writes,

Honestly, one could read this article by DW as a way to cleanse his Christian Nationalist movement of the kinists he finds so problematic. Isn’t DW saying, “Christian Nationalism, yes …. Kinism as part of Christian Nationalism NO?”

In fairness though, I don’t blame DW for that since in my world DW’s kind of civic and pluralistic “Christian” Nationalism likewise would need not apply.

DW writes,

He bases his account of this on an article by Murray Rothbard, and one wonders why McAtee is demonstrating his leftward drift so openly, citing the work of a Jew like that. A little suspicious, no?

BLM responds,

I not only have read plenty of Rothbard, I’ve also read plenty of Neil Postmen, Jaques Derrida, and Bernard Bailyn — Jews all. Does this prove I’m not an anti-Semite?  I’ve even been known to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as well as St. Paul. By DW’s reckoning I’ve been suspicious for a very long time now in terms of my leftist drifting.

DW writes,

However I confess myself as not being in charge of anything that other people might want to call themselves. I am only in charge of what I am willing to call myself. And if Christian Nationalism comes to be widely associated with ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory, then to Hell with Christian Nationalism, and I would rather be dead in a ditch than to call myself that. I would drop it like a hot rock. But if Christian Nationalism gets successfully defined by Christians who understand how important it is not to go down that ungodly wormhole, then I am happy to be associated with it.

Bret responds,

I quite agree that I have no desire to be widely associated with a Christian Nationalism that is guilty of ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory. I agree with Doug’s sentiment “to hell with that form of Christian Nationalism.”

But, as they say, “the devil is in the details,” and I’m not confident per our exchange here that DW and I are going to define ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory in the same way. In the “for whatever it is worth” category I want DW to know that I find myself repeatedly pushing back against some of the ethnic animosity and/or ethnic vainglory he is rightly concerned about. I see this in some quarters where, for example, people want to argue that National Socialism was a positive good.

DW ends with,

But time will tell. I have not yet gotten my orders from the CIA.

BLM responds,

Well, we trust that DW will be honest with us when those orders from the CIA come in.

McAtee & Wilson Converse on Kinism — And you are Privy — Part V

Doug Wilson (DW) writes;

Suppose the apostle Paul had said something like, “‘Cretans are evil beasts, lazy gluttons, and liars.’ This testimony is true” (Tit. 1:12). Just suppose, all right? Would it be to the point to say, “some are, some aren’t, just like the rest of us”? Different cultures sin differently, even though we live in a time when it is almost illegal to state the obvious. Some cultures are laid back, some of full of cussedness, some are grasping, and some are lazy.

Me, back in 2008

But having said all this, it is crucial to note that the apostle Paul does not leave the Cretans to wallow in their wicked ways. He goes on to tell Titus to “rebuke them sharply” so that they wouldn’t be like that any more. There is no genetic determinism when it comes to sin.

Bret responds,

Right… the genetic determinism lies in the disposition for different peoples to have besetting sins in different categories. Obviously, the determinism is not so final that the old man can’t be put off, while the new man in Christ can’t be put on. Obviously, the determinism does not suggest that progress can’t be made in sanctification. But the genetic aspect clearly, while not deterministic in the fullest sense of that idea, does suggest that different peoples can have different dispositions towards particular expressions of sin. This is the teaching of Paul here in Titus.

I think we might agree here though we may be in violent agreement.

DW writes,

So as the gospel brings the world closer to the blessed day when the world will be filled with all the fruit of God’s kindness, the different ethnic groups are going to bring all their variegated glories into the New Jerusalem. And all of us, emptied of our vainglorious pufferies by that point, will praise and honor one another, each of us esteeming the other groups as better than our own (Phil. 2:3). This is not the self-loathing we see on display now, but rather the glory of Christian humility, which is something some white people really need to work on. Some whites do the self-loathing thing, and others do the chest-beating, and everybody ought to consider Paul’s more excellent way.

BLM responds,

Obviously, DW and I live in different worlds because as I look upon the cultural landscape right now I see whites doing the self-loathing thing (my Suicidal Altruism I mentioned earlier) more than the chest beating thing. Indeed, I see DW as seeking to get the white man to scurry back to his self-loathing mode. “How dare the white man quit with his self-loathing and agree with Churchill on the JQ? How dare the white man state the obvious that minorities are being used to be the one of the constituencies of the new proletariat to do the Cultural Marxist long march through the Institutions? Don’t they know they are supposed to be so busy self-loathing that they don’t see, let alone mention, the obvious? How dare they commit the sin of noticing?”

And when I say the above all DW can seem to hear me say is that, “Whites are perfect and have no sinful dispositions.” And no matter how often I deny that it seems to be what he hears me saying.

DW writes,

As the kings and chieftains are making their way through the gates of that New Jerusalem, there will be no thrown elbows, catcalls, or jeers. Differences yes, but the differences of all the varied instruments in a symphony orchestra, all playing a song composed by Moses in Heaven, and by the Lamb.

“And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.”

Revelation 15:3-4

Bret responds,

Yes, they do sing that song but they sing it as a great choral with each nation as a nation singing its distinctly assigned part. They do not sing as one homo-globo mass but as distinct nations who together in a confederated heavenly church choir sing their glories to God.

Praise God that DW and I seem to agree on that.