Hammering Out the Faith

Reconstructing a Nation

2012-02-14T13:02:00.000-08:00

I am a Christian Reconstructionist--there, I have said it. I have officially and formally outed myself. I have been a CR for about three years, which is about how long I have known my good friend and sometimes fellow-blogger Lance Box. In that time I have read dozens and dozens of books and articles by such writers as R J Rushdoony, Gary DeMar, David Chilton and Gary North. Reconstructionist materials are easily obtained at the Chalcedon Foundation website or at Gary North Freebooks (yes, they are all free!). CR has messed with me totally: body, soul, heart, mind--I don't know if I will ever be the same!

Since Christmas 2010, I have been working my way slowly and methodically through the compendium volume The Roots of Reconstruction, which consists of the complete collection of articles written by R J Rushdoony over a period of some thirty plus years. Many of these articles were first publish in the series Chalcedon Reports.

In today's blog, I want to summarry Chalcedon Report No. 43, dated March 1, 1969. My reason for doing so is that in November 2012 Americans will be voting on a new president, and here in Australia, a federal election will be held sometime in 2013, unless the current embattled Prime Minister Julia Gillard is ousted internally by her own party or decides to call a snap election. Particularly in the United States, conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, fairly united in opposition to a second term for President Obama, are wondering who among the Republican candidates to throw their support behind. The field of candidates is narrowing, but there remains much confusion within the ranks as to what kind of President (and government) a nation should have. All of this is with the backdrop of economic stagnation, and exploding national deficit, all of this with a nervous eye towards Europe on the one hand and the Chinese economy on the other. What should a Christian do? How could Christians transform society? Even that latter question is perhaps not the one many Christians think of except in limited, focussed areas of social reform such as the anti-abortion, pro-life position.

R J Rushdoony, in No. 43, addresses this matter. I here summarise this article by quoting directly his words, taken directly from The Roots of Reconstruction, pp. 663-666 (Mark of the Beast devotees, calm down!). [I will make the occasional comment with square bracket.]

"...social financing is a major public necessity in order to maintain a vast network of social institutions which require financing and support.

"Historically, there have been in the main two means of social financing: first, by state taxation and then state control and maintenance of the various social institutions which must be maintained, and, second, by the law of the tithe, whereby the tithe, as God's tax, is used to maintain education, welfare, religious institutions, and a variety of social functions." [Rushdoony further on in this article elaborates on the matter of state control. Witness the current furor in the USA over President Obama's compromise (back-down) on forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraceptives used by their employees. Not a few commentators have stated that this might be the straw which costs Obama the next election.]

"Earlier, the tithe barn was a familiar aspect of the Western world....Until World War II, gleaning was a familiar part of American rural life in some areas. Organisations like Goodwill Industries had applied the gleaning principle to urban life. Education as a state function is a relatively modern concept. Through the depression of 1907, welfare in the U.S.was taken care of by churches, foundations, and various similar agencies; it was [Tom] Pendergast, Kansas City, who saw the political potentialities of welfare as an instrument of political power and instituted the first tax-supported welfare program."[In the USA, blacks and the poor usually voted Democrat, while here in Australia Aborigines and the poor have traditionally voted Labor. This statement is not racist or prejudicial--there is a demonstrable statistical correlation between state welfare and voting patterns.]

"The law of the tithe was gradually eliminated in America...and gradually replaced by state taxes, in particular the previously unknown property tax. The revolutionary ferment from Europe was largely behind the desire for state action. After 1800, this revolutionary influence merged with still another influence, Darwin's doctrine of evolution.

"Social Darwinism led to the application of ruthless egoism (as against Christian individualism) to the economic world, and the 'robber barons'emerged....Vanderbilt, not a capitalist, in fact, they [members of Congress] denied him the title: he was a government manipulator, i.e., his wealth came from government contracts gained by manipulating politicians....this socialistic alliance of big business with big government has added to itself big labor, big foundations, and statist education to make up our modern establishment, with the big churches as the chaplains of this new order.... [That this relationship between the church and governmental statist welfare is demonstrated every time there is the hint of any cutback to Centrelink benefits. One can usually expect to see not only members of ACOSS but also the Reverend Tim Costello, former head of the Baptist Unions of Australia, and now CEO of World Vision, decrying on TV any proposed cuts to social services. The assumption and the conclusion is always that state welfare be--must be!-- increased.]

"Social Darwinism meant a denial of social responsibility by the socialistic industrialists....The middle classes are being now steadily expropriated in their possessions on the plea that the needs of the people require it.

"True. The needs of the people do require something, but the statist 'something' is the destruction, first, of the middle classes to provide for the lower classes, second the destruction of the lower classes to provide for the state, and, third, civil war within the establisment as social cannibalism sets in." [Here I merely draw attention to the results of vastly increased political, social and economic rights and benefits for Aboriginal people in Australia since, roughly, 1967, but certainly dating from the Whitlam era. The state of Aboriginal society in the Northern Territory cannot be described other than as being appalling--they as a society of First Nation peoples, are nearly destroyed. One much ask the question why? Like all the king's horses, and all the king's men, no one can put Humpty together again!]

"The social functions of statism, of socialism are thus aspects of its imperialism and parasitism. When the state assumes social functions, its purpose is statist; the state is more concerned with its survival than with the survival of some people, or a class of people. The statist assumption of social functions removes responsibility from the people and promotes social isolation." [I note here that currently, in neither the USA, Australia, Europe or anywhere else on planet earth, is there a viable political party espousing what Rushdoony is recommending. It may be generations before the Church re-assumes and re-asserts it God-ordained role in society, which means of necessity, challenging the State to retreat from areas of society that God never intended it to manage: family, welfare and education being the three main ones.]

"The tithe has a major social function which needs restoring....Those Christians who have concerned themselves with Christian reconstruction have since 1950 established a vast number of Christian schools as well as other agencies. Within fifteen years, almost 30% of American grade school children were no longer in the statist schools.

"What we must do is, first, to tithe, and second, to allocate our tithe to godly agencies. Godly agencies mean far more than the church. In the Old Testament tithe went to the priests and Levites. The priests and Levites had a variety of functions in Israel: religious in the sense of ministerin in the sanctuary, and religious in the sense of providing godly education, music, welfare, and necessary godly assistance to civil authorities. the realm of the godly, of the Christian, is broader than the church. To limit Christ's realm to the church is not Biblical; it is pietism, a surrender of Christ's kingship over the world. The purpose of the tithe must be to establish that kingship."[This, in short, is why the church must be allowed its tax-free status. This is why, in the USA at least, direct donations to the church are tax deductible. It is precisely because the church in both countries (and Europe, no doubt) have withdrawin from its kingdom-building functions into more pietistic emphases, that much of society believes that the church and Christians are complete irrelevancies. The charge is somewhat deserved!]

"This means stewardship. We are not our own: we belong to God, and all our possessions and wealth belong to Him.

"This trust means, first, a responnsibility to care for our own families....No civil government could begin to finance what the families underwrite daily."..."

"Second, as we go outside the family, the minimum requirements of God's law is the tithe, God's tax on man. The tithe can be used as we, under God, feel led to use it, provided always the receiving agencies are doing the Lod's work in their areas. We need to asses the need for Christian reconstruction and then conscientiously support those agencies which we believe best further it: a church, an organisation dedicated to creationsim, or the cause of Christian education, missions, Christian scholarship, and so on...."

"There are many who say, how can I pay my taxes and still tithe?....you have no other alternative. Are you going to wait for the state to lower its taxes? The state will never lower its taxes, nor will the people permit it to, as long as the necessary social functions are left in the hands of the state....the problem most legislators face is the unrelenting pressure for higher taxes from people who are demanding new services for themselves at public expense, and this always means taxes....

"We need to do this in delight and anticipation of a godly order; we also need to do it in fear of the consequences if we do not. Either we work to establish a godly order, or we go dwon into the hell of total statism." [GFC or a United Europe, anyone?]

Malachi 3:8-12

⁸“Will a man rob God?
Yet you have robbed Me!
But you say,
‘In what way have we robbed You?’
In tithes and offerings.
⁹You are cursed with a curse,
For you have robbed Me,
Even this whole nation.
¹⁰Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the Lord of hosts,
“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven
And pour out for you such blessing
That there will not be room enough to receive it.

¹¹“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes,
So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground,
Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,”
Says the Lord of hosts;
¹²“And all nations will call you blessed,
For you will be a delightful land,”
Says the Lord of hosts.

Marriage

2012-01-29T00:56:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I gave an extended series of quotations to summarise chapter 14 'Morality': Why Are Some Less Corrupt?' of Vishal Mangalwadi's book The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. I continue to commend it as very worthwhile reading, not just for Christians for for non-Christians and atheists (not equivalent terms), many of whom are quite happy for Australia, the United States and Europe to continue jettisoning its Judeo-Christian foundations as a basis for morality, government and society.

Now in this blog, I would like similarly to summarise chapter 15 'Family: Why Did America Surge Ahead of Europe?' To begin with, I agree mostly, and often wholeheartedly, with most of what Mangalwadi states in this chapter. However, I would disagree at one small, but crucial, point. Mangalwadi, while a firm believer in the Biblical concept of male headship within marriage, bases the concept of headship on Genesis 3 and The Fall. I would disagree, and believe that, while agreeing with Mangalwadi that Genesis 1 teaches and strongly affirms the equality of male and female, Genesis 2 lays the true foundation for ideal, sinless headship of men in marriage--a goal that nonetheless no human male has yet achieved. At this point I believe Mangalwadi's reasoning, as in chapter 13, is somewhat confused/confusing and weak. He seems to confuse the concepts of dominion versus domination.

Enough of that for now, on with the summary of some excellent writing! As in my previous blog, this summary will take the form of a series of quotes lifted from the text where I have highlighted or made notes in my copy of the book. Any comments of mine I will inclose in square brackets.

"In 1831-1832...in Democracy in America,...Alexis de Tocqeville wrote: 'I have recorded so many considerable achievements of the Americans, if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I would answer that it is due to the superiority of their women....In almost all Protestant nations girls are much more in the control of their own behaviour than among Catholic ones. This independence is even greater in those Protestant countries, such as England, which have kept or gained the right of self-government. In such cases both political habits and religious beliefs infuse a spirit of liberty into the family. In the United States, Protestant teaching is combined with a very free constitution and a very democratic society, and in no other country is a girl left so soon or so completely to look after herself.'...

"Monogamy was not a Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Islamic conception of marriage. It was a peculiarly Christian idea. It spread around the world in the nineteenth century, mainly through the Western missionary movement." [One often reads or hears of the criticism of Christians who insist that the Bible provides the standard for and the standard definition of marriage for all society. That criticism usually takes the form of, 'What about all that polygamy in the Old Testament?' This is a fair question, but I believe Mangalwadi's perspective, in this instance, is insightful--that monogamy stems specifically from Christian beliefs and represents God's ideal.]

"Many historians have noticed what the New Testament suggests, that Christianity conquered Rome because as we shall see below, it attracted and empowered women. It is important to understand how polygamy weakens and enslaves women....

"Although many of our contemporaries have argued that the right to easy divorce is necessary for a woman's liberty and happiness, the experience of easy divorce in Islam and the accumulated wisom of the ages suggest that divorce and polygamy weaken women....

"Like pagans, early Christians prized female chastity, but unlike pagans, they rejected the double standard that gave pagan men so much sexual license....

"Christians also expressed their respect for women by raising the age of marriage....

"The Bible's sexual ethic gave Christian girls the time to grow up and become better wives and mothers....

"...Roman Empire...extramarital sex with a temple prostitute was considered a purifying, god-pleasing, religious event, if not the very means of Gnostic enlightenment....
"Easy availability of sex without commitment took away men's motivation to be married....

"Another cumulative result of promiscuity, child marriage, mistreatment of women, divorce, and fear of marriage was that Rome's pagan population began to decline during the final years of empire."

"Christians' choices in favor of sexual purity, stable marriage, and care for children, orphans, and widows aided civilization but were not caused by concerns for civilization. Their motive was to please God by obeying His Word....

[Following a discussion of the rise of Medieval Catholic ascetism and sexual abstinence among priests and monks:]" ...the sixteenth-century Reformation began restoring biblical norms for sexual mores. Reformers like Martin Luther argued that, according to God's Word, sex and marriage were a means to holiness. The family, not the monastery, was the divinely ordained school of character....

[quoting Martin Luther:] "The doctrine that marriage is spiritually inferior or undesirable is 'the teaching of the demons.' Luther taught that the family, not the monastery, is God's school of character; celibacy has become the devil's trap to lure priests and monks into sin....

[again citing Luther:] "'Marriage is good, virginity better, but liberty is the best.' From the Bible Luther concluded that monastic vows rested on false and arrogant assumptions that celibate Christians had a special calling or vocation, to observe the counsels of perfection, which were superior to ordinary Christians who obey ordinary laws. Luther's revolutionary conclusion is known as the 'priesthood of all believers''...

"His exposition became the basic theological factor that enabled Protestant nations to develop economically faster than Catholic countries and to build egalitarian democracies....

"On January 10, 1529, Luther preached on the second chapter of the gospel of John. The passage recounts Jesus'miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana at his widowed mother's request. Luther encapsulates the intrinsic goodness of marriage, the priesthood of all believers, the equal value of every vocation, and the family as the school of character:

[Luther]'There are three estates: marriage, virginity, and widowhood. They are all good. None is to be despised. The virgin is not to be esteemed above the widow, nor the widow above the wife, any more than the tailor is to be esteemed above the butcher. There is no estate to which the Devil is so opposed as to marriage. The clergy have not wanted to be bothered with workd and worry. They have been afraid of a nagging wife, disobedient children, difficult relatives, or the dying pig or a cow. They want to lie abed [or in a recliner, or buried in the bowels of some library, I should add!] until the sun shines through the window. Our ancestors knew this and would say, "Dear child, be a priest or a num and have a good time."I have heard married people say to monks, "You have it easy, but when we get up we do not know where to find our bread." Marriage is a heavy cross because so many couples quarrel. It is the grace of God when they agree. The Holy Spirit declares there are three wonders: when brothers agree, when neighbors love each others, and when a man and a wife are at one. When I see a pair like that, I am glad as if I were in a garden of roses. It is rare.'

"Radical feminists were not the first to see marriage as a 'heavy cross'-a burden or slavery. Luther said marriage was slavery for men as much as for women. That is precisely why many men in pagan Rome [and 21st century Australia!] preferred not to marry but to seek extramarital or homosexual relationships. Christianity made marriage harder for men by requiring that husbands remain faithful, committed, and loving to the same woman-no matter what-until death do us part.' When a husband is forbidden extramarital affairs, taking a second wife, or divorcing a difficult wife; when his is not allowed to hate or be harsh with her; when he is required to love and honor his wife; then his wife is empowered. She has the security to seek for her dignity and rights.

"Marriage brings out the worst in both husbands and wives. They must choose whether to stay in that school of character or to drop out. The Bible made divorce difficult because one does not learn much by quitting a challenging school. The only way to make monogamy work is to value love above pleasure, to pursue holiness and humility rather than power and personal fulfillment, to find grace to repent rather than condemn, to learn sacrifice and patience in place of indulgence and gratification. The modern world was created by countless couples who did just that. In working to preserve their marriages and proved for their children, they invested in the future of civilization itself."

[I'm going to end this blog here and now. I have written in the top margin of page 291, where the above paragraph is found, these words, "Best section of the entire book!" Mangalwadi goes on in this chapter to speak of Fatherhood, The American Girl and The Philosophy of Marriage--all good stuff...I commend it it! But it's time to head off to church now with my wife of 37+ years. God grant and grace me with the ability to be a Godly head for her today!]

The Book That Made Your World

2012-01-25T21:12:00.000-08:00

This blog's title is the same as that of a fascinating book by Vishal Mangalwadi, an Indian scholar. The subtitle is How the Bible Created the Soull of Western Civilization. (2011; Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 442 pages).

Last night, on Australia Day eve, Christians from all over Australia gathered together for a night of prayer for this nation. It could be argued, and I would do so here, that we are witnessing the loss of Australia's soul, and that fear for the consequences of such a loss is what motivates many of us to pray.

I am not attempting here to review Mangalwadi's book, the main thesis of which is that we (Christian and non-Christian alike around the world) would do well to acknowledge the positive, leavening effect that the Bible has had on Western Civilization. This is particularly surprising, coming from an Indian, born into a decidedly Hindu culture before faith in Christ transformed his life.

Over the course of the past several years, I have been in home and other small groups where we have despaired over the deteriorating state of society, be it in terms of crime, immorality, economics--you name it, we despaired. It is hard not to succumb to a creeping fatalism. But what I would like to do in this blog now is simply to summarise part of Chapter 14: "Morality: Why Are Some Less Corrupt?" I do so by quoting here sections of that chapter that I highlighted as I read. (I'm a great highlighter and marginal scribbler in books!) As the chapter progresses, Mangalwadi goes into generous detail into the life of John Wesley and its influence on England. So, here we go (pp. 254-273):

I have quoted these statements in the order in which Mangalwadi wrote them. Where I have indicated a new paragraph wherever Mangalwadi did, although there are sometime leaps forward over several paragraphs.

"How did ordinary people of Holland become so different from our people in India and Egypt? The answer is simple. The Bible taught the people of Holland that even though no human being may be watching us in that dairy farm [reference to an illustration of Dutch communal honesty], God, our ultimate judge, is watching to see if we obey his commands to neither covet nor steal....

"The [Heidelberg] catechism did not inject anything into the Ten Commandments that the Bible itself did not teach. The Bible said that God's people who did not give a tenth of their income to God were robbing God....

"[Mangalwadi makes special reference to a book that highly has influenced his thinking:] Ian Bradley's book The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians....

"The empirical data says that countries most influenced by the Bible are the least corrupt....

"The testimony of history is that Christendom was as corrupt as any other part of the world until it recovered this biblical gospel during the Reformation....

"In 1738, two centuries after the Reformation, Bishop Berkeley declared that religion and morality in Britain had collapsed [SS: sound familiar?!] 'to a degree that was never before known in any Christian country.' The important reasons for the degeneration of Protestant England were the restoration of the monarchy and the supremacy of the Anglican Church at the end of the seventeenth century....

"The combined impact of these developments was to leave the church bereft of prophets....

"The rise of the Enlightenment, toward the end of the seventeeth century and through the eighteenth century, made the situation hopeless. Deism, or 'natural religion', had taught that God is not involved in the affairs of this world.... [SS: I have often heard Jesus' words quoted at this point--'My kingdom is not of this world.']....The belief took away the fear of God....

"Deism progressed to rationalism, skepticism, atheism, and finally cynicism....

"A corrupt church with closed Scriptures darkened most aspects of English life....

"Corruption spreads like cancer....

"Britain at this time, more than at any other, was a nation divided between the rich and the poor....

"The strangulation of biblical Christianity had further inhumane consequences in the treatment and mortality of children....

"The eighteenth century in England is know as the 'Gin Age.'...Horrible child abuse....

"a perverted conception of sport...baiting of bulls, bears, badgers and dogs...cockfighting....

"Gambling was a national obession for all classes...promiscuity became a sport...openly pornographic literature....

"The Bible became a closed book, and the result was ignorance, lawlessness, and savagery....

"...lawlessness, thieves, robbers, and highwaymen....
"
[Finally, Mangalwadi comes to the end of this litany of horrors which could easily describe our current western world. The dawn breaks!]

"Into this spiritual and moral quagmire stepped John Wesley. He was born the same year as Jonathan Edwards, on June 28, 1703....

"George Whitefield...convinced him of the need for field preaching....The Great Awakening, the evangelical revival, was born....

"For three decades, magistrates, squires, and clergy turned a blind eye to the continual drunken attacks by mobs and gangs on Wesley and his supporters....

"...the Wesleys [John and Charles] and Whitefield narrowly escaped death....

"Wesley...believed that God's purpose for him was to open the Word of God for his nation....

"Wesley's central understanding of Christianity was that individual redemption leads to social regeneration....Because of the preaching of the gospel, the high moral principals [read 'Law', I would contend!] set forth in Scriptures slowly began to take root in people's minds. Wesley believed that God's Word calls for the salvation of individual souls. It also gives us firm ordinances [again, 'Law'] for national existence and a common social life under God--these were his goals, and he never lost sight of them....

[I will come out right here and state clearly that as I first rest Mangalwadi's description of Wesley's motivation, I was reminded strongly of the writings of R J Rushdoony and other modern-day Reconstructionists who affirm that Christians should, as a matter of course, be working to evangelise nations so that eventually all of society is ruled by God's Law--all this before Christ returns, not after.]'

"In May 1739, the conrnerstone of the first Methodist preaching house was laid in Bristol. Soon Kingswood School and the London foundry were opened. The foundry became the hub of many social service projects, such as an employment bureau, loans for the poor, and a free medical dispensary....

[Note, this is precisely one of Rushdoony's contentions, namely that the modern State has been allowed to shoulder aside the Church, with the Church's acquiescience, over the last 200 years so that numerous social services routinely provided for as part of the Church's ministry have been taken over by the State.]

"Wesley understood the Bible demands that individual conversion should lead to changes in society,...

"...Wesley deplored the stupidity and futility of war, especially Britain's war with the American colonies....

"Wesley supported fair prices, a living wage, and honest and healthy employment for all....

"As Charles Dickens after him, Wesley put certain aspects of the law 'in the stocks,' holding them up to public ridicule....

"...the nineteenth century teaching tradition. Finny, Moody, Spurgeon, Nicholson, Ryle, Moule, James, Danny, Chavass....Their biblical revival held in check the character-destroying consequences of atheism that corrupted other European nations like France.... [...and certainly Australia today--God may be mocked, but nations pay a terrible price as a consequence!]

"The biblical revival affected the lives of politicians. Edmund, Burke and William Pitt....Perceval, Lord Liverpool, Abraham Lincoln, Gladstone, and the Prince Consort, among other, acknowledged the influence of the Great Awakening. the biblical revial, beginning among the outcast masses, was the midwife of the spirit and character values that have created and sustained free institutions throughout the English-speaking world. England after Wesley saw many of his century's evils eradicated, because hundreds of thousands became Christians. Their hearts were changed, as were their minds and attitudes, and so society--the public realm--was affected....

"Wesley's purpose under God had been achieved: To attack the root cause of spiritual atrophy and moral decay and purge the nation's soul....

"Transformation of a nation is an intergenerational task....

"John Wesley's life under God refutes the idea that history is bound to go down towards corruption, or that it is 'made' by material conditions and institutions."

So, that summarises Vishal Mangalwadi's description of the effects of John Wesley's ministry during the Great Awakening. As I stated before, I doubt very much whether Mangalwadi would label himself a Christian Reconstructionist, but he certainly believes, from other statements throughout his book, in the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:26-27. And certainly there are big differences overall between the theology of John Wesley and that of Rushdoony and other current Reconstructionist writers (Arminianism vs Calvinism being perhaps the main difference, although I don't know Wesley's views on post-millenial eschatology or covenantalism.) Regardless, before Reconstructionism can be dismissed out of hand as the general ravings of the lunatic-fringe, ultra-conservative, extreme Christian right, one must first acknowledge that what modern Reconstructionists continue to preach today is exactly what Wesley saw fulfilled in his lifetime.

There is still hope for Australia--there is still hope for Western Civilization--there is still hope for this sin-sick world! On that note can I close with a link to an encouraging blog for Australia Day by Bill Muehlenberg, Fantastic Pro-Life News on Australia Day.

2 Chronicles 7:14

If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Angels Screaming

2012-01-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

People post all manner of weird and wonderful things on Facebook, but here is a very heartwarming video depicting a young wife's reaction at seeing her soldier husband appear before her very eyes, quite unexpectedly while dining out with her family. A one-word summary of her reaction would be SCREAM!--the first thing she did upon seeing him for whom no doubt she had been longing for months if not years during some overseas posting. The scream is quickly supplanted with tears and hugs and finally, finally, a smile forms on the young woman's face.

I was thinking about this as I took a rare 4km jog with my old and faithful dog Marley on this, my 61st birthday. And Luke 15 came to mind, particularly verse 7 and its refrain in verse 10:

"I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance."

Luke 15, of course, contains the three familiar 'lost' parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. I wonder about the statement regarding the joy in heaven over repenting sinners. Is it in any way similar to this woman's reaction? I think perhaps it is. But then I asked myself, "Why do angels get so excited over repentance. Surely, after several millenia of seeing God's grace in action, the matter of a sinner's repenting must get a bit old hat, even mundane. But apparently it never gets boring, and apparently angels do not tire of this cosmic game of peek-a-boo that causes them to rejoice just as a baby laughs every time we pop out at them and say 'Boo!' But in this case, it is God who continually pops out and says 'Boo--that's my grace again in action!' I can well imagine the angels looking down at fallen humanity and saying to themselves, "Surely, that one is beyond God's grace! That one is too bad, too evil, too sinful--there's no hope for him/her!" And then I imagine God's saying, "Boo--this one is mine too!" And the heavenly host goes wild with joy!

It is this divine selection, this finding of the hopelessly loss, which leads to 'big R' repentance and leads to our ultimate salvation. Then I began thinking about that little phrase 'just persons who need no repentance'. Surely, everyone needs repentance; everyone needs to repent. Surely, this verse is not teaching that it is possible to be saved apart from repentance, by living a completely just (righteous) life. No, the Bible is perfectly clear that unless people repent, they will not be saved.

But there is another type of repentance which I call 'little r' repentance. 'Little r' repentance refers to the hundreds if not thousands of opportunities placed before us each day, by God, to produce the fruit that indicates our repented and forgiven state. Speaking personally on my 61st birthday, I can honestly say that this is the harder type of repentance to produce, because it involves those niggling little (and sometimes big) tendencies to sin. There has never been a day so far, and I doubt there will ever come a day, when God does not give me multiple opportunities NOT to lose my temper, NOT to say an unkind or profane word, NOT to lust. Many times I fail in these and other areas, but sometimes--sometime--I don't. And when I don't it is not, for the most part, that I have made some extra effort of my will imposing itself over my desires. No, such instances can only be attributed to the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in my life, and when this happens, I can well imagine the angels screaming with joy and poking each other in the ribs,"Hey, look at that--Steve Swartz didn't swear went that idiot cut him off at the stop light! Steve Swartz didn't take a second look at that very attractive woman!"

So, as I begin year 62 of life, I am thankful for both 'big R' and 'little r' repentance. I am thankful God has graced and gifted me, undeservedly, with repentance. And as I rest on the 'big R', may I display 'little r' a hundred times a day! And may I make the angels scream with delight and joy!

The Open Door Made Me Do It!

2011-11-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

In the 70's black American comedian Flip Wilson immortalised the sentence, "The devil made me do it!" Well, we now well and truly have the moral equivalent, but I for one have stopped laughing.

Tuesday's headline in the Alice Springs Advocate was the all-too-familiar refrain 'Lock the Doors'. The front-page article told the tale of you young adventurers, aged 13 and 15, who apparently and somehow have gotten the idea that it is altogether acceptable and expected behaviour for them to let themselves into houses whose doors they just happen to find unlocked. Where could they have learned such a notion? Perhaps it is because of the messages they keep hearing, such as this one from the story-writer, "Unlocked door were to blame for a recent crime spree," according to police. Now leaving aside, for the moment, whether a crime spree represents more or less crime than a spate, could I say just a few things about the quote.

First of all, the writer attributes this statement to the police, but did not make a direct quote, so perhaps he has somehow misrepresented how the police actually feel about the causes of crime. Regardless, someone believes the statement is true; otherwise, why would it be reported in the newspaper? Let's examine the logic.

If unlocked doors are to blame for housebreaking, then all of the thousands upon thousands of unsecured items in grocery stores, K-Mart, Target and every other shop around town are the cause of shoplifting. The only exception would be jewellery stores where the owners have the good sense to lock up the valuables out of reach of impressionable hands, young and old. So apparently as a society we have moved from 'Caveat emptor'-- 'Let the buyer beware' to 'Caveat venditor'-- 'Let the vendor beware'. In this case, any who possesses anything that is unsecured becomes a defacto, if unwitting, vendor of that possession, which can and will be taken at the whim and discretion of nimble-fingered consumers. And then we in society have the temerity to arrest them for breaking and entering -- how atrocious! What a violation of the International Rights of Children!

So let's take it even further, shall we. By the logic expressed in Tuesday's newspaper, women who walk around with anything less on than a full burka covering are asking to be assaulted. They are obviously asking for it because they have not taken prudent precautionary measures to ward off the unwanted attentions of those who might wish to sample the merchandise. Your readers will, of course, remember that this was exactly the argument used by a Muslim cleric two or three years ago down south who argued that women who dress provocatively are no better than raw meat laying on the sidewalk, attracting stray cats. That point of view was roundly attacked.

Let me offer another explanation for crime. It goes like this: Murderers murder. Thieves steal. Liars lie. I was going to add that adulterers commit adultery, but modern society is redefining the whole matter of sexuality, so that one no longer applies. My point is that as a society we now redefine everything according to our wishes. We pander to bad behaviour, accept that it is something in the environment which as caused the bad behaviour, and then engage in the endless task of meeting the environmental needs of those who happen to get caught in the act.

By the way, the above-mentioned housebreaking was stopped by an alert neighbour. Imagine, if you will, what might have happened if one or both of the youths in questions were armed with knives or other weaponry. One of several things might have happened. Either they would have injured or killed the neighbour who had interrupted their shopping, or he might have injured or killed one of them, possibly in self-defence. If the former, then we could have sent him a card or attended his funeral. But if the latter, then we would have outraged citizenry decrying the over-application of force, with the prospects of the neighbour facing criminal prosecution.

By all means--develop youth diversionary programs! They used to be called parents. How about going to school? How about getting a job? How about volunteering? If that doesn't suit little Johnny, how about military college for boys (these certainly are not men!)? For specifically Aboriginal youth offenders, how about round-the-year 24-7 Aboriginal business camp run by senior Aboriginal men (and financed by the Government who seems to have plenty of taxpayer money for prisons) who still remember how young boys used to be taught how to be men?

When exactly will we wake up to any of this!

Exodus 20: 15, 17

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

Ephesians 4;28

Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.

Due Inheritance

2011-11-19T01:16:00.000-08:00

This is a review of the book by Ted Egan, Due Inheritance (2008. Niblick Publishing, Nightcliff,147 pages--A$25). The book is not your ordinary academic treatise of the kind found in bookshops carrying various books written either by or about Australian Aborigines. It contains only a handful of explanatory footnotes, nor is there any list of references at the end. Within its pages, very few other books or studies are mentioned. It does mention by name or with any regularity many persons, Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, who in some way have either impacted the author or whose lives have been impacted by the events described in the book. It is instead the expression of a natural-born raconteur who has lived and worked for some fifty years in the Northern Territory alongside Aboriginal people and who, like many thousands of others within Australia are asking the question--How could life have gone so badly for First Australians to be today, for the vast majority of them, in a state which can fairly be described as ungodly mess? (my words, not the author's)

The book, though short and easily read within 2-3 hours, is not an easy-read. It is confronting, shocking and, at points, rude in it's descriptions. For example, on p. viii in the Forward, are these words by Dr. David Headon, Canberra:

"He refuses to back away from tough assessments, whenever they need to be made: the community of Yuendumu is, today, a fourth world cesspit that needs to be bulldozed (the Aboriginals there, once the toughest people on earth are now "listless at best); the furtive, compulsive, frenzied attitude [of First Australians to alcohol] still prevails, but must be changed, for the present drinking habits...are rarely sociable and they are often nothing short of suicidal; and in the town camps of cities and towns such as Darwin, Broome, Alice Springs and Coober Pedy, murder and mayhem prevail.

So, it is painfully clear from the very start of the book that the author is not about winning friends, but he is about influencing people while there is still time. As I moved through the pages of Due Inheritance, I was struck by many similarities in the analyses and descriptions found in a book by Dr. Peter Sutton, The Politics of Suffering. To quote from Wikipaedia about this book:

"Sutton argues that self-management in the 1970s, the equal pay decisions and granting of land rights and access to sit-down money'', the homelands movement, bilingual education, and a plethora of other policies concerning health and community development employment projects have not lead to any discernible improvement in living conditions, or in today's political lexicon, a closing of the gap. What is more, he says the Aboriginal industry has until only recently stubbornly resisted acknowledging the brutal realities of daily life."

There is, however, a profound difference between the two authors. When I reached the end of Dr. Sutton's book, I was disappointed that it ended where it did. The last chapter was something of a feeble lament about how we, the best and the brightest minds of the 60's onwards, could have stuffed things up so badly for Aboriginal people (again, my words, not Sutton's).

Ted Egan's book, in a sense, picks up where Sutton's book end. Egan, as is the wont of men in their advancing years, has a big idea, and because of that big idea, he still has hope--and so do I, for that matter. In his own website summary"of Due Inheritance, Egan says this:

"In brief, in my book, I present a twelve point plan, suggesting:

(1) the establishment of a Register of the First Australians, organised and controlled by First Australians themselves, incorporating appropriate data necessary to conduct elections, appraise language and other strengths, and for any purpose deemed beneficial in recognising those people with real affinities dating pre-1788.

(2) the election, via the Register, of the Academy of First Australians, comprising fifty (50) First Australians, over eighteen years of age, free from any criminal conviction, to be, as a body, the cultural authority of the First Australians and act in an advisory capacity to Federal Parliament on all matters of policy. The Academy would primarily play a cultural role, to preserve all aspects of traditional culture, especially the retention and rehabilitation of traditional languages and ceremonies. It is suggested that the Academy rather than government should be the body to negotiate land leases with traditional owners and shared responsibility agreements with First Australian communities. The Academy would be accorded true recognition and national respect as the elected nominees of all First Australians. Twenty five (25) members would be required to demonstrate fluency in a traditional Australian language as well as English. The other twenty-five (25) members would be elected from regional bodies throughout Australia.

(3) the establishment of a once-only Future Fund, in an amount of $5 billion, as the Inheritance of the First Australians. $4.5 billion would be invested in bullet-proof investments to enable annual topping-up of the balance of $500,000,000 that would be distributed annually, at the behest of the Academy, for cultural and local government advancement of First Australians. There would be total accountability.

(4) an individual appraisal of every First Australian from birth to death, to ensure that every opportunity is provided to enable each person to achieve full potential as a valued citizen of Australia.

(5) the recognition of the land rights of every identifiable language group of First Australians, by the establishment of a home base in land terms, no matter how small that parcel of land might be. The symbolism is crucial. This was the basis of the land rights struggles of the 1960s.

(6) procedures to require governments to stop fighting First Australians in land matters. Instead of appealing against decisions like Blue Mud Bay, government should seek to use such a decision as the means for wonderful co-operation with, in that case, the Yolngu.

(7) a system to take out of our national vocabulary pejorative terms, based on perceived inferiority, like fringe dwellers, town campers and long grassers. I advocate the abandonment of all schemes to accommodate people so categorised in intolerable slum conditions not acceptable to other Australians.

(8) a system that throws the problems of those people back to a traditional First Australian leadership for rehabilitation in their own traditional areas. This is not apartheid: this is caring for countrymen by countrymen. Again, it is what the land rights struggles of the 1960s were all about.

(9) a system whereby all National Parks are placed under joint management of appropriate Commonwealth, State and Territory agencies, together with the Academy of First Australians.

(10) a system to allow existing First Australian landowners the opportunity, if appropriate, simultaneously to have their land classified as National Parks, with all the obvious benefits.

(11) a total review of all social service payments, especially Unemployment Benefit, as they relate to First Australians, with a view to establishing new national criteria concerning eligibility.

(12) the presentation, via the Academy, of imaginative campaigns concerning attitudes to alcohol, particularly among First Australians."

Can Egan's ideas work? Will they work? Can we even hope that they are workable? Will they be allowed to work and see the light of day? These are the questions to be asked and, in time, answered. For there is no doubt in my mind that Egan's big idea will draw fire from many, if not all sides, from Aboriginals to non-Aborigionals alike. In short, his big idea will draw fire from all and sundry (and there are tens of thousands across this continent) who have a vested, financial and political, reason for keeping things churning over as they are within the, as it has often been called, the Aboriginal industry. One could call it institutionalised, industrial-strength misery. For every Aboriginal person out there who can expect to live on average a full 20 years less than the rest of the population, who will suffer rates of kidney failure and dialysis treatment some 8-10 times greater than the national average, who will be unemployed at a rate ranging from 5-10 times the national average depending on locale, who will be under-educated, over incarcerated and live in perpetual substandard housing--for every one such person, there will be one or more people, government and non-government alike, who will be trying very, very hard to help save or better them and their lives, spending until, never-ending billions of dollars in the process. To what end, both Sutton and Egan have now asked? To watch the proud train that is Aboriginal Australia, head backwards down the track and over the precipice into oblivion.

I too have been and still am part of the Aboriginal industry, for twenty-five years as a missionary linguist coordinating the Warlpiri Bible Translation project. Since leaving that endeavour in 2003 three, I have worked at Yirara College (an Aboriginal boarding college in Alice Springs run by the Lutheran Finke River Mission), a teacher of basic English literacy and numeracy at the Institute of Aboriginal Development, then a similar position at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre, then for about a year a prison officer, for two months as a probation and parole office with Community Corrections and now a Trainer with the Aboriginal Interpreter Service. So I also am a direct witness since 1977, the year my wife and I first came to Australia from the USA, of the steady deterioration of Aboriginal people, particularly in the Northern Territory, although not limited to that area. So, as Ted Egan I am sure would agree, no non-Aboriginal person on the continent is absolved from responsibility for the current situation. We must do better, and to do that, we must do something radically different.

I said earlier that Due Inheritance is not a hopeless book of doom and gloom. Oh, there is plenty of doom and gloom to go around, that is for certain. But there is hope. Maybe.

Ted Egan has performed yet another great public service for all the people of Australia. For it is not overstating the matter to say that what happens to the First Australians will be the collective fate of every Australian. They are like the canary in the coal mine. If they die, it is because of the poisonous air which will eventually kill us all.

Ted Egan has written his book from a secular perspective, not from the perspective which I would be coming from, namely a Christian perspective. This is not to say that Ted Egan is not a Christian--he does not say one way or the other what his religious beliefs are, and so his descriptions and analyses can fairly be labelled as modern benevolent humanism. However, it is interesting to me how many of his proposed solutions are actually founded on what is traditional Judeo-Christian ethics. Let me explain.

In the chapter entitled "A Starting Point: A New Approach to Self Help", Egan mentions the Harrison Ford movie The Witness. This movie is centred around the Amish people of Pennsylvania. Egan describes what was and is the traditional Amish method for building or replacing a barn, as depicted in the movie. The community as a whole--man, woman and child--gather at the site and all work feverishly together to build a complete barn from scratch in a single day. The Amish have been doing this for centuries now, and they are the last remnants in the United States of a Biblical, covenant-based Christian community who are, by their own choice, segregated off from much of the wider American society, culture and government intervention and control. In short, the Amish take care of their own from cradle to grave with minimal intrusion into their affairs. Without a very strong and intractable set of shared religious beliefs, rigidly and strictly enforced internally, such communities as the Amish cannot exist for long.

And that is what the big idea within Due Inheritance requires--spiritual rejuvenation and revival of some sort. Australia as a whole is moving further and further away from its Judeo-Christian roots into the somewhat uncharted world of multi-culturalism and diversity. What is it that will continue to hold Australia together as a nation? Due Inheritance points to, I believe, a major but not exclusive part of the answer. The Aboriginal, First Australian people must reconnect with their God-given religious roots. As a Christian, I believe that the God of the Bible placed within the traditional religions of First Australia, traces of Himself and the salvation He alone can offer humanity. I believe further that for everyone on this planet, the fullest revelation of God is through His Son Jesus Christ. Ted Egan and many First Australians might well disagree with this point of view, and that is their right. However, many First Australians have accepted aspects of Christianity within their own belief systems. They suffer just as much as others of their own people who don't. I imagine they often wonder why their own religious beliefs and the beliefs within Christianity have resulted in the life of suffering that is their mutual lot today. That is beyond the scope of this review.

Just a few further comments. To kick start this revitalisation, Egan proposes a once payment from the nation of A$5 billion as agreed upon by the First Australian Academy and the Federal, State and Territory governments. This agreement would bring an end to the current state of governance, including the foregoing of future land claims and the abolition of Land Councils, dominated by lawyers and anthropologists. The $5 billion dollars would generate a self-perpetuating disposable income in excess of $250 million per year to be dispersed by decision of the Academy members to Aboriginal communites and groups involved with increasing decision-making, governance and business enterprises. Egan suggests that all national parks be turned over to First Australians to manage on the nation's behalf.

Who knows whether this will or even could work. I do not have the economic credentials to determine whether the $5 billion would or could be managed in a bullet-proof investment portfolio. It would be a challenge given the global financial situation. When asked, the question p. 133, "You say that overall expendtiture of taxpayer funds will be less under your scheme, yet you seek to set up a Futures Fund, immediately committing $5 billion. When will the saving start?", Egan's reply is, "My answer is: 'From Day One'." Well, we won't know if we don't try.

One rather huge hurdle to overcome is similar to the tremendous amount of power needed to launch the huge Saturn rocket on its way to the moon. There is the huge pull of gravitation and inertia to overcome, and (I'm guessing here) surely more than 95% of the rocket fuel is expended within the first five minutes just to achieve earth orbit. Who are the people who will provide the initial, massive boost of goodwill and skill necessary to launch Due Inheritance off the pad, without it falling back to ground in a fiery mass? Egan speaks of scores and scores of skilled volunteers flooding into the communities, like dedicated Amish, to raise the barn. He speaks of the hundreds and thousands of skilled and dedicated First Australians, tribal and non-tribal, who will suddenly materialise to take the reins of control. But, and this is a huge but, the sad reality is that we have now, in 2011, nearly two full generations of under-educated and underskilled Aboriginal people living the welfare and prison nightmare. How do you overcome this inertia of educational and vocational neglect that means that there are vast numbers of, for the most part, men between the ages of 20-50 who simply do not have the skills required. Are there enough to come alongside without, somehow and again with the very best of intentions, creating another spiralling bureaucracy that will pound the final nails into the coffin?

There is still hope--perhaps there is still time. Only God knows. May He have mercy on this nation!

Thank you, Ted Egan, for being perhaps one in a long line of prophetic voices crying in the wilderness.

Joel 2:28, Acts 2:17

And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions. (King James Version)

Kajirna-jana Pirlirrpa ngaju-nyangu kurru-pinyi nyurrurla-nyanguku ngalapi-nyanuku manu yurntalu-nyanuku, ngulakuju Pirlirrpakuju kapulurla marlaja wangkami jaru junga-nyayirni ngaju-nyangu yapa panu-kurra. Purlka-paturlu manu kurdu-warnu-paturlu kapujulu marlaja nyanyi nyiyarningkijarra jukurrparla manu yuruyururla munga wiri parra wiri Pirlirrpa ngaju-nyanguku.(Warlpiri Bible)

John 1:5

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (English Standard Version)

Ngulangku kuja kangalpa milki-yirrarni Jarra-nyayirni-wangurlu, ngulaju-ka tarnnga-juku rdili janka. Ngulaju kulalpa mungangku wamu-wantinjarla palu-pungkarla, lawa. (Warlpiri Bible)

Proverbs 29:18a

Where there is no vision, the people perish... (King James Version)

Jukurrpawanguju kalu yapaju muku pali. (Warlpiri Bible)

Just One Pen

2011-11-18T02:35:00.000-08:00

Had a classic Aspberger's miscommunication moment (actually three minutes) at work today. Four o'clock, and about to head home. Another great and productive week at work, praise God! Decided I really like the particular type of ball-point gel pen that I picked up from who knows where. Decide to have our Office PA order a box for me. Get the huge Corporate Express catalog and riffle through it, finding a pen that seemed to match. No prices listed, so I call the six-digit number listed in the Alice Springs Directory, thinking foolishly that someone from across town would pick up. No luck, a nice lady picks up, but it takes 2-3 minutes to realise she's from Brisbane. I ask what the price is for such and such a pen is, offering to give the catalog number and everything. "What's your account number?" I don't have an account, I just want to know how much these pens are." We can't give that information out unless you or your business has an account." The AIS probably does have an account but no one was around who would know it. So I ask, "You can't just tell me how much one pen is?" "No!" "Are you telling me me that if I went over to the CE store 2km away and asked how much a pen was, they wouldn't tell me?" "They would tell you if you were paying cash." "OK, I'm paying cash." "I still can't tell you unless you have an account and want a quote."

"I don't want a quote, I want simply to know how much this pen costs." "I'm sorry, our company policy is that we cannot tell you the price except in a quote." "If I were Alan Joyce and wanted to buy a billion pens for Qantas, would you tell me then?" "Are you Alan Joyce?" "Yes." "What your account number?" I guess, "747?" "I'm sorry, we don't have that number on our computer." "Ok, thank you for your help--I'm glad this call has been monitored for training purpose. I'm going over to K-Mart now and buy 1 billion pens." Clever country indeed-ROFLOL! And people tell me I'm nuts?!

Irresistable Forces and Immoveable Objects

2011-11-11T00:13:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, I was scanning this week's issue of Time magazine, the lead article being the rise of consumerism in China, particulary conspicuous consumerism. Featured were a young, good-looking entrepreneurial Chinese couple sitting in their fashionable living room surrounded by all manner of fancy stuff. Another picture showed the man dressed in the latest fashion surrounded with about 30-40 pairs of the gaudiest, and no doubt most expensive shoes, since Imelda Marcos gained world-wide fame for her proclivity towards towards pedicular excess.

But the main point of the article was not just about the rise of consumerism in China, something that we hear more and more about all the time. Rather it was how the leading economists and economies around the world, most particularly in the United States and Europe are counting, banking, and pleading for the Chinese to spend, spend, spend the world back from the brink of the current economic, bankruptcy and malaise. Indeed, China is seen as the only possible powerhouse behind global economic recovery, and if they do not respond in good ol' America (or Aussie) 'shop til you drop' consumerism, we are all economic goners!

Just two weeks ago, I read in one of the major national newspapers how, again from some leading world economic guru, the biggest threat to the world's economic recovery was the growing thrift of ordinary people, tightening their belts in the face of high unemployment, rising prices, disappearing retirement savings and general uncertainty. So much for the virtue of thrift.

Call this side of the equation The Immoveable Object--economies and countries losing control financially. Hold that thought for a moment.

Today's Alice Springs Advocate touted a one-day, fly-in fly-out 90 minute public seminar headed by that all-around environmental good guy Tim Flannery. Hi website fairly shouts "One World. One Humanity. One Destiny."--not sure about where he learned the function of full stops, but that's another topic! The Advocate's headline entone, "This decade's critical warns climate gurus". I won't bore you with the details of all the dire things they predict, if we don't control greenhouse gases. And now that the Labor Party has bedded down the new Carbon Tax, presumably we have turned the corner, or if not (and that's BIG if), at least Australia is leading the way forward into a survivable future. Otherwise, we're all physical goners!

Call this side of the equation The Irresistable Force.

What happens, however, when you have Forces meeting Objects heading in opposite direction? How can it be, rational or otherwise, that various groups of highly intelligent, knowledgeable and powerful people from all over the world are grabbing at the same steering wheel and tugging frantically in opposite directions? I am hardly the first person on this planet to ask what happens when upwardly aspirational Chinese (not to mention Indians, Africans and South Americans) do what previously impoverished, aspirational people do--and now are encouraged to do by economists--to buy like the dickens with money they probably don't have except by borrowing to obtain things run on electricity or fueled by petroleum products?

Just asking?

Grasshopper Governance

2011-11-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has seen government (Federal, State and Territory) in action in regards to social and economic policy cannot but be but taken by the similarity between the processes involved and a swarm of grasshoppers, devouring everything in its path. Two Scriptures came to mind this morning during my devotions.

Micah 2:1-2,

Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds!
When the morning dawns,
they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand.
They covet fields and seize them, and houses,
and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance."

Joel 1:4, 2:6-11

What the chewing locust[a] left, the swarming locust has eaten;

What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten;
And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten...
Blow the trumpet in Zion,

And sound an alarm in My holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble;
For the day of the LORD is coming,
For it is at hand:
2 A day of darkness and gloominess,
A day of clouds and thick darkness,
Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains.
A people come, great and strong,
The like of whom has never been;
Nor will there ever be any such after them,
Even for many successive generations.
3 A fire devours before them,
And behind them a flame burns;
The land is like the Garden of Eden before them,
And behind them a desolate wilderness;
Surely nothing shall escape them.
4 Their appearance is like the appearance of horses;
And like swift steeds, so they run.
5 With a noise like chariots
Over mountaintops they leap,
Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble,
Like a strong people set in battle array.
6 Before them the people writhe in pain;
All faces are drained of color.
7 They run like mighty men,
They climb the wall like men of war;
Every one marches in formation,
And they do not break ranks.
8 They do not push one another;
Every one marches in his own column.
Though they lunge between the weapons,
They are not cut down.
9 They run to and fro in the city,
They run on the wall;
They climb into the houses,
They enter at the windows like a thief.
10 The earth quakes before them,
The heavens tremble;
The sun and moon grow dark,
And the stars diminish their brightness.
11 The LORD gives voice before His army,
For His camp is very great;
For strong is the One who executes His word.
For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible;
Who can endure it?

This I now call 'Grasshopper Governance'.

Ted Egan, in his book Due Inheritance: Reviving the Cultural and Economic Wellbeing of First Australians (2008, p. 25) writes these telling words:

"In bush communities, all the bright First Australians spend their lives attending meetings convened by the government officials; they are paid 'sitting fees' and enjoy fancy lunches. The officials fly in at great expense, with their laptops and endless PowePoint presentations. The First Australians wear different hats -- education, health, local government etc. -- on different days as their so-called 'expertise' is tapped under those predictable headings in the guise of the much-vaunted but rarely achieved 'consultation'. They often doze or posture their way through meaningless, tokenistic discussions that go nowhere beyond coining new acronyms and further confusing issues. Never has so much 'through the Chair, if I may' politeness been expended on so many pointless, nonsensical exercises."

Grasshopper Governance is alive and well when applied to Aboriginal Affairs. But do not think that the grasshoppers have a taste for only, in Ted Egan's phrase First Australians -- they have a taste for you! If individuals, men and women, communities and nations refuse to acknowledge the Sovereignty of God and the LORD Jesus Christ in today's human, national and international affairs, they are asking for the sovereignty of the Grasshoppers. Baygon will not work this time around!

Capital Crimes

2011-11-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

I write these words following on from an excellent men's breakfast at my house this morning, attended by nine of my dear friends who, by the amount of of eggs and bacon consumed, must all be ready to meet Our Maker! Medical staff was present, armed with some green substance which he cooked along with some kind of meat from a sea creature unknown in Central Australia.

Our discussion ranged far and wide, taking off from a short passage I read from an autobiography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I have been reading of late. One snippet was this: "The proclamation of grace has its limits. Grace may not be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it....The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample upon the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them." This was written in about 1935 when Bonhoeffer was struggling to convince even those within the Confessing Church of the mortal danger to both German and Christians posed by Nazism and Adolph Hitler.

Bonhoeffer's words were in exposition of two of Christ's words:

Matthew 7:6

“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces."

Matthew 16:19

"And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

The question was asked by a member of the breakfast group as to the place within modern society for punishment of capital crimes, whatever they might be, as well as the role generally of punishment and discipline within the context of the Church. One opinion expressed was that it was and is the duty and role of the State to exact capitol punishment when necessary to suppress and control certain crimes, not specified. To this there was expressed the opposite view that capitol punishment has no role or place whatsoever in modern society, Christian or otherwise. A further question was asked, along the lines of what laws have there been in society that are the direct manifestation of matters of faith, the presupposition being that Church and State are completely and absolutely separate and that therefore the Church should not be pushing the State to conform to Biblical law.

I gave a response along these lines. Speaking as a dual-citizen of both Australia and the United States, I suggested that part of the reluctance (even revulsion) some within our small group felt against capital punishment came not so much because Christian or Biblical belief but simply because Australia as a nation has long since abandoned capitol punishment. I then posited that, despite this, Australia still does exact capitol punishment on a daily basis involving the deaths of thousands of human beings every year. I speak, of course, of abortion. I then posed the question as to the basis upon which Christians should oppose abortion. My friend said, "We should vigorously oppose abortion because it is so abhorrent." I disagreed, saying instead that we should vigorously oppose abortion because it violates the commandment 'Thou shall not kill.'

You see, when we begin to oppose this or that evil simply on the basis of what we consider abhorrent to our sensitivities, we then have raised our sentiments to a higher level than the expressed will of God stated clearly in the Law of God, namely the Ten Commandments. We have set ourselves as the determiners of what is good and what is evil. We have in fact take a large bite of the prohibited fruit hanging from the Tree of the the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Obviously, millions and millions of people--men and women--who find the killing of innocent fetuses less abhorrent than whatever motivates them to have the abortion--economics, career ambition, women's rights, etc, etc.

Without the Law of God as the bedrock, the Gold Standard of our morality, both personal and national, we will slide inexorably into chaos and destruction as surely as Germany did in the 1930's, dragging much of the world into oblivion along with it.

Proclaim Christ's love, evangelise or die--but please, don't cast the Gospel before swine!

Australia Kamparru!

2011-11-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that a draft version of verses one and two of Advance Australia Fair, the Australian National Anthem, now exists in Warlpiri.

(Note: The anthem has been hyphenated to assist with the singing of it. There are the same number of syllables per line in the Warlpiri version as there are in the English )

Australia Kamparru! — the Warlpiri National Anthem

(1) Yapa-jurlipa wardinyi,

Warla-ngarra-ngarra!

Yalyu-yalyu-jala walya,

Ngapa-kurlu-juku.

Ngurrju ka-ngalpa mardarni,

Marrka-nyayirnirli.

JUKURRPA-rlipa purami--

Australia kamparru!

JUKURRPA-rlipa yunparni--

Australia kamparru!

Free Translation

(1) All of us people are happy,

Because we are free.

The land is red,

But there's water still.

It keeps us

Quite strongly.

Let's follow the DREAM--

Australia in the front!

Let's sing the DREAM--

Australia in the front!

(2) Kankarlarra-ka Waniki
Miril-miril-mani.
Nyina karlipa ngurungka
Panu-kari-kirli.
Jintangka-juku karlipa...
Nyinami tarnngaju.
JUKURRPA-rlipa purami--
Australia kamparru!
JUKURRPA-rlipa yunparni--
Australia kamparru!

Free Translation

(2)High up the Southern Cross
Shines.
We live on the land
With many others.
We in one group...
Live permanently
Let's follow the DREAM--
Australia in the front!
Let's sing the DREAM--
Australia in the front!

I would also like to direct your attention to Ted Egan's Kutju Australia website, and ask you to join in with encouraging our national anthem be translated and sung in every remaining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island language (and even some of the ones now extinct, but kept alive through dictionaries and grammars)

Machines of Loving Grace

2011-10-31T13:48:00.000-07:00

I have been fascinated over the last couple of weeks with watching two segments of the three-part BBC documentary series Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, produced by filmmaker Adam Curtis. As I watched (and rewatched it) I have been struck by the profound implications the ideas presented have for Christians trying desperately to influence an increasingly secular and, if you bother watching the news, out of control world--its economy, its politics, its environmental issues, its social issues. For those in Australia, episode 3 airs tonight, Tuesday 1 November 2011, on SBS4, starting 8:30pm, Alice Springs (centre of the universe) time.

If I could sum up segments 1 and 2, it would be this: "Everyone wanted to take God's beard and try it on for size." (an old Siberian saying taken from A Sniper's Story by Nicolai Lilin, p. 7) Stated more directly: When humanity refuses to accept and bow before the Sovereignty of God, it will inevitably seek to fill the void. The results, not surprisingly (from a Christian perspective) will be chaos, destruction and ruin. If further proof were needed that the world, having forsaken the Sovereignty of God (more on that later), I noticed in the latest issue of Women's Weekly (noooo, I don't buy it--my wife does!), on page is the headline Will Christin Save the World? The Christine in question is Christine Lagarde, the new head of the International Monetary Fund who has "...the daunting task of keep the world's economy afloat." But back now to the documentary.

In episode one, "Curtis tracks the effects of Ayn Rand's ideas on American financial markets, particularly via the influence on Alan Greenspan." I must admit to having been something of an Ayn Rand fan in the early 80's. Strangely enough, I came across her two major works, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in the SIL mission library in Darwin! Though her writing is often described as ponderous, I was fascinated by her main theme, philosophical objectivism, which was played out in these novels by heroic, talented individuals fighting against society which demanded uniformity, ordinariness and altruism. Mind you, in retrospect it is somewhat incredible that a Christian, any Christian, should be seduced by such thinking, but no less an evangelical scholar than John Piper toyed and wrestled with the seductive nature of Rand's ideas before renouncing them. I commend his Piper's critique of Ayn Rand. It is certainly beyond the scope of this blog to summarise either Rand's philosophy or Piper's analysis, but it is well worth your while to follow the links and take a thoughtful tour through what is written.

But back to the documentary. What I find intriguing is the fact that ideas do matter. What drives human behaviour, be it individual, social or national, are ideas. Much of what we see happening around us economically, politically, socially, environmentally is driven by ideas and philosophies, including various presuppositions, which lie hidden from most people. In a world that is increasingly founded on notions of randomness, it is not surprising that people throw up their hands in despair at viewing a world seemingly out of control in so many areas. At the same time, there is within human beings an implacable thirst for control or those who promise it. Rand did, and so did many of her disciples who from the 50's onward became the entrepreneurs and movers and shakers of, at least, American society and government. Primary among these was Alan Greenspan who, by the turn of the 21st century had become the most powerful person in the world, advisor not only to a succession of American presidents but also saviour of the world's economy following the 1998 collapse, and leading into the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. All of this, if you give credence to the documentary (and I do!) the result of the outworkings of Ayn Rand's philosophy.

The unifying theme, if there is one in this series, is that the world has been and continues to be seduced by the notion that machines (networked computers) have the power and ability to save mankind, to prevent all of us 6-7 billion or so human beings from destroying ourselves. The cybernetics systems that have been constructed and now are being continually refined have become the guiding, unseen hand, which will save the world. Let me know how that is working!

Let me now quote an extended exposition by R J Rushdoony on Genesis 49:9 (take from a speech delivered 8 December 1974 at a Chalcedon Guild Dinner), which reads, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." According to the Jewish Targums, 'Shiloh' is paraphrased as 'until the time when the King Messiah comes to whom it belongeth.' Obviously, the Messiah is King Jesus.

Rushdoony continues:

"...the modern state declares itself to be Shiloh, he whose right it is. The modern state acknowledges no law beyond itself, no law-giver save itself, no savior beyond a man, and no binding power beyond time and history. It sometimes disguises its hatred by a show of tolerance for Christianity, but that toleration is itself a form of declaring tha Biblical faith is irrelevant. If the claims of Scripture and the God of Scripture are true, then there is no way in which men and institutions can sidestep the absolute requirement of total submission to Jesus Christ as Lord. Their option is only Christ or judgment: there is no life apart from Him, nor any order possible in contempt of Him.

"For the state to attempt, as 20th century states do, to establish an order apart from Christ is to say that god is not the Lord, and that the universe is open to other claims of deity and sovereignty.

"At the first Christmas, the battle was joined, church (the priests), state (Herod), and fallen humanity against the Christ-child. At the crucifixion, the battle continued, with priests, Sanhedrin, and Rome united in striving to destroy the King. In virtually every capitol in the world today, the battles continues, as new sanhedrins, call parliaments, congresses, national assemblies, and like names, seek to set aside and suppress the claioms of Christ as absolute Lord and only Savior. The new Herods and Pilates seek sanctimoniously to wash their hands of Him, and then to go about their own great business of creating a paradise on earth without God, and the only result is hell on earth.

"...as Solzhenitsyn observes, in The Gulag Archipelago, 'pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.'

"To the question, Who is Shiloh?, the 20th century rarely answers, 'Jesus Christ'. Even among those who profess to call Him Savior, too few will also acknowledge Him to be the Lord. But, if He is not our Lord, He is not our Savior. Jesus Christ is not an insurance agent, writing out an insurance policy on us, and then making no further claim on us, as long as our policy is paid up with modest sums from time to time. He is Shiloh, He whose right it is, and He will not surrender His sovereignty unto any other."

Psalm 2

The Messiah’s Triumph and Kingdom

1 Why do the nations rage,

And the people plot a vain thing?

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 break Their bonds in pieces

And cast away Their cords from us.”

4 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.

5 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:

6 “Yet I have set My King

On My holy hill of Zion.”

7 “I will declare the decree:

The LORD has said to Me,

‘You are My Son,

Today I have begotten You.

8 Ask of Me, and I will give You

The nations for Your inheritance,

And the ends of the earth for Your possession.

9 You shall break[a] them with a rod of iron;

You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”

10 Now therefore, be wise, O kings;

Be instructed, you judges 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, When His wrath is kindled but a little.

Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.

Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982. It could fairly be said the she died a lonely, embittered woman. It's lonely being god--in fact, it is impossible to be God unless, of course, you are God. Ayn Rand's legacy still, however, lives on--don't ask me, watch the evening news!

Our LORD and Savior King Jesus lives today, seated at the right hand of God the Father, ruling over the nations until such a time as every knew bows down before Him and earth has indeed become heaven, the place where the Father's will is done. Amen!

The Man Elijah

2011-09-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

My thoughts this morning turned to the prophet (more correctly THE Prophet of prophets) Elijah, about whom I have blogged once. What I have to say is certainly not comprehensive and consists of sermons I have heard over many years, commentaries I have read, as well as some possible insights into the heart, mind, personality and psychological makeup of this great man of God.

Everything that we know of the life and deeds of Elijah can be found in I Kings 17 to 2 Kings 2. He is, of course, mentioned in the New Testament, most prominently in his appearance along with Moses before Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, as recorded in Matthew 17:2-4 (as well as in the parallel passages in Mark and Luke). As such, Elijah epitomizes all of the Old Testaments prophets as well, perhaps, as all who in the Church age claim to have prophetic gifting.

In the New Testament, James 5:15-18 gives us a fourfold description of Elijah:

1 Elijah's prayers were effective, for example by praying earnestly for the rain to be stopped and then after three and a half years for it to start again.
2 Elijah's prayers were fervent, the definition which is to have or show great emotion or zeal, being extremely hot and glowing.
3 Elijah himself was a righteous man, not self-righteous of course, but the righteousness that has always comes through faith in God which lives out that faith in being a Covenant-keeper.
4 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours.

It is, I suppose, this last point which I wish to pursue today. Elijah, I believe, would make almost any Christian's list of his or her Top Ten favourite Old Testament characters. This is perhaps because most depictions of Elijah involve high drama, even the spectacular. Everything reported about him seems bigger than life, and certainly out of the ordinary. Today being Father's Day, I note that there is no indication of Elijah have either a wife or children. I wonder what he, his personality, was like before he simply bursts onto the narrative stage in 1 Kings 17:1 as 'Elijah the Tishbite' to deliver a rather blunt weather report to King Ahab, 'As the LORD God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word.' That's it. No call to repent, no forgiving of the apostate king or a seeker-sensitive methodology. Just a messenger delivering a message. Then the LORD tells Elijah to high-tail it east and hide beside the Cherith Brook. (I Kings 17:2-4). This holiday package included meals delivered by ravens. Even this holiday comes to an end, and the brook dries up.

Then in 1 Kings 17:8-24 comes what looks to be the only inkling of compassion and mercy to be found in Elijah. He is taken in by a starving widow and her son, miraculously provides a bountiful supply of flour and oil lasting until God breaks the drought, and tops it all off by later bringing the young boy back to life. From my perspective, apart from this episode, there is not much to indicate that Elijah presence or appearance was one that caused eager enthusiasm or delight by others who happened to be in the same room as him. So in 1 Kings 18, Elijah is commanded to go speak to Ahab to announce an end to the drought. Prior to this meeting Ahab, more specifically his wife Jezebel, had massacred all the other prophets of God who could be found, while Obabiah managed to hide fifty of them from the slaughter. What those other fifty prophets ever did is not recorded in the Bible.  But even when Obadiah bumped into Elijah, Obadiah's words betray his belief that it was never a good thing to bump into Elijah, saying (almost hyperventing in the process!):

“How have I sinned, that you are delivering your servant into the hand of Ahab, to kill me? As the LORD your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to hunt for you; and when they said, ‘He is not here,’ he took an oath from the kingdom or nation that they could not find you. 11 And now you say, ‘Go, tell your master, “Elijah is here”’! And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from you, that the Spirit of the LORD will carry you to a place I do not know; so when I go and tell Ahab, and he cannot find you, he will kill me. But I your servant have feared the LORD from my youth. Was it not reported to my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the LORD, how I hid one hundred men of the LORD’s prophets, fifty to a cave, and fed them with bread and water? And now you say, ‘Go, tell your master, “Elijah is here.”’ He will kill me!” (1 Kings 18:9-14)

Elijah's response in verse 15 shows an almost heedlessness (almost as one with Aspberger's Syndrome would) towards Obadiah's feelings, answering him, "As the LORD of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely present myself to him today.” Elijah was a single-man on a mission from God, and he was not going to let social niceties or brotherly kindness interrupt his focus. Obabiah slinks away and deliver his message to the king.

King Ahab goes out to Elijah. I love his greeting, "Is that you, O troubler of Israel?” Elijah thanks him for the compliment and delivers the challenge (1 Kings 18:18-19):

"I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the LORD and have followed the Baals. Now therefore, send and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”

The rest of this story is so familiar, that I will not step through it, except to make a few points.

1 Apart from the 450 prophets of Baal he was confronting singlehandedly, other ordinary and borderlione apostate, or at least submissive, citizens of Israel were there for the big event.

2 Despite Obadiah and the fifty prophets secreted away, Elijah perceived himself (almost as one with narcissism would) as the only prophets, saying (1 King 18-22), "I alone am left a prophet of the LORD; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men...."   Was not even Obadiah there? Were none of the other fifty there, having finally come out of hiding? I don't know. Regardless, Elijah felt himself alone in the presence of God fighting an impossible battle.

3 Elijah showed himself quite capable of invective, insult, beligerence, mockery, disdain, perhaps even crudity as he watched the 450 dance about and gash themselves futilely, saying (1 Kings 18:27), "Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.”   Goodness, gracious me! Did not Elijah know that a gentle word turneth away wrath, or that this is no way to win or influence people, or that he was perhaps behaving childishly or arrogantly or insensitively or rudely or that he was not allowing himself to be led by the Spirit, or even that he simply need to forgive these poor, lost and confused souls? Maybe he was just throwing a good ol' trantrum! Hadn't he read The Shack? Didn't he listen to Joel Osteen? Take a chill-pill, man! Calm down! Sit down! Shut up! Grow up, man!

4 Finally, the 450 were finally dismissed, all out for nought, and Elijah took the crease (stepped up to the plate, if you prefer baseball to cricket), restored the broken-down, foundational altar of the LORD, arranged a cut-up bull on top of the wood, baptised the lot well past the saturation point and then prayed (1 Kings 18:36-37):

"LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word. Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that You are the LORD God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.”

5 AND FIRE CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN!!!

To finish off the story in chapter 18, Elijah then commands the people to slay the 450 prophets of Baal, which they did. Elijah then tells Ahab to go and have a party because the rain's coming! Elijah and his servant them climb to the top of Mount Carmel from where he prays the rain in. Seeing it coming, he tells his servant to go and tell Ahab to hightail it out of there in his chariot back to Jezreel because it's going to big a big one.

Then we finally come to chapter 19 which gives some remarkable, even surprising, insights into the nature of the man Elijah. Jezebel isn't happy with him having defeated her prophets and her god and so puts out a death warrant on Ezekiel. Ezekiel hears this, he heads south to Beersheba and leaves his servant there. He goes a further day's journery, collapses under a tree and prays to die. Oh dear, suicidal tendencies. His words betray his exhausted state (1 Kings 19:4), "It is enough! Now, LORD, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!” Not much evidence of the victorious life here! Not much mention of his faith in Almighty God! Not much memory either--had he not just witnessed fire fall from heaven to defeat his enemies? The brute physicality of the situation, as I see it, is that it apparently takes a lot out of a man to be so consumed by God that one dare not think it does not take a physical and emotional toll on a man to the point of emotional exhaustion. And that is why I think 1 Kings 19 is in the Bible, sandwiched between chapters 18 and 20.

The LORD in His graciousness looks with pity on Elijah, feeds him, lets him sleep, feeds him again, lets him sleep some more and then directs him to walk the forty days to Horeb, the mountain of God. Arriving there, Elijah sleeps in a cave, wakes up and explains to the LORD why he is there. Elijah again betrays his fallen humanity and laments (1 Kings 19:10), “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.”

Hadn't Elijah learned anything? Why did he continue with this 'poor fella-me, I'm the ONLY one left, bla, bla, blaa' bleating, which some might label childish or immature? I have only one answer--the man, the man Elijah, the fallen but redeemed man Elijah, was exhausted. 1 Kings 19 shows us that God can still use men and women who, in modern terminology, 'loses it'. In fact, God may so drive someone into extreme service that they exhaust themselves dry, at which point God can reach down and touch them.

There is a marvelous scene from one of my favourite, albeit brutally graphic films The Green Mile. In it, a massively huge black man from the Deep South is wrongfully sentenced for a murder and awaiting execution by the electric chair. The black man William, however, has some sort of mystical healing powers. He mystically heals the wife of the sympathetic warden Paul, played by Tom Hanks. At one point, through the bars,William clenches hold of Percy, and young but sadistic guard who delights in taunting and torturing condemned prisoners. William then 'regurgitates' the sickness back into Percy, this being depicted visually as a swirling mass of black insects coming out of William's mouth and going into Percy. Percy goes into a permanent catatonic state.

"In the wake of these events, Paul interrogates John, who says he 'punished them bad men' and offers to show Paul what he saw. John takes Paul's hand stating that he has to give Paul 'a part of himself" in order to see and imparts the visions of what he saw, of what really happened to the girls before he found them and failed in bringing them back to life, and was taken for the real culprit as he was found sobbing over the victims' bodies. Paul asks John what he should do, if he should open the door and let John walk away. John tells him that he is ready to die because there is too much pain in the world, which he is aware of and sensitive to, stating that he is 'rightly tired of the pain' and is ready to rest, convincing Paul it will be a 'kindly gift to him, when asked how he could answer to God for the sin of killing him. When John is lead to the electric chair, he asks Paul not to put the traditional black hood over his head because he is afraid of the dark. Paul agrees and after Paul shakes his hand, he heart-brokenly orders the power turned on, killing John." (from Wikipedia)

Perhaps it was something like that with Elijah. Yes, in behaving as he did in chapter 19, perhaps he was complaining overly much. But then again, perhaps he was asking the LORD for a 'kindly gift'. It is one thing to pray against evil; it is quite another to, in addition, stand up to it and call down the fire from heaven at God's command. It takes a physical toll, and it is probably not healthy to do it very often.

So God ministers to Elijah. He sends thunder and earthquake, but speaks to him in a quiet voice. He asks Elijah again why he was there, and again Elijah laments his loneliness. And then God tells Elijah (1 Kings 19:15-18):

"Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria. Also you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place. It shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and whoever escapes the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

Yes, there were 7000 Israelites who were not apostate followers of Baal, but for whatever reasons, only Elijah had the courage to speak up against Ahab to his face, and expose the evil that the Gospel of Christ cures. Perhaps only Elijah was truly called to be a prophet.

Legion

2011-09-01T02:12:00.000-07:00

My wife probably has long since given up thinking that I not only think too much but definitely pay too much money on books. She may well be right on both counts--I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be someone other than who I am. How many people major in philosophy at university--a career choice guaranteed to make you virtually unemployable unless you are the caliber of Plato, Socrates and Immanuel Kant (which I am NOT!).

Trouble is, I think. Whether that means, according to Kant, I am, is another matter. I wonder if Kant realised what a blasphemous statement he uttered--concluding that he was God, the Great and Singular I AM, just because he thought? But my thoughts have derailed already. I didn't want to write about Kant, but about Jesus, particularly the popular and familiar story of the healing of the demoniac from Mark 5.

What I find fascinating about this story is the part about Jesus asking the unclean spirit was his name was before healing the possessed man. Why did Jesus do this? Why, in fact, does it seem necessary for Jesus to expose the name (character) of the demon before casting him out and healing the poor, suffering mad man? If memory serves me, He never did this when healing anyone else. Now, I've never cast a demon out of anyone, although I have certainly tried, particularly when trying to start a stubborn lawn mower or unjamming a photo copier. I've even tried it when trying to resurrect my computer, locked in the grip of the Microsoft blue screen of death. Never have I succeeded in these instances, but what I have read of people who claim regularly to cast demons and who have written advice manuals on how to go about it is that you ask the demon to name and identify itself. But again, I have digressed from my point.

I read the newspaper every day, usually The Australian. I see all sorts of issues being reported from global warming, to various wars, child protection, economics, crime and so forth. Various opinions are put forth from all sides of the political and/or religious perspective, some Christians and some decidedly not. What I am trying to say that lying behind and underneath many if not each and every one of the problems and situations facing modern mankind are demonic forces that refuse to identify themselves, which no one thinks of asking to identify themselves. And so the solutions offered are often ad hoc and surface level, not even getting close to the underlying spiritual issues. Most often, spiritual issues are not even considered, unless it is the hidden spirit of anti-Christ that fuels the debate.

For example, let's take the issue of Global Warming, which itself no longer goes by that name but has mutated by name to that of Climate Change. Setting the science beside for the moment (see Bill Muehlenberg for an excellent critique of the nature of the current debate), what are the possible demons that lie behind the science:

-the demon of Evolution (versus Biblical Creation)
-the demon of One World Government (versus the reign of the LORD Jesus Christ)
-the demon of Gaia (versus the worship of YAHWEH, the one true God)
-the demon of Wealth Redistribution (versus the Biblical prohibition of theft)
-the demon of Humanism (as opposed to the sovereignty of God)

That's to just name a few of the hidden demons which might be lurking behind the issue of Climate Change.

What should the average Christian do, who has no interest in thinking through these issues, who perhaps has no interest in matters of philosophy and theology? Well, you should! And until you do, you should pay close attention to those whom God has gifted as prophets and teachers. Evaluate what they say in light of Scripture. And always ask, "What is your name?

Jane Fonda

2011-08-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Now that I have your attention, let me write some more on matters of forgiveness. Jane Fonda is variously famous for, among other things, being the daughter of movie star Henry Fonda, being a movie star herself in such memorable roles as Cat Ballou and Barbarella, former wife of anti-Vietnam activist Tom Hayden. She was also known as 'Hanoi Jane' following anti-war visits to North Vietnam and being photographed alongside NVA soldiers manning anti-aircraft weapons. She was and is an active feminist of near iconic proportions.

Now as she nears her 74th year, she is able to look back and reflect calmly on her life, much of this reflection detailed in her new book Prime Time. Don't give up on this blog yet--I'm about to talk about forgiveness.

Over lunch today, I picked up the August 23, 2011 issue of Time magazine where on the back page, Jane was asked 10 Questions. Here's what she had to say about her infamous North Vietnam photographs:

"That picture was a terrible mistake, and I'm prepared to apologize for it until I go to my grave, because it hurt servicemen and their families in ways that are profound. But I'm getting comments on my blog from veterans saying, 'I've hated yu for years, and now I am able to forgive you and ask for forgiveness," and I cannot tell you what that means to me."

So far so good, or at least not too bad, and it would have been all right if forgiveness hadn't gotten more of a mention than that. Very few people, including moi, would have much if anything to quibble about in her statement. However, she didn't let it rest there.

She was later asked in the article, "Where do you fall on the spectrum of faith?"

Her gobsmacking, albeit perfectly understandable reply:

"I'm a Christian. I study the teachings of Jesus, which are that we have to overcome differences, we have to forgive. I was particularly drawn to black churches when I lived in Atlanta, but I do not go to church."

Well, there you have it summed up in words I could hardly better to describe how the world in general views Christianity, the Church, Jesus Christ and the Gospel. It is:

1. Studying the teachings of Jesus, although which ones she does not specify.

2. Overcoming differences--I wonder how she overcomes differences with Christians who believe babies ought not be aborted?

3. Forgiveness.

4. Negatively, church attendance or fellowship with fellow-believers not required.

This is a gross form of reductionism which presumably Ms Fonda believes will qualify her for eternal life in heaven, with God--assuming of course she believes in those three teachings of Jesus. But my question for today (actually my second question for today) is this:

Where could she have possibly gotten this understand about the Bible, Christianity, Jesus Christ and forgiveness. I am guessing here, but I imagine that were she asked to pick one of the above four beliefs about faith sums up her view of the the Christian faith, she would pick forgiveness. If I am right, then to where has the Gospel disappeared?

Does she believe in sin?

Does she believe in hell?

Does she believe in faith?

Does she believe in repentance? (Perhaps so, in that she repents of being Hanoi Jane!)

Does she believe in grace? (I'm guessing so.)

Does she believe in atonement?

Does she believe in the cross?

Does she believe in sanctification?

The list could be much longer, but perhaps you get my drift.

Where did she learn all of this? Listening to:

Robert Shuller?

Joel Osteen?

Creflow Dollar?

Oprah Winfrey?

Dr Phil?

I don't know.

Did she get this idea from doing some solid reading from Charles Spurgeon, John Piper or even C. S. Lewis? Somehow I don't think so!

Who knows? Now ultimately neither I nor anyone else can categorically say whether or not Jane Fonda is saved or not. God will determine that, and the books will be opened eventually and the fruit of every life revealed. But should not a testimony of faith like this one from Jane Fonda serve as a cautionary tale for all of us charged with presenting the Gospel clearly and honestly to a sin-sick and sin-lost world?

You see, we can play somewhat fast and loose with any concept such as forgiveness and wrench it out of its historical, Biblical context. You see, even Jesus was at times unforgiving and implacable, despite his own commands to forgive. It is hard to recognise the spirit of forgiveness in Jesus when he characterised the Pharisees as white-washed sepulchres full of dead men's bones or when he advised child-abusers to have millstones tied around their necks and tossed into the sea or when he overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple, flogging them with a whip. It's hard to see Christ as forgiving as He reigned over the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70, seated as it were upon a white horse with words of righteousness and justice written on his thighs!

And the Apostles Paul, John, Peter and James--there are instances where each one had unforgiving words of judgment to pronounce on those implacably and irredeemably opposed to the LORD Jesus Christ. Where's the forgiveness when Paul calls the Judaisers dogs or advises them to castrate themselves? Where's the forgiveness when John writes about the spirit of anti-Christ? Did other Christian brothers call them aside and plead with them to take chill pills and be forgiving? I don't know--I wasn't there. And so I struggle to come to terms with, as the old song says, the Wonderful Grace of Jesus, which surely is about forgiveness but so very much more.

If all of the glorious Gospel heard by the world is forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness..., then how can they conclude any differently than Jane Fonda that Jesus has provided everyone with the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card?

Samson

2011-08-24T15:23:00.000-07:00

I don't believe I've blogged anything about Samson but, having short to mid-term memory disorder, I can't really say! However, my thoughts fell this morning to Samson. We read this about Samson in Hebrews 11, the great chapter on faith and heroes of the faith:

32 And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: 33 who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35 Women received their dead raised to life again.

Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. 36 Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted,[f] were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented— 38 of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.

39 And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, 40 God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

The complete story of Samson is found in Judges 13-16. Apart from being a very gripping and ripping yarn and the subject of Sunday School song and fascination, Samson is rarely held up as a role model for young men. Certainly his mother and father were godly parents, and they received Samson into their lives as a special gift from God to a barren mother. They in turn dedicated Samson to God by ensuring he lived up to his Nazarite vows.

But to be frank, once Samson reached adulthood, he seems to have turned less and less from being a man of God to being a man more in the mold of a Homer Simpson on steroids. He was certainly sensual, with considerable sexual and gustatory appetite. He certainly enjoyed a bit of physical argy-bargy. To say the least, if he were still technically keeping to even a few of his Nazarite vows, he seemed always to be treading carefully at the extreme edge of the legal bounds of sanctified propriety. Eventually this life style cost him both his Spirit-given superhuman strength and his eyesight.

In his forced humility, however, his thoughts turned back to God. And he prayed one more time for the strength to do what God had brought him into existence to do, namely to provide relief for his people by destroying their oppressors and his tormenters, the Philistines. The rest is, as they say, history--his final act brought down the house, killing thousands of Philistines and himself in the process.

So, who exacted vengeance on the Philistines that day--God or Samson? And how does this Old Testament story from the period of the Judges accord with the well known passage from Paul found in Romans 12:19-21, which states:

Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Therefore

If your enemy is hungry, feed him;

If he is thirsty, give him a drink;

For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”

21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Is it the situation that vengeance, as seemingly exemplified by Samson, was justified in the Old Testament era while now being banned in these New Testament times? Remember, Paul's quote itself comes from Deuteronomy 32:35. And yet time after time God raised up Judges to, as it were, do the dirty work of slaying the enemy.

Was Samson's final act an act of obedience? It would certainly seem so, given the analysis of Hebrews 11.

So, am I advocating vigilantism or physical violence or the taking up of arms against modern-day oppressors? No, but in fairness and love to them, it is my duty to tell them that a worse fate awaits them than the occasional letter to the editor! If they come to my house looking hungry or thirsty, I will set food and water before them. And I will share with them the Gospel of Christ who is both Lamb and Lion. And if they repent and confess their sins, it is because the Sovereign God has called them into salvation at last.

I close with the Apostle James' words in his letter, chapter 2:14-26

14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your[d] works, and I will show you my faith by my[e] works. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? 23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”And he was called the friend of God. 24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?

26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

Father Forgive Them

2011-08-24T01:22:00.000-07:00

One of Jesus' seven words/statements on the cross is this", from Luke 23:34 (NKJV):

"Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

My question for today, without an answer is this: Did the Father answer Jesus' prayer? That is to say, who exactly--if anyone--got forgiven on that first Good Friday?

We know that one thief got forgiven. But waht about the Roman soldiers who wouldn't have known Jesus from a bar of soap, nor cared less? Was it Pilate? Was it Judas? Was it the Jewish people in general or the Jewish leaders in particular? Who got forgiven?

A quick search at Biblegateway for the root 'forgive'in the NKJV lists 95 references. Forgiveness is the stock and trade for Christians. It is what we do and what we are supposed to do. But are there limits? Are there any circumstances under which it is not only appropriate but necessary for Christians to be unforgiving? Are there limits to forgiveness, given Jesus' words to Peter to forgive a brother 70 x 7 times (unceasingly) would appear to make the answer an emphatic 'No!'?

There is currently, in my life and my wife's, a consuming and burning issue relating to the forgiveness of a grievous offense done against us, presumably by non-Christians working within a decidedly non-Christian government department. Various people, Christian and otherwise, have encouraged us to be forgiving, particularly the former group, some of whom seem quite dismayed at the volcanic anger that simmers below the surface within us. So, this is a live issue for me, for us. In one very real sense, the matter has already killed us. I know how stubborn, selfish and ungodly I can be at times--am I just lookind for the slightest fig leaf of an excuse to be unforgiving?

Did the Father answer Jesus' prayer? Please help me understand! As I have long-quoted the words of the Pilgrim saint William Perkins at the head of my blogsite, if I have gone astray, please help me get back on the straight path!

Wanted: Men and Women of Courage

2011-08-20T01:02:00.000-07:00

May I commend Bill's Muehlenberg's blog to you, particularly today's offering? I have never met Bill, but he is on my short list of people I would like to meet. Certainly, as is sometimes asked "Who would you like to share a meal with?" Well, I'd like to share a meal with Bill. I have been following his blog now for several years, and he is one of the sanest and clearest voices in the area of Christian apologetics that we have here in Australia today.

I commented as follows just now to his thoughts:

May I humbly and respectfully commend the my last two posts on my blog (hammeroffaith.blogspot.com/2011/08/child-abuse-and-millstones.html and hammeroffaith.blogspot.com/2011/08/lawlessness-and-child-protection.html). My dear wife and I have been fighting a bitter, bloody, costly, running battle (sometimes it seems like to the death) for the last two years with the Northern Territory Department of Children and Family Services–than which a more Orwellian and oxymoronic name cannot be found. We have been slandered and libelled, and our Aboriginal foster son has been subjected to unspeakable abuse at the hands of social workers, all at the behest of the CEO of DCFS. Thank God our son is no longer under a court order, but still our lives will not be the same. I am 60, my wife not far behind. She lives in fear, literally of the proverbial ‘knock on the door at midnight’.

But we pray and at the same time do we whatever we can practically to bring this evil system of state-sanctioned abuse down. We gladly join with you in your efforts to pray God’s kingdom down on earth as it is in heaven–will you and your readers likewise join with us?

Jesus Himself stated that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. For too long the Church has huddled pietistically, waiting patiently and passively for the rapture, while at the same time failing to understand Jesus’ imagery. It is the hell of Satan that is being besieged, despite appearances. The Church has the glove-hand of Christ, seating on His Throne and seated on His white horse. We are to be assaulting strongholds, we are to ever be on the attack by all means, prayerfully and physically. Victory is assured, even if it takes a thousand generations of God’s blessing to accomplish!

Sorry for getting wound up, Bill–my God grant us victory!

May the Apostle Paul's Valedictory prove to be mine (and that of my dear wife)!

Timothy 4:6-8 (New King James Version NKJV)

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.

Lawlessness and Child Protection

2011-08-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

Following is the text of a letter sent off this morning to the editor of the Alice Springs Advocate. Whether it sees the light of day in this Friday's edition remains to be seen.

"So many interesting things in Tuesday's paper to comment on. I will spare the local community my thoughts on the 2-litre wine cask issue, highlighted by the cover picture.

However, in 'Hoon nabbed again', Sergeant Conan Robertsone is quoted, "This situation is so frustrating. You would think he would have learned from the previous two occasions [of previous hooning arrests] , but clearly he has no regard for the law or the safety of other road users. It's ridiculous to think that he deliberately went out to buy a replacement car so he could continue to flaunt his disregard for the law. Obviously he has more money than sense, because there is a good chance he'll lose his car permanently."

Now I sympathise 100% with Sgt. Robertson's frustration. However, what exactly is so ridiculous about this hoon's behaviour in an environment where the odds are in his favour that he will get nothing more than consecutive wrist slaps, including eventually getting one or more impounded vehicles back? The law as interpreted and enforced by magistrates is a joke in such instances, and in many others unrelated to hooning. As for the chances he'll lose his car permanently, I reckon the odds of him being given still more benefit of the doubt by the all-patient, all-forgiving, ever-lecturing magistrates--more intent on rehabilition and reformation of character than in either punishing offenders or protecting the innocent, law-abiding members of society--I say again, I reckon the odds are pretty good in favour of the hoon--he wouldn't get better odds if he went to the casino! What would I do? Permanent loss of vehicle at the first offense, full stop! Then we'd discuss further fines and/or incarceration. Until the State realises that its first duty is to protect law-abiding citizenry rather than trying to rehabilitate or reform law-breakers, we will continue to see such lunacy coming from the courts.

Regarding Hal Duell's letter "What if kids are in danger", Mr Duell finished by asking, "What are the options for effective, appropriate intervention if a child is identified as being in danger?" First and most importantly, scrap the entire Protection of Children Act and start over from scratch. The Act in its current form gives NTFC (or DCFS or FACS or whatever their current cancerous and oxymoronic acronym is) gives the Department (how Orwellian!) intrusive powers into the lives of families that would cause the Gestapo or KGB to blush. My family and I can speak from hard-earned personal experience that the only thing worse than having the Department not intervene in in a suspected child abuse situation is for them to intervene. For every child and family they help, I dare say there is at least one or more families and/or children that they have destroyed!

The three-member Board of Enquiry into Child Protection in the NT has long since come and gone. With what results? Certainly a huge and scathing report of Departmental conduct. However, the Department continues to have an increased budget with more and more case workers and more and more outsource the care of children taken into custody. An Chief Minister Henderson pronounces last week that everything is now lovely in the garden! Frankly, the situation is not unlike more and more freight cars being allocated to the transport of human beings to Auschwitz--just not as obvious! The Department and Government are not the solution to matters of child protection--they are the problem!

Mr Duell, and any other readers, search out and interview anyone who has been a foster carer in the NT anytime over the last twenty years. Your ears will burn with tales of outrage after outrage perpetrated by the Department against children placed in care and then removed at the whim of the Department. By all means, remember and lament the worst aspects of the Stolen Generation era. But we are now in an era of a new governmental madness called Child Protection. History, let alone God, will not forgive us for what we are doing!"

Dance Again

2011-07-09T23:48:00.000-07:00

A poem by my wife, Beverly Napangardi Swartz

I see the dust rising
The men pounding their feet
To the beat of the boomerangs
Clapping a beat
Their legs bound in leaves
Faces and chests with white down
They stood up so tall as they danced out their song
They walked through the trails with heads so erect
Their weapons grasped tightly
Demanding respect

I saw this man lying drunk in the grass
My heart cried out sadly as I felt what had past
Get up off the ground
Please dance out your song
Hold your head high
Let the world sing along
Let the beat fill your head
Clap clap and a roll
The dancing brings back
The Dreamtime of old

O Wretched Man -- O Matchless Christ!

2011-06-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

Aren't you glad that that some verses are in the Bible? I am. Consider for a moment Paul's words in Romans 7:15-23 (NKJV):

For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

It's been that kind of weekend for me. I won't bore you with the gory detail. But as the final minutes tick off before Bev, Casimir and I head off to church, I am so eternally grateful that Paul did not toss in the towel at verse 24, but that by God's grace he penned verse 25a:

I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

One would think the matter of the Christian walk would get easier over time. One would think that the heavenly breezes should blow more often during our trek up sunshine mountain. Praise God if that is your experience--it is not mine! I seem always to be rolling back down to the bottom on the slope. I will never, ever make it on my own.

Just as I am without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou biddest me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

The God-Ordained Centre of Society

2011-05-18T23:14:00.000-07:00

I have been slowly working my way through R. J. Rushdoony's commentary on Exodus, quite a bargain when ordered from the Chalcedon Foundation website store in the USA, due to the high Aussie dollar. The introduction from the Chalcedon website has this by way of introduction:

"Essentially, all of mankind is on some sort of exodus. However, the path of fallen man is vastly different from that of the righteous. Apart from Jesus Christ and His atoning work, the exodus of a fallen humanity means only a further descent from sin into death. But in Christ, the exodus in now a glorious ascent into the justice and dominion of the everlasting Kingdom of God.

Therefore, if we are to better understand the gracious provisions made for us in the "promised land" of the New Covenant, a thorough examination into the historic path of Israel as described in the book of Exodus is essential."

The commentary itself ends with a four-part exposition and commentary entitled The Worship Centre, focussing on Exodus, chapters 37-38, chapters dedicated to describing the construction of the Tabernacle. I would like to quote some key thoughts.

"Man has made himself the center of life in modern thought. As a result, in every sphere of life, including too often the church, a man-centred emphasis prevails.

"The physical structure of God's sanctuary is a witness on the one hand to the necessary center of all life and thought, and, on the other, the necessity to incarnate faith in action, in wood and stone, in construction and constructive activity in every sphere.

"One question more needs to be answered. Some say, why, when God is Creator of all things by His first word, is it necessary to give God such great wealth for the construction of His House? Why, when He needs nothing? This question betrays false thinking. If a man is rich, does that acquite us of the obligation to pay him what we owe him? Does our need absolve us of our duties? Implicit in all such thinking, is an absence of morality and justice, because we have abandoned God in favor of ourselves as the center." (p. 527)

"As we have seen, Exodus gives us the government and justice of God as the center of social order and all law....Since World War II especially, Western law has been steadily purged of God's law. One whose views were very powerful in Scotland and America, and whose influence is now being denied and expunged, was John Knox. Of him James K. Cameron wrote: 'Knox made clear the policy which he would wish to have effected in Scotland. To live according to the Word of God entailed by the upholding of the validity for Christians of the Old Testament law and the responsibility of seeking from those who exercised the civil sword their full co-operation and compliance. Knox, of course, was aware that some claimed that Christians lived under a new dispensation, for whom the rigour of the Levitical law had passed away. His answer to them is characteristically blunt. "If ye claim any privilege by the coming of the Lord Jesus, himself will answer, 'that he is not come to break or destroy the law of his heavenly Father."'

"Where God's law is not at the center of a society, the result is a struggle by men to establish their particular versions of human sovereignties and man-made laws. We are at present in the vast conflic created by this shift of center from God's word and law to man." (p. 533)

"In the United States, the shift from the Christian center to a humanistic and statist one was completed in the adminisitarion of President John F. Kennedy, who closely followed the anti-Christian premises of Daniel Bell. In particular, two of Bell's premises were clearly stressed by Kennedy. First, society's problems were now ostensibly no longer moral ones, bu rather technological in nature. A trained bureaucracy of experts would henceforth solve all social problems. No doubt, Bell meant men like himself. Second, Bell removed Christianity not only from the centre of society, but also, from society altogether. It was now apparently peripheral and a matter of taste, comparable to a taste for jazz, or for a particular school of art. The non-Christian state was now the center."(p. 538)

"The law thus is not an impersonal or abstract code, but the personal witness and covenant presence of God to set forth the premise of his covenant and peace. Central to God's sanctuary and palace is the ark, and, within it, God's law. Thus, we find in the Holy of Holies two things which clearly set forth the meaning of the covenant: the ark with its mercy seat, and, within the ark, God's covenant law. Grace and law are thus inseparable. God's covenant with man is a treaty of law, at the same time, for God to covenant Himself with man is an act of sovereign grace. Any attempt to separate grace and law is desctructive of both and a destruction of covanantalism.

"God's required center for society is thus the sanctuary, and the sanctuary sets forth the necessity for both grace and law. Man can live without neither; to attempt the construction of development of any social order without either grace or law is suicidal. this is why the Chritian state and the Christian church, working together but separate, are essential to society....

"The manifestation in blessings of God's presence and glory requires faithfulness to the covenant law, it requires obedience. There is no neutral ground between God's blessings and His curses. All attempts to deny God's centrality in a culture are efforts to escape from the inevitable alternatives of inescapable blessings and inescapable curses. There is no escape. No center holds other than the triune God. All things else fall apart. The God-ordained center must be reestablished.(544-545)

Poverty and Justice

2011-05-11T02:11:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, the American Bible Society published the Poverty and Justice Bible. I hadn't heard of it, frankly, until doing some recent reading on the subject of tithing. This in turn was prompted by last Sunday's sermon at the Alice Springs Baptist Church.

My parents always tithed, and even as a young boy getting 45 cents a week allowance (don't ask me how my parents decided on that amount!), I was always taught that the tithe was required by God. The church I attended was funded mostly by tithing members. Tithing was seen as natural as breathing. Did it make any of us perfect? No! Did it save us? No! But was and is it something that Christians should do, as the basis for whatever free-will offerings we may decide to give? Absolutely!

I've been doing some further reading on the topic of the tithe, a decidedly unpopular topic within much of the modern church. I came across these three articles which formed a critique by Lee Dulgon of the Poverty and Justice Bible. The critique discusses tithing within the wider and necessary context of the Kingdom of God and the Law of God. It is well worth the half hour or so it would take you to read all three parts. I commend the articles to you--God Bless!

Grace and Law

2011-04-24T16:03:00.000-07:00

King David wrote:

"I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad.

O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.

Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me." Psalm 119:96-98 (King James Version)

Later, in the same Psalm, he writes:

"Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous judgments." Psalm 119:104-106

In fact, the entirety of Psalm 119 sings the glorious nature of the Law of God and the Psalmist's love for it.

How then is it possible that the mere mention of the Law of God, even within church, is met with a considerable lack of enthusiasm. Beyond that, God's Law and any association with it is greeted with the same level of disgust as one would express, having just trodden upon a canine deposit in one's front lawn. We, as people of grace, are warned constantly against the evils of Phariseeim, and reminded equally often that we now, as the redeemed, are under grace and not law. Why then am I still uncomfortable with such antithesis between grace and law? Why is as almost as much contempt for the Law of God often expressed within the confines of the Church as it is from within secular society?

I, personally, continue to be blessed as I work my way through all 1124 pages of the Roots of Reconstruction, which collects in one huge volume many of the works and position papers of R. J. Rushdoony of the Chalcedon Society, author of the equally profound Institutes of Biblical Law.

Here are some of his cogent thoughts on the matter of grace and law.

"We are all of necessity nomians, advocates of law and antinomians, anti-law. The only question is, whose law do we advocate, and whose law do we oppose? All too many today live by the state's law and grace, and shall perish from it, instead of looking to the Lord and His grace and law.

"Grace and law are inseparable. Our salvation in Christ is an act of law: it is Christ's satisfaction by His atonement of the law and justice of the triune God. As our substitute and representative man, as Head of the new humanity, Jesus Christ pays our death penalty from the law. He frees us from the penalty of the law, from the law as an indictment and death sentence, to free us to a way of holiness, the very law of God now written on our hearts and an aspect of our new nature."

"As fallen men, we sought salvation by our works. We believed that man, as his own god, could determine, in his private, social, and statist life, good and evil, or establish law, for himself. this was our depravity, and our original sin, our sin in Adam and as members of his humanity or race.

"In Jesus Christ, we know by grace that we have been freed from that hostility to the Lord and His law, from antinomianism in relationship to God. We are now antinomians with respect to Satan's program (Gen. 3:5), and every church or state which seeks to promtoe and develoop Adam's rebellion against God." (Roots of Reconstruction, Antinomianism Versus Dominion, Chalcedion Position Paper No. 9, pp. 41-42)

In Chalcedion Position Paper No. 11, Covenant, Law, Grace, and Antinomianism, pp. 47-48, Rushdoony places the discussion of grace and law firmly within the context of covenant. He states:

"The Bible is a covenant book, and, basic to the understanding of all its teachings, is the doctrine of the covenant....

"...a covenant can be between a great and transcendental power, a god, and a people whom he chosoes; here, there is no comparable nature, nor any common level of communication. Such a covenant, on the initiative of the superior power, is a covenant of grace.

"The covenant of Scripture, between the triune God and a chosen people, is a covenant of grace....

"...A covenant, however, is also always a covenant of law. To speak of a covenant is to speak of law....

"...In a covenant, the superior power gives the law to the lesser power; in human covenants, there is often some trading with regard to the legal requirements. In God's covenant with man, there is a unilateral declaration of law: the law of the covenant is God's law only. Where there is no law, there is no covenant, for a covenant imposes a law on all concerned, and the penalty for violation of covenant law is death.

"Hence, a covenant is not made: it is cut, and it requires the shedding of blood to indicate the penalty for all violations of the covenant and its law. But a covenant also requires an eating, a common meal, to indicate communion and community....

"...God's covenant with man is all of grace, and yet it is also law....To oppose law, grace, and covenant is to deny all three; they are not opposing concepts but rather different aspects of the same fact of a relationship to the Throne of God.

"...Scripture indicts all who break God's law as covenant-breakers.

"Antinomianism thus is more than covenant-breaking. It is the denial of the covenant and of covenant justice or righteousness. God's covenant grace, and law are inseparable. Antinomians, however, seek to separate grace from law, and then finally from the covenant as well. The end result is no grace at all. An unrighteous and lawless grace is not grace but sin.

"Phariseeism commits the opposite sin, legalism. It denies grace in favor of works and thereby seeks to reduce the covenant to the human level, i.e., two parties of more or less equal standing, able to give something one to another. The covenant law is then altered, as in Phariseeim, to make it by re-interpretaion man's tradition and law. The result is again the destruction of God's covenant, and a denial of law as well as grace.

"The product of the covenant is peace, peace between God and man, and between covenant men. To violate God's covenant is to violate His peace as well. The lack of peace today is evidence of a violated covenant."

Rushdoony goes on to say much more on the topic, but that will suffice for now. I close with two further, related comments and questions regarding the matter of grace and law as played out in the early church. In Acts 5 we read of the deception of Ananias and his wife Sapphira by lying about the amount they were freely giving to the apostles. On what basis were they condemned by God and thus fell dead? It was because of their mutual lie, a clear violation of the Law of God. In 1 Corinthians we read that some within that Spirit-filled fellowship had actually died because of their ungodly gluttony and selfishness when it came to communion. Again, these were matters in clear violation of the Law of God. The Corinthian church was also home to incestuous adultery and lawsuits one against the other--clear violations of the Law.

One might at least ask the question, in view of such recorded events, of what relevance was the Law of God and Law-keeping to these ones who received the ultimate in divine sanction? Why didn't Paul just tell the Corinthians to wait until the Spirit wrote His Law upon their hearts? Why did he bring up these sinful matters in the first place? Why didn't He just advise the Corinthians to sit in a circle, like silent Quakers, and wait for the Spirit to speak? Was the Law of no relevance at all for them as Christians? It is a question worthy of asking--and a frightening question at that, given the experience of Acts 5 and 1 Corinthians 11!

How far have we moved as a Church from the attitude of the Psalmist David, for whom God's Law was infinitely sweet? Can we really treat God's Law with contempt and disdain? Is the Old Testament one great divine 'Whoops'? Should the teaching of our children begin at Matthew 1?

Some food for thought.

Democracy With God

2011-04-23T15:14:00.001-07:00

Recently a friend from church was asked to review an associate pastor's sermon, which he did. Following the review, he had a query which he placed in an email. It was this: "One other thing... I can’t remember but did you make some mention about there is nothing that we can do that would affect / offend God’s view of us? or similar? Was this leaning towards the idea that grace covers everything and therefore we do not need to worry about what we do because its ok and God will forgive us?"

It's a good question, and regardless of whether or not this pastor said or believes such a thing, one does not have to travel far to hear such views stated openly and with conviction within the church. Joel Osteen and Rob Bell come to mind, not to mention Bishop Shelby Spong or Robert Young, author of The Shack, subject of my very first blog. And, of course, there are numerous non-Christains who, if they have any notions at all of God and heaven, display a strong preference for the God of love, as opposed to the God of Scripture who is Love and Grace, but equally of Law and Holiness.

This morning, as part of my devotional reading, I read Chalcedon Position Paper No. 6, written by R. J. Rushdoony in August 1979 and compiled in The Roots of Reconstruction (1991, Red House Books, Valecito CA). It contains the seeds of how I would wish to respond to my friend's query. In the position paper, Rushdoony identifies as "...one of the great heresies of our day, the belief in democracy. At the beginning of the centrury, some churchmen began talking about the democracy of God, i.e., that God wants a universe where He and His creatures can work and plan together in a democratic way. Of course, if our relationship with God is a democratic one, we can correct the Bible where it displeases us, eliminate what we cannot correct, and use other standards and tests for the church and the clergy than God's enscriptured word. Then, logically, our word is as good as God's word, and as authoritative as God's" (p. 25)

Rushoony states (p. 25), "The justification for all things is not to be found in the triune God but in the people. Virtue means meeting people's needs, and the democratic state, church, and God have one function, to supply human wants." Quoting Lord Percy (p. 25), "...democracy's characteristic Mark of the Beast...of all means of assimilation, the most essential to democracy is a uniform State-controled education."

Continuing on (p. 25), "Behind all this is the question of authority: is it from God, or from man?...If the authority is man, then all things must serve man and bow down before man's authority. As T. Robert Ingram has so clearly pointed out in What's Wrong with Human Rights (1979), the doctrine of human rights is the humanistic replacement for Biblical law."

On p. 27, Rushdoony speaks of soap-oera religion: "In soap opera religion, life is without dominion; instead, it is a forever-abounding mess, met with a sensitive and bleeding heart. Soap opera religion is the faith of the castrated, of the impotent, and the irrelevant. The devotees of soap opera religion are full of impotent self-pity and rage over the human predicament, but are devoid of any constructive action; only destruction and negation become them."

"The heresy of democracy leads to the triumph of sentimental religion....The focus in sentimental religion shifts from God's word to man's feelings, and from basic doctine to psychology and human needs. The doctrine of the sovereignty of man means the sovereignty of the total man, and all his feelings. We have a generation now whose concern is themselves, whose self-love blots out reality and truth."

Remember--Rushdoony wrote these words some thirty or so years ago. Since then much more of the doctrinal energy of the evangelical Church has long since seeped away, much like a leaking dam. Reading the following paragraph, one would get the impression that Rushdoony was about to create Facebook!

"So great is this self-absorption that, in any office, faculty, church group, or other fellowship, there are commonly 'I didn't sleep well last night...I'm so tired today...Nothing I eat agrees with me lately, and I'm always gassy...I saw that film and used oodles of Kleenex...The color green always upsets me...I can't bear to have children around...' and so on and on. Purely private feelings are announced as though the world should react, be concerned , and be governed by them."

"Even worse, God is approached with a similar endless gush of private feelings, as though God should be concerned and upset when an egomaniac is distressed. Few people pray, asking, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?'" (p. 28)

Drawing matters to a close, Rushdoony states (p. 29), "Basic also to the heresy of democracy in the church is its belief, not only in man's needs as against God's requirements, but its belief in the irrelevance of God's law. If man is Sovereign, God's law cannot bind man, and both hell and justice fade away. god then is allowed only one approach to man, love. He is portrayed as needing, yearning for, and calling for man's love. Man is in the driver's seat, to accept or reject that plea. Lord Percy stated it succinctly, "A mere breaker of the law...may always be saved; but there is no salvation for the deniers of law'(p. 108)."

Rushdoony's concluding words (p. 29): "We have an age that wants, if it has anything to do with God, only His fellowship, on man's terms, and without His sovereignty and lordship. It dares to correct and amend God's word; it refuses to hear Him but offers rather to love Him. (One Hollywood 'Christian' leader of a few years back spoke of God as a 'living doll'). It wants a universe in which man plays sovereign and creator, endeavouring to create a brave new world out of sinful man, or out of self-centered churchmen, and it produces a fair facsimile of hell. Such a world is beggibng for judgment, and then as now 'judgement must begin with the house of God' (I Peter 4:17). As always, judgment precedes salvation."

Righteous Justice

2011-03-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

Making the brief ten-minute ride by bus into work yesterday morning, I began thinking about the matter of righteousness. Two passages of Scripture came to mind: the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and the Full Armor of God in Ephesians 6. Specifically, I began to think about the word 'righteousness'. And I began to wonder how exactly it can be that these two instances of righteousness could be fit into the doctrine of imputed righteosness. John Piper has written an entire book on this topic, arguing specifically against the position taken by N. T. Wright, who also responded with a book. So the discussion is has both currency and import for Christian.

At our informal men's breakfast this morning at the home of a good friend, I posed the topic like this:

"Imputed Righteousness: According to most orthodox teaching, such as
that from John Piper, our righteousness consists of us having imputed
into us Christ's perfect righteousness at the moment of salvation.
How is it then possible for Christ, in Matthew 5, to have commanded us
to 'hunger and thirst after righteousness', given that the Beautitudes
are Kingdom blessings, not normally considered as part of messages to
the lost regarding how to be saved. In addition, how can Paul enjoin
us to 'put on the breastplate of righteousness' if righteousness
itself is imputed to us, the passive recipients."

So, what conclusions can be drawn on the matter. First of all, the doctrine of justification and more specifically the nature of righteousness, imputed or otherwise is HUGE--far beyond the puny musings of a blog! But it is nonetheless a worthwhile effort for mere mortals to engage in. If fact, it has huge implications for Christians, both in terms of how we come to faith in the first place but then also in terms of how we live out that faith.

Actually, the matter of justification was one that was tackled a short while back by Pastor Sam Swadling of the Alice Springs Baptist Church in a series of message on four or five key issues of crucial concern for Christians today. Justification was one of those issue. As a matter of record, while expressing some sympathies and/or sensitivity in regards to N. T. Wright's position, Pastor Sam came down fairly solidly in the John Piper camp on how to consider justification and imputed righteousness.

Another motivating factor again behind my present thoughts on righteousness is that time and time again, whether it be from sermons in church or sermons heard on Christian TV (Joel Osteen comes to mind), whether it be from Martin Luther's teaching on Grace and Law or whether it be from Philip Yancey's modern classic "What's So Amazing About Grace", God's Law, the Law of Moses, Old Testament Law -- however it's named gets a right proper thrashing and hammering by all and sundry as they declare that Christ's death on the cross has fulfilled the law, abrogated the law, finished the law, completed the law -- again, choose your phrasing, but the point is always the same, namely, that for Spirit-filled Christians, the Law is a complete and utter irrelevancy to Christian faith! Those who dare say otherwise are likewise castigated as legalists, Pharisees, doctrinaires, Puritanical -- you get the idea!

This matter has bothered me for quite some time, but moreso in recent years as I have sees several things happening. First, increasing Christian relevancy within society. That is to say, the secular world is becoming increasingly intolerant of Christians, particularly Christian politicians, having any say in matters of public discourse, not the least calls for a return to Biblical, Ten Commandment foundations for our legal system. Second, what appears to be sin and a toleration of sin and sinful behaviour within our churches, much of it excused with statements and sentiments such as, "Well, we are not to judge," or "You know, Christ commanded us to forgive seventy times seven, so we must forgive," or (and this is my favourite!) "There's nothing you can do to make God love you more, and nothing you can do to make him love you less!" I beg respectfully to differ. And here's why.

In Matthew 5:6, Jesus said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled." This beatitude presupposes not a righteousness that has been passively received (which is the case for all regenerated people), but some sort of righteousness that can somehow be in short supply, such as food and water, and which much be eager sought after and desired. That is, this righteousness appears to be of some strange type that requires even a small bit of human effort, quite unlike imputed righteousness which is a free gift of God.

Then, in Ephesians 6:14, Paul tells us, as part of our spiritual armor, "Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness,..." This, like Jesus' word in the Beatitudes is not a passive picture; it is the picture of a soldier, armed and ready to fight, to advance, to conquer!

So, what's going on with righteousness? I think at least part of the answer can be found by examining some linguistic data from the Bible. In the Old Testament, righteousness and justice (if you consult a concordance, such as Young's) is based upon a single, Hebrew root Z-D-K, as in the named Zedekiah, 'the Righteousness of the LORD/YAHWEH' Melchizedek 'King of Righteousness'. Similarly, in the New Testament, both justice and righteousness flow out of the same Greek root DIKAI-. English translations translate DIKAI- as righteousness, whereas the concept of justice comes through, from the same root, only when (mostly in the epistles) justification is spoken of. My point here is, that when English speaker's read/hear 'justice' they do not automatically think also of 'righteousness'. Likewise, when 'justice' is spoken of, they do not automatically think of 'righteousness'. But when Jewish believers used either Z-D-K or DIKAI-, they thought of both together. Justice and Righteousness are what's written on both sides of the same semantic coin.

At brekkie this morning, I pointed out that this is an example where, I believe the Warlpiri translation and that into at least one other Central Australian Aborigional language is superior than (the 'deficiences' of) English. Warlpiri's word for 'straight' is 'jungarni'. Is is the way we have translated both 'justice' and . Thus a righteous person is one who follows the law of God correctly or straight. God's act of imputing the righteousness of Christ, at the moment of regneration, is to 'cut straight' the person.

Viewed in this way, God's Law is the basis upon which God regenerates a person, through the imputation of Christ's righteousness--Christ being the perfect Law-keeper and Law-Fulfiller. God's law is then, following regeneration, the means by which a person achieves sanctification, empowered by the Holy Spirit to increasingly over time, keep the perfect Law of God, the Law of Christ so that, as King David once cried out, "Oh, how I live thy Law!

Casimir at 10

2011-03-05T20:01:00.000-08:00

This last Sunday a few invited guests and family came to our house for Casimir's 10th birthday party. Earlier in the day, Casimir had asked Bev if I would read a Bible story for him, and as I thought about the matter, the story of the little boy Samuel kept coming to mind. As it turned out, we never got to the reading of the story, but nonetheless I want to commemorate Casimír's arrival at the end of his first decade of life with a prayer of blessing upon him that he will see many more. He is not presently capable of understanding all of what I will write, but perhaps someday he will read it and realise that he really is a special young boy upon whom God's hand has been, just as surely as it was upon Samuel and his parents.

First of all, Samuel came from a Godly family with a rich, spiritual heritage. 1 Samuel 1:1-3 states:

"Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim, of the mountains of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu,the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. And he had two wives: the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. This man went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to the LORD of hosts in Shiloh."

I would trust that Bev and I have been at least as diligent in the exercise of his faith as were this man and his two wives.

In these verses is introduced a problem that sets the stage for what follows; namely, Hannah's barrenness which in Old Testament times was considered to be a sign of the absence of the LORD's favour upon a woman. 1 Samuel 1:4-5 states it in just those terms:

"And whenever the time came for Elkanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the LORD had closed her womb."

From this, among may other things, we see that God is in complete control of all situations, good or bad. He is Sovereign, and we must trust him always. Hannah trusted God in just that way. She trusted him enough to pray that He would intervene and cause her to fall pregnant, which indeed she did. When it finally happened, she named her baby boy Samuel, which means God Hears, and said in 1 Samuel 1:20, "Because I have asked for him from the LORD."

But the preceding verses tell us something interesting. During her previous visit to Shiloh, she had prayed fervently, a prayer that was observed at a distance by Eli the priest. He thought that she was drunk, but when he asked her, she explained her situation and the nature of her prayer. Eli blessed her and prayed that God would grant her request. Then in 1 Samuel 1:18, it says this: "So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad." The interesting thing here is that she obtained joy well before she fell pregnant and then had Samuel. Her situation at the time of the prayer was still somewhat grim and sad. Joy is a gift from God.

Casimir, your birth was no doubt a great surprise to your natural mother. Someday we will tell you about it, or maybe she will. Your birth could be called something of a miracle, and was certainly unexpected. God is like that! He is a God of miracles. Already in your young life, you have been at death's door more than once. You were like that when your natural parents asked us to take you from hospital and raise you up. A year later you were unconscious for an hour as doctors worked frantically to pull you back to this side of heaven. I wonder what you saw during that hour? I wonder where you went and what you experienced. When you awoke, you were not the same little baby as before. Some would speak of you in terms of disability, but I wonder if you are more accurately described as having ability that so-called normal people cannot appreciate or understand. I believe you were touched by God, and to be touched by God changes everything. You belong to Him. He does not relinquish what belongs to Him--ever. I want you to know that as deeply as you can.

And so it was with little Samuel. Samuel's mother Hannah had pledged to dedicate her little son to the LORD, should she be given one. 1 Samuel 1:26-28 says this:

"And she said, “O my lord! As your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood by you here, praying to the LORD. 27 For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition which I asked of Him. 28 Therefore I also have lent him to the LORD; as long as he lives he shall be lent to the LORD.” So they worshiped the LORD there."

Casimir, Hannah loved her little boy enough to lend him back to God. It was a permanent loan, with no take backs. The Bible does not tell us anything about how much Hannah longed to hold him, how much she missed him, how much she cried for him during the 364 days of each year when she and her husband were not at Shiloh for their annual sacrifice. But I suspect she did miss him very much. Each year, as he grew bigger and bigger, she would make a new little robe to wear. She would bring it to him, and then she would return home without him. And I suspect she would cry. Elkanah, his father, too.

I don't know how much Samuel understood about why he was living with this very old man Eli. I don't know if he ever harbored suspicions that his parents did not love him or had abandoned him. The Bible does not speak of any resentment or anger on his part, but it would be astounding indeed if he didn't sometimes feel that way. But then the story takes a marvelous turn, as recorded in 1 Samuel 3--he heard the voice of God!

Casimir, I don't know if I can be as good a second father to you as Eli was to Samuel. The Bible tells us that Eli was not a perfect man, and neither am I. Perhaps Eli got exasperated at Samuel's pranks--I know I do! Perhaps, being old, Eli didn't have enough energy to keep up with Samuel. I don't know. Regardless, Casimir, as you grow older and on those nights when you lie awake, sleepless on your bed, may you hear the voice of God. May you recognise your Father's voice, the voice of the Good Shepherd calling out to yet another sheep who belongs to Him. Ultimately I don't care whether or not you listen to me nearly as much as I care that you listen to God and do his will to the best of the ability He chooses to give you. May you respond in complete love and obedience. May you be forever, the LORD's man!

Bless you Casimir!

Dad

Destroyed in Alice

2011-02-20T13:21:00.000-08:00

Living in Alice Springs since our family moved here in 1988, I am increasingly dismayed and troubled by the violence and lawlessness that is gripping in ever-increasing proportions what once was a nice place to live. Politicians are fulminating, the jails and prisons are bursting, social services by the planeload are being poured into the town, teachers face unruly students, and youth-gangs freely roam the streets at night, playing a deadly game of catch-me-if-you-can with the undermanned police and security guards. People are scared to move about, and many are angry at the increasingly laughable and somewhat misnamed criminal justice system, the magistrates within which don't even bother to slap wrists anymore. It's all become a deadly game of musical criminality with the police, the courts, the prison, and the probation and parole officers all giving the merry-go-round of crime a push. And it is the public which suffers.

An article in The Weekend Australian pretty well summed the matter up: "Alice Springs is in deeper trouble than is widely understood. For many locals, driven to despair by the township's drug and alcohol-fuelled violence, the only way is out."

The following is the full text of a letter to the editor sent to the local papers this morning. It was prompted by a devotional reading by R. J. Rushdoony in a posthumously-published book, A Word in Season, of some of his articles first published in the Californian Farmer, an agricultual periodical that provided him a regular column entitled "The Pastor's Pulpit."

May I offer for public consideration a four-step process guaranteed to produce, over time, the violent lawlessness that has Alice Springs in it grip, a state of affairs which has politicians scrambling and local business barricading themselves in or leaving town? This process has been precisely defined by R. J. Rushdoony fifty years ago in reference to hippies in America.

"First, abolish all teaching about God, the Bible, and God's moral law from the schools. The child will then grow up believing that these things are really not important and that religion is really a private matter and question of taste.

"Second, emphasize the individual and his rights, not the claims of God and His law. Make sure that the child has a strong and intense passion for his rights, and no concern about his moral responsibilities. Then you can be sure that he will be irresponsible and yet demanding.

"Third, make sure that the child feels entitled to the best of everything and feels cheated if he is denied instant paradise. Then the child will be sure to demand everything and riot if denied it.

"Fourth, convince the child that man's real problem is not his sin but a bad environment. Teach him that his problems are due to the evils of big business, warmongers, big labor, profiteering farmers, politicians and the like. Never let him suspect that all men are sinners, including himself, and, maybe, especially himself, and that their real need is for regeneration in Jesus Christ. Then the child will grow up with a revolutionary rage at everybody instead of looking to God for regeneration."

Interestingly, in his analysis of societal decay, Rushdoony did not even mention the use and overuse of alcohol, marijuana and other increasingly acceptable drugs. These have long since taken over a distressingly large segment of our population. Societies, as well as individuals, reap what they sow, and we are now reaping the whirlwind!
2700 years ago, the prophet Isaiah pretty well summed up the matter in his pronouncements over Judah:

“I will make mere youths their officials;
children will rule over them.”

People will oppress each other—
man against man, neighbor against neighbor.
The young will rise up against the old,
the nobody against the honored." (Isaiah 3:4-5)

All of Isaiah 3 makes for sobering reading, but buried within this pronouncement of God's judgment comes a ray of hope of those who still believe in God's Righteous Law:

"Tell the righteous it will be well with them,
for they will enjoy the fruit of their deeds." (Isaiah 3:10)

Buckler and Shield -- Psalm 35

2011-02-13T13:07:00.000-08:00

A Psalm of David

1 Plead my cause, O LORD, with those who strive with me;
Fight against those who fight against me.
2 Take hold of shield and buckler,
And stand up for my help.
3 Also draw out the spear,
And stop those who pursue me.
Say to my soul,
“I am your salvation.”

4 Let those be put to shame and brought to dishonor
Who seek after my life;
Let those be turned back and brought to confusion
Who plot my hurt.
5 Let them be like chaff before the wind,
And let the angel of the LORD chase them.
6 Let their way be dark and slippery,
And let the angel of the LORD pursue them.
7 For without cause they have hidden their net for me in a pit,
Which they have dug without cause for my life.
8 Let destruction come upon him unexpectedly,
And let his net that he has hidden catch himself;
Into that very destruction let him fall.

9 And my soul shall be joyful in the LORD;
It shall rejoice in His salvation.
10 All my bones shall say,
“LORD, who is like You,
Delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him,
Yes, the poor and the needy from him who plunders him?”

11 Fierce witnesses rise up;
They ask me things that I do not know.
12 They reward me evil for good,
To the sorrow of my soul.
13 But as for me, when they were sick,
My clothing was sackcloth;
I humbled myself with fasting;
And my prayer would return to my own heart.
14 I paced about as though he were my friend or brother;
I bowed down heavily, as one who mourns for his mother.

15 But in my adversity they rejoiced
And gathered together;
Attackers gathered against me,
And I did not know it;
They tore at me and did not cease;
16 With ungodly mockers at feasts
They gnashed at me with their teeth.

17 Lord, how long will You look on?
Rescue me from their destructions,
My precious life from the lions.
18 I will give You thanks in the great assembly;
I will praise You among many people.

19 Let them not rejoice over me who are wrongfully my enemies;
Nor let them wink with the eye who hate me without a cause.
20 For they do not speak peace,
But they devise deceitful matters
Against the quiet ones in the land.
21 They also opened their mouth wide against me,
And said, “Aha, aha!
Our eyes have seen it.”

22 This You have seen, O LORD;
Do not keep silence.
O Lord, do not be far from me.
23 Stir up Yourself, and awake to my vindication,
To my cause, my God and my Lord.
24 Vindicate me, O LORD my God, according to Your righteousness;
And let them not rejoice over me.
25 Let them not say in their hearts, “Ah, so we would have it!”
Let them not say, “We have swallowed him up.”

26 Let them be ashamed and brought to mutual confusion
Who rejoice at my hurt;
Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor
Who exalt themselves against me.

27 Let them shout for joy and be glad,
Who favor my righteous cause;
And let them say continually,
“Let the LORD be magnified,
Who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant.”
28 And my tongue shall speak of Your righteousness
And of Your praise all the day long.

Texting for Seniors

2011-02-11T18:54:00.001-08:00

Since Seniors are texting and tweeting, there appears to be a need for a STC (Senior Texting Code).

ATD: At The Doctor's
BFF: Best Friend Farted
BTW: Bring The Wheelchair
BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth
CBM: Covered By Medicare
CUATSC: See You At The Senior Center
DWI: Driving While Incontinent
FWB: Friend With Beta Blockers
FWIW: Forgot Where I Was
FYI: Found Your Insulin
GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low!
GHA: Got Heartburn Again
HGBM: Had Good Bowel Movement
IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On?
JJU: Judge Judy's On
LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out
LOL: Living On Lipitor
LWOC: Lawrence Welk's On Cable
OMMR: On My Massage Recliner
OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas.
ROFL... CGU: Rolling On The Floor Laughing... And Can't Get Up
SGGP: Sorry, Gotta Go Poop
TTYL: Talk To You Louder
WAITT: Who Am I Talking To?
WTFA: Wet The Furniture Again
WTP: Where's The Prunes?
WWNO: Walker Wheels Need Oil

God's Hornets

2011-02-08T14:20:00.000-08:00

Part of my devotional reading this morning came from R. J. Rushdoony's excellent commentary on Exodus. Today's text was Exodus 23:26-33, entitled "Hornets and Snares."

26 No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. 27 “I will send My fear before you, I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28 And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. 29 I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land. 31 And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea, Philistia, and from the desert to the River.[a] For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you. 32 You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. 33 They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

Rushdoony makes several interesting points:

"We are very prone to materialistic concepts of historial determination. Economic factors, military considerations, geopolitical determinations, and a host of like things are regularly weighted and weighted by historians. History is variously defined in humanistic or in scientific terms, and routinely without regard to the triune God....

"Verse 27, however, tells us something basic about history: God's determination. God's terror can overwhelm His enemies and destroy them...To oppose God is to invite His terror....

"Faithfulness also means providential care (v. 28)....The sovereignty of Egypt's pharaoh was symbolized by a hieroglyph of a hornet. Egypt had devastated the old Canannite powers and civilization. Its plunder had included not only great amounts of gold, slaves, horses, and chariots, but also some of Canaan's leading nobles and their wives. Thus, when Joshua and the Israelites appeared before the walls of Jericho, they faced shattered powers whose prosperity and morale were not yet restored. Egypt had broken the Canaanites, and Israel had broken Egypts, and, as Rahab was later to tell Joshua's men, God's terror had taken hold of all men....God declares that He governs the hearts of all men, and He destroys our enemies before us when we are faithful to Him....

"The text assures of of two things. First, God sends a 'hornet,' some providential power, ahead of us, to do much of the work for us. Ont top of this, He sends terror into the hearts of His enemies and ours. Second, we are not handed the victory without battle on our part, nor without snares when we have triumphed....

"We are therefore to fear God, not man, and we are not to be arrogant, nor over-confident in our own powers, for the God-ordained snares are there to trip us up in our pride."

My dear wife, our foster son and I continue to be ensnared in a seemingly intractable and never-ending death-dance with the government department charged with the 'care' of our dear little one. From a human perspective, we have no strength left to continue the fight. But today's text, and Rushdoony's words, are a timely reminder of God's providential care over this and every other situation in our lives.

I would add but one thought to those of Rushdoony's. It is clear from this and numerous other Biblical texts that, while we are to pray earnestly for matters that concern us, both great and trivial, we are nonetheless NEVER to pray as if we are bringing the matters to God's attention, as if he were a divine grandfather, dozing peacefully on his rocking chair, while the world (and our little piece of it) goes to hell in a hand-basket. Instead, we are to pray in divine confidence in His omnipotence, His omniscience, His grace and His vengeance. Are we are thereby to be at peace in the midst of the storm.

Go Hornets!

2011

2011-01-03T00:56:00.000-08:00

I type this a bare five days before I reach a decadal milestone (60), which from some perspectives might seem just that much closer to a tombstone. Don't know about you, but sometimes I wake up at night in a panicked sweat, contemplating the sobering thought that I am a decade away from 70, a mere two decades from 70--why, I'm only four decades from getting a letter of congratulations from the Queen, although surely she will be long dead by then, and probably Prince Charles and Camilla as well!

2010 was not a particularly good year for us, as Bev and I seemed to be flailing about trying to slay various dragons that seemingly had emerged from the pits of hell to assault our family. They have reemerged again as we now enter 2011. All things being equal, I have 5-10 years of productive, bill-paying work left, but doing what? God seems to have put paid to my career as a prison officer (which nonetheless finally paid off our mortgage, praise God!) by touching my left hip in May as surely as he touched Jacob's hip, leaving him with a permanent limp and remainder of who is God and who is not! I face job uncertainty, not at all comfortable yet as a temporary probation and parole officer working for and within a system that seems more concerned with shuffling paper and a never-ending stream of offenders/criminals/--choose your synonym--around and around between the courts, prison and an innocent public that pays for the whole ungodly mess and is less-and-less protected.

As if that weren't enough, no one who currently lives in Alice Springs cannot but be absolutely and utterly horrified over the rampant and never-ending and never-lessening criminality and violence that consumes the front pages of every one of our bi-weekly newspaper. Have we reached the tipping point as a society over which God calls down judgment, or are we are the verge of a spiritual revival and revitalisation--or both?

Frankly, I'm tired, and the words of Solomon from Ecclesiastes 12:1-3 come to mind:

Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth,
Before the difficult days come,
And the years draw near when you say,

“I have no pleasure in them”:
While the sun and the light,
The moon and the stars,
Are not darkened,
And the clouds do not return after the rain;

In the day when the keepers of the house tremble,
And the strong men bow down;
When the grinders cease because they are few,
And those that look through the windows grow dim."

But, out of this existential despair, Ezekiel's question from 37:2-4 come to mind:

He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!""

Oh LORD, I have no other prayer at this, the start of 2011, than that you would blow over and rattle these very dry bones just one more time--please! Whatever You are to do LORD, do it quickly, because we have run out of answers, and I am not convinced that we even know what the right questions are.

Losing Faith in God

2010-12-02T18:37:00.000-08:00

Through Facebook, I just came across a short blog by Steve Dennie, who my wife and I know by our mutual associations with Huntington College (now University). He was commenting on a Washington Post article about the apparent lost faith of a father grieving and daily caring for his 21 year old son who had had his head kicked in the previous year. Steve asked the question as to how we would/should respond to such a situation. Here was what I wrote in brief reply.

"Very poignant article, Steve. Perhaps I/we should respond in the way Job’s three friends did before opening their collective mouths. They sat silent with him for seven days, but then apparently couldn’t resist the urge to speak truth and love into the situation. They felt overly compelled to defend God. They were threatened by the real-life assault on their cherished beliefs about the justice and mercy of God.

Long after my HC days, and quite the contrary to my Arminian roots, I have since come to a more Calvinistic perspective including the Sovereignty of God. Big John Piper fan. We spend so much time making sure our grip on God is intact and vital, when in actual fact, His grip on us is decisive.

So, in the case of this friend, if I had the courage and stomach for it, I would join the tiny band of those who clean and feed and exercise his son for as many years as it takes for God to bring them both home. And, God help me–I would stop my mouth!"

I've let this situation, Steve's question and my response percolate a while before writing what follows. Even now, life and what it means to be alive as a human being, intrudes. You see, yesterday afternoon my wife emailed me at work saying that she'd just jound a large lump on the left side of her neck. She got into the doctor who, after a brief exam, arranged a hurry-up ultrasound to which I am about to take her. Thoughts of cancer also intrude, maybe nothing, but nonetheless, my theology is about to meet the rugged road of uncertainty.

...

Four hours later, the ultra-sound has been conducted and now Bev and I await 48-72 hours of waiting to hear the results from her GP. I've had more thoughts on Steve Dennie's question and the relationship between good theology and pastoral care as they apply to life's sometimes very rough and hard edges. But, I will take my own advice above and, for now, shut my mouth!

Why Stop Here?

2010-11-28T16:47:00.000-08:00

WARNING: THE CONTENTS OF THIS BLOG ARE DECIDELY NOT NICE!

In a speech to the Australian Labor Party South Australian State Convention, Federal Labor Finance Minister Penny Wong has made her strongest statement to date advocating the legitimasation and legalisation of same-sex marriage in Australia. That she is in an openly homosexual relationship makes this no surprise at all. What may surprise and should alarm is the rapidity, post-election, in which the Green influence on Australian national politics has begun to flower. The intensity of the push towards such legalisation is now at fever pitch.

There are those within the Labor Party itself who are alarmed at the political, if not ethical, implications of this move. Even the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, while in favor of same-sex relationships and marriage, has signalled that, for whatever reasons, she opposes its legalisation. It is hard to fathom why; that is, on what basis other than perceived political expediency could and does she oppose legalisation?

At the State Convention, Wong tabled the following motion: "This convention calls upon the ALP national conference to amend the platform to support the legal right of all adult couples in Australia to be married if they so choose, and for that marriage to be recognised and registered by law in Australia, regardless of the sexual orientation, or gender, of the parties to the marriage."

I would like, in this post, to suggest three variations of this motion which, on philosophical grounds alone, are equally valid.

1 "This convention calls upon the ALP national conference to amend the platform to support the legal right of any adult/animal pairing in Australia to be married if they so choose, and for that marriage to be recognised and registered by law in Australia, regardless of the sexual orientation, species, or gender, of the parties to the marriage.

2 "This convention calls upon the ALP national conference to amend the platform to support the legal right of any adult/child couple in Australia to be married if they so choose, and for that marriage to be recognised and registered by law in Australia, regardless of the sexual orientation, age, or gender, of the parties to the marriage."

3 "This convention calls upon the ALP national conference to amend the platform to support the legal right of any mother/son, father/daughter, father/son, mother/daughter in Australia to be married if they so choose, and for that marriage to be recognised and registered by law in Australia, regardless of the sexual orientation, familial relationship, or gender, of the parties to the marriage."

Ridiculous! Preposterous! Absurd! Sick! Improbable! LOL!

Let me remind readers of this blog that we are only 2-3 generations removed from an era when, even though homosexuality was practiced by a minority of the population (as is the case today, albeit a larger and growing minority), it would have been thought equally ridiculous, preposterous, absurd, sick, improbable and/or laughable--not to mention morally wrong--for anyone to suggest legalising homosexual marriage. I dare venture to say that it would have been thought as ridiculous, preposterous, absurd, sick, improbable and/or laughalbe--not to mention morally wrong--by the vast majority of society, Christian or otherwise as suggestions 1, 2, and 3 above, advocating the legalisation of marriage of humans and animals and/or adults and children (paedophilia anyone?) and/or family members (incest anyone?).

That humans have had homosexual relationships since nearly the dawn of time is not the point. That human beings have engaged in sexual acts with animals is not the point. That adults have preyed and still do prey sexually on children is not the point. That incestuous relationships have existed is not the point. Ditto for homosexual relationships. The point is that western society as a whole once considered all of these types of sexual relationships to be morally wrong because of its Judeo-Christian ethical foundation. That ethic lies squarely upon Biblical Law. With that foundation rapidly crumbling around our ears, and being actively attacked on many fronts, the first of these taboos has nearly been expunged from society. Can anyone honestly say that the others may not likewise crumble?

Strangely enough, society as a wholestill roundly condemns paedophilia and, for the most part, incest and bestiality although the latter, in particular, is still the source of not-inconsiderable, dark humour. We are still in the transitional, 'normalisation' stage as regards our attitudes towards homosexuality. I would challenge any atheist to devise an moral system which condemns, for instance, paedophilia on solely evolutionary grounds. Or incest. Or bestiality. It cannot be done, when the driving force behind that ethic is survival of the fittest which, at the very least, dictates that the strong will of necessity win out over the weak and where, therefore, what is right is ultimately determined on who is strongest. One can bleat about altruism or the brotherhood of man or human dignity all one wants, but without a Biblical foundation, no consistent moral ethic of any kind can be fashioned.

Speaking from an evolutionary point of view (which I do NOT ascribe to!), which is entirely appropriate for a society which, by and large, accepts evolution as law, not mere theory, one may still ask what exactly we as a society evolving out of and into. That is, evolutionary thinking, as applied to theology, indicates that just as the more primitive Old Testament developed into the more nuanced and loving New Testament, so the latter continues to evolve into more and more loving forms so that the angry, wrathful God of the Old Testament--the condemner of homosexuality, bestiality, paedophilia and incest--has now become the All-Accepting God of Our Own Imagination. That is, of course, if you haven't rid yourself yet of the need for a god!

The LORD God noted in Genesis 6:5b, just prior to the Flood, "... that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time." Further on, in Genesis 11:6b God said, "...nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." Now the reality is that society has only recently breached the fortress of heterosexual, monogamous marriage dictated by the Bible. But, once that beachhead has been established, there is absolutely nothing to prevent further once-unthinkables from becoming reality.

So, again I ask--why stop with the legalisation of homosexual marriage? Do you think that I am overstating the possibilities somewhat? Consider these words from 2001 by Australia's premier ethical philosopher Peter Singer in his article Heavy Petting (I will spare you its entire contents--read the lot if you wish):

"Not so long ago, any form of sexuality not leading to the conception of children was seen as, at best, wanton lust, or worse, a perversion. One by one, the taboos have fallen. The idea that it could be wrong to use contraception in order to separate sex from reproduction is now merely quaint....

But not every taboo has crumbled. Heard anyone chatting at parties lately about how good it is having sex with their dog? Probably not. Sex with animals is still definitely taboo. If Midas Dekkers, author of Dearest Pet, has got it right, this is not because of its rarity. Dekkers, a Dutch biologist and popular naturalist, has assembled a substantial body of evidence to show that humans have often thought of "love for animals" in ways that go beyond a pat and a hug, or a proper concern for the welfare of members of other species....

The existence of sexual contact between humans and animals, and the potency of the taboo against it, displays the ambivalence of our relationship with animals. On the one hand, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition — less so in the East — we have always seen ourselves as distinct from animals, and imagined that a wide, unbridgeable gulf separates us from them. Humans alone are made in the image of God. Only human beings have an immortal soul. In Genesis, God gives humans dominion over the animals. In the Renaissance idea of the Great Chain of Being, humans are halfway between the beasts and the angels. We are spiritual beings as well as physical beings. For Kant, humans have an inherent dignity that makes them ends in themselves, whereas animals are mere means to our ends. Today the language of human rights — rights that we attribute to all human beings but deny to all nonhuman animals — maintains this separation...."

Singer wrote these words nine years ago. At the time, he may not have been willing to pull the trigger that drove a bullet into the brain of Biblical, heterosexual, monogamous, intra-species marriage--who knows how far his thinking has progressed--make the regressed--today. Even he would perhaps be surprised at how quickly societal attitudes have changed in a single decade.

God help us! Why do I choose to write on such an unsavory topic today. It is only because of the words of the LORD God to Ezekiel some 2500 years ago:

"17 Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. 18 When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for[b] their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 19 But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself. 20 Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 21 But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself. (Ezekiel 3:17-21)'

Perhaps my words can save others. At least they may save myself.

(Late note: May I commend to you Bill Muehlenberg's (as usual) insightful blog which I just now read. Two messages...similar story... same LORD God!)

The Disappointing God

2010-11-24T20:30:00.000-08:00

I only listen to the Christian FM station Vision 88.0 in the brief snatches it takes to drive to and fro in Alice Springs. I happened to hear something this morning that caught my attention and got me to thinking. One of the radio announcers was giving what I would describe as a brief filler, gushing testimonial about God's faithfulness and how good God is. So far so good. Then he went on to enthuse that "God never disappoints; He never lets you/us down!" Hmmm? The unspoken syllogism (although I doubt the speaker has thought through the implications of his statements) seems to be this:

God is absolutely and infinitely faithful to us.
God loves us infinitely and absolutely.
Therefore, we will/should never be disappointed by Him.

The difficulty for me is that I have never, ever met any Christian of any maturity who has not either felt, experienced and/or spoken of being disappointed by or in God. With one exception--those occasional sunny souls who are perpetually climbing up sunshine mountains where heavenly breezes blow and where faces are aglow. So for me there is something of a cognitive gap involved in the proposition that God never disappoints us.

At the risk of offending such-like believers, I am now going to list a number (I don't know how many I will get to) of the ways in which God has disappointed me. Trivial or deadly serious disappointments, I will work backwards in time beginning with this very day.

1 I'm disappointed to have stepped on the scales this morning, once again, to find that God failed to translate last night's snacking into a net loss of at least 2kg.

2 I'm disappointed to check our bank balance, once again, only to see that there has not been a bank error in our favour to the extent of, say, $500,000 dollars.

3 I'm disapointed that God has not yet decided to heal my left hip without arthroscopic surgery in four months time.

4 I'm disappointed that I sustained this injury in the first place.

5 I'm disappointed that because of this, I will need to be job hunting again (although there are several options in play).

6 While I'm at it, I'm disappointed that God has not entrusted me with so many riches that work remains a necessity.

7 I'm disappointed that I spend/waste so much time looking for my reading glasses.

8 I'm disappointed that I am not universally and perpetually cheerful and upbeat.

9 I'm disappointed that the older I get, the more I look like something out of Mr Potato Head.

10 I'm disappointed God did not heal (in no particular order) my first grandson Nathaniel, my father, my mother, a little foster daughter named Beverly....

11 I'm disappointed that God has not rid me of my bad temper and caustic mouth which too often slays those closest to me.

12 I'm disappointed that 23 years of hard work translating Warlpiri Scriptures has not transformed Warlpiri society. Quite the opposite--the Warlpiri communities seem to heading down hell in a hand-basket, and are punching much too far above their weight in terms of penal incarceration.

I'll stop there as I think the pattern is established. What am I to do with and about all of these presumed disappointed and offenses by God against my will?

First, I think it best to spread things out honestly on the table before God and not try to hide behind a cloak of sanctified and silent resentment. This is not to say that my attitude should be one of constant complaining (another fault of mine), but rather to assure myself and others that God is not going to fall into some snivelling, cosmic heap if we are honest to Him about what we truly think and feel. the Psalms in particular, but also Job and the Prophets are chock-a-block with people pouring out their souls to God, often in anguished bitterness of soul.

Second, I must recognise and reaffirm daily that I am not God, nor am I sovereign--He alone is! This is not easy for a narcissist with Aspberger's Syndrome to boot.

Third, I must acknowledge with humility that God's ways are usually not mind, that His thoughts, plans and purposes far exceed mine, and that it is much more to my benefit for me to be bent towards His will than for me to try and bend Him (and the world under His sway) to mine.

Fourth, as I also heard this morning on Vision radio, I must continually nurture the attitude of gratitude, constantly rejoicing in and being thankful for everything, great and small that does meet with or cause my satisfaction or pleasure. So, here's another list.

1 I'm thankful that certain doctor's have the ability to repair torn hip labrum tissue.

2 I'm thankful for one marvelous wife, a beautiful foster son, three wonderful children of my own, their spouses, and five lovely grand-children.

3 I'm thankful for the recently-developed pleasure in setting up two fish aquariums in our house.

4 I'm thankful that Bev and I paid off our mortgage this month after 12 years.

5 I'm thankful that I don't weight 200 kg!

6 I'm thankful that I can grow a killer moustache, even if it is salt and pepper.

7 I'm thankful for close Christian friends.

8 I'm thankful that the LORD's mercies are renewed every morning!

9 I'm thankful that God's grip on me is infinitely stronger than mine on Him.

10 I'm thankful that God has not given me the task of running the universe!

11 I'm thankful that Christ's blood is sufficient for the eternal cleansing of my sin.

12 I'm thankful that, much as I have tried, I have not exhausted the riches of God's grace--and never will!

13 I'm thankful that God does not give me everything I want--except Himself.

Perhaps you should be honest with God and draw up a couple of lists. Go ahead--He can take it!

The Moment Passed

2010-10-30T00:16:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, on the move
Shop to shop, I’m in my groove
Day off work, no time to lose
The moment passed, and so did I.

Out the door, and down the street
And sitting there, without a seat
A filthy man, no time to greet
The moment passed, and so did I.

They look the same, all grease and grime
Sunburnt face, no friend of time
No more reason, no more rhyme
The moment passed, and so did I.

Walk faster now, avoid the smell
And also eyes, a tale that tell
Of life and love no longer well
The moment passed, and so did I.

Quick to the car, and shut the door
And rid the mind of visions more
Than I can think of wretched poor
The moment passed, and so did I.

The Saviour’s words, I cannot flee
“A cup of water given free...”
More to the point, “...it’s done to Me.”
If not, I die—He passes by.

(Written on the occasion of turning my car around, parking it, returning to a street person named Malcolm, whom I had previously walked right by, asking him if he'd had anything to eat or drink that day, chatting with him over a cafe mocha and meat pie at Gloria Jean's, hearing about Mexico City and Ceduna and being born with three kidneys, but awaiting surgery soon so that some other person could have one, and 'Can you speak Spanish', 'No, I came to Australia as a baby, and I'm very clever [oft repeated]', this man's mind is nearly gone, but he's heard of heaven and expects to go there, I ask why God would take him in, he looks vaguely into the distance with puzzled eyes, and so I tell him about Jesus who died that he might live, just sharing a bit of the Gospel with this child of God, whom I nearly passed by, God help me, LORD have mercy on me and Malcolm, and coming home, and life goes on!)

"And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward.” (Matthew 10:42)

Islam for All of Life

2010-09-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

Haiku Blog Summary

Muslims know what they’re about—
World dominion.
But dominion is Christ’s!

Twitter Blog Summary

Muslims know their faith is more than five daily prayers, but for society and government too. Christians don’t know their Holy Book as well. We will change or we will die!

Full Blog

I had an interesting and revealing conversation with a work colleague on the bus earlier today. This person had spent a number of years providing various educational services and training in the UAE (United Arab Emirates), and so was fairly familiar with what it is like to live in an Islamic country. We talked about the Islamic principle of Abrogation whereby later writings of the Prophet Mohammed abrogate, or supercede/abolish, earlier writings. I first heard about this principle in last week’s sermon at the Alice Springs Baptist Church.

The following quote is taken directly from, an Internet article From the Middle East Forum entitled Peace or Jihad? Abrogation in Islam.

"During the lifetime of Muhammad, the Islamic community passed through three stages. In the beginning from 610 until 622, God commanded restraint. As the Muslims relocated to Medina (623-26), God permitted Muslims only to fight in a defensive war. However, in the last six years of Muhammad's life (626-32), God permitted Muslims to fight an aggressive war first against polytheists, the league and later against monotheists like the Jews of Khaybar. Once Muhammad was given permission to kill in the name of God, he instigated battle."

My friend is not a professing Christian, having quipped, somewhat flippantly to me a week or so ago in an email exchange that “If God really had written the Bible or Koran or any other sacred book, SHE would have done a better and clearer job of it!” So I believe it is fair to say that my friend takes a fairly secular view of life, although he has made it abundantly clear that he has no sympathy for Islam but rather is alarmed over the increasingly march of Islam and Sharia Law worldwide.

Then, as our conversation was dying down, my friend said, almost as an aside, “Interestingly the Koran details the way by which societies should be ordered and governed.” By implication, he was contrasting this to, at least, the Bible and Christianity as he undertood it. It would appear that my friend had no expectation or notion that, whatever one is to make of Christianity, it is qualitatively different to Islam in that the Bible does NOT give details as to the way in which society should be ordered and governed. I responded briefly to my friend's assertion, stating that as a matter of fact I believed that Christianity and the Bible did indeed provide a blue-print for all of society and governance. The matter rested at that point.

Regardless, I was, and still am quite stunned by the clarity in which my friend had just described the crisis that confronts so much of Christianity and the Church today, which is this: secular society, and particularly atheists, have completely segregated and compartmentalised Christianity into a very tiny box called Religious Belief. And within that box, people ascribing to multiculturalism (otherwise known as religious/cultural pluralism or in Biblical terminology polytheism/paganism/idolatry) are perfectly free to believe whatever they want, no matter how silly or scientifically unprovable. Therefore, whatever Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus or Buddhists wish to believe is nothing more than a cross-cultural or multicultural curiousity whose major function in life is to give comfort to their adherents and foment the occasional war between faiths. Otherwise, life is to be lived and can be and should be lived without any overt religious faith, thank you very much.

That this is the view of your average secularist, educated or otherwise, is sad enough. That this presuppositional belief is repeated within the confines of the Church itself is an unmitigated tragedy and disgrace for those of us to who Jesus Christ commanded, as per Matthew 28:18-20, “Go ye therefore into all the world, making disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” Many Christians, sincere 'Bible believing' Christians,within the Church have a pessimistic, defeatist mentality regarding the prospects of the Gospel within the world. I should know, because that was my attitude for many, many years. I repent of that. Christ’s Great Commission is our marching orders for the reformation of the world!

But quite frankly, many if not most Christians in the United States and Australia have long since forgotten these words of command. Instead, they wait patiently and with much sighing for the LORD Jesus to rapture them out of this deteriorating mess which is His fallen creation. They refuse to fully engage the world and refuse to work as disciples and soldiers of the cross to engage in an evangelism that expects society to be transformed until such a stage that the Kingdom is come, and God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven. They are fully conversant and filled up with Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, having read The Late Great Planet Earth and all 16 books in the Left Behind series. They cannot wait for Gog and Magog to descend upon Israel in their hundreds of millions only to be slain at Armageddon. They immerse themselves in End Time prophecies and speculations regarding the Beast of Revelation and make a vibrant cottage industry out of identifying who is the Anti-Christ and who is 666.

Yet these same Christians cannot tell you why Psalm 110:1, (indeed, the entire chapter!) is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament. I for one, for many years of my Christian experience, could not really make much sense at all of Jesus' words. What sort of cryptic statement is this, "The LORD said unto my Lord, 'Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.’"? Frankly, it just seemed like gibberish.

How wrong and ignorant I was! Fire from being gibberish, this works speaks of Christ's enthronement, post-resurrection and post-ascension at the right hand of God the Father, where he currently reigns and rules over all of his creation. Trying to look back and wondering what I could have been thinking, I must have had the mental picture of a somewhat Deistic, far-removed Father and Son, sitting together in heaven with legs crossed, sipping port and smoking cigars after a heavy meal. Sitting there doing nothing in particular except watched the world deteriorate on their 3D TV! I must have imagined the Father finally leaning over to the Son and say to Him, "Well, I'm tired of watching this program--maybe you should return to The Late, Great Planet Earth and clean up the mess! The word blasphemy also springs to mind. God, forgive me!

Instead, what I now believe with ever-increasing surety is that the Father, through His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, is progressively over time, and in space, bringing all of the enemies of Christ under his feet. How is this happening? It is happening through evangelism and through the progressive and continual and unstoppable spread of the Gospel throughout the world.

Note that one small word ‘until’ in Psalm 110:1. How long will Jesus stay seated at the right hand of God? What must happen before he returns, not after? Obviously (and I don't know how I could have missed this meaning for so many years!), Jesus cannot and will not return until the Father has completed his job of placing all nations under the feet of his beloved Son. The point of the matter is this -- despite appearances, and no matter whether it takes 10 years, 100 years, or 1000 years or more, the Gospel will spread and become increasingly successful on this earth. The Gospel will surplant and surmount all other faiths. Every knee will bow before Christ, either in thankful adoration and thanks or in abject terror and dread.

How different this is to the view of many Christians who watch and fully expect the world to go completely to hell in a handbasket. They are not actively working to restore the earth as it was originally created, and as Christ taught us to prayer, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." They may well be actively engaging in personal evangelism. And while they may support missionaries who are taking the Gospel, far and wide, they are none the less infected with a certain passivity and are waiting for Christ’s return so that the world will be set straight in the millennium. In one sense, they suffer from a type of spiritual schizophrenia. On one hand, they work to save souls, one by one. But there is no real expectation that either society or civil government will be transformed. Instead, the worse things get, the closer they are to the day when they will be raptured off the planet before the Great Tribulation.

How does this relate to Islam and the conversastion with my friend? It relates, but by way of contrast. You see, there is no such thing as a secular Muslim. False as their religion is, they sincerely believe in it and practice it on a daily basis. They do not compartmentalise it is an activity which takes place only within the confines of a mosque. No, Muslims, if they are true to their faith, know that Islam applies to all of society, to all of culture, including government. They know that sooner or later, the entire world will be converted to Islam, at the point of a sword, gun or bomb, if necessary. How many Christians today believe similarly in the ultimate success of our faith today? Too few!

May Almighty God help us to see that Christianity is a faith for all of life, not for the one or two hours of a Sunday morning spent in church. We are meant to take hold of and bring down every stronghold within government, education, business, health, social services, sports, the arts. We are to be expecting and working towards Christ’s increasing dominion on earth as in heaven, in space and in time. We don’t do this by power, nor by might, but by God’s Spirit, as it says in Zechariah 4:6. And if we don’t, God will remove us and get us out of the way, just as surely as He did in AD 70 to the Jewish nation in Jerusalem, as an apostate Church until he finds people who will take Him at His Living Word.

Noah's Three Sons: Human History in Three Dimensions

2010-09-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

I would like to review the book Noah's Three Sons: Human History in Three Dimensions, written by Arthur C. Custance (1975. The Doorway Papers, volume 1. Zondervan: Grand Rapids). This and a wide variety of other books and scholarly papers are readily available online.

Here is the Abstract from the website:

"This Volume of five Papers is a bird's eye view of the world after the Flood, of how these three sons and their wives re-peopled the world, establishing (and destroying) civilizations and cultures as they spread over the earth. It is not a haphazard or chance occurrence for, when seen from the divine point of view, God has sovereignly ordered the unfolding of His purposes for the well-being of all peoples so that the complete potential of the human race might find full expression.

The basic thesis is that the tenth chapter of Genesis, the Table of Nations, is a statement about the origins of the present world population, and of how these descendants of the three brothers spread out over the earth. And it is further proposed that a division of responsiblities to care for the needs of man at three fundamental levels -- spiritual, physical, and intellectual - were divinely appointed to each of these three branches of Noah's family. History bears out the uniqueness of each of these racial stocks in a remarkable way. In these Papers is the evidence for the technological genius of Ham, the intellectual character of Japheth, and the spiritual qualities of Shem.

The interaction of these three contributions is the theme of this history. The final Paper is an exploration of the broader implications of the thesis, and of underlying causes (linguistic, cultural, etc.) that have led each branch to continue to make its unique contribution. Human potential reaches its climax when all three brothers jointly make their common contributions. Thus this three-dimensional view of human history gives insights into the manner in which God ordained that the full potential of the human race should unfold and find expression in the individual and in the nation.

Yet it is contended that if there is meaning to the universe, it is to be found in the birth and death of Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, that God might by a process of Redemption show forth His love toward the First Adam and his descendants whose very existences depend upon the creation of such a physical world. Man, then, is the key to the meaning of the universe."

I read this book slowly and sporadically over a period in excess of six months, along with any number of other books 'on the boil'. I found the material presented quite challenging in that, at first glance, Custance's thesis seems racialist, if not outright racist. I am of a generation that by training looks askance at any notions which lend credence to race-based supremacists of whatever ilk.

Using Custance's schema, I a Japhethite (non-practical purveyor and synthesizer of ideas) as opposed to the practical descendants of Ham or the religious descendants of Shem. We white-skinned westerners of Indo-European descent (particuliarly Americans by birth, such as myself!) like to think of ourselves as the inventors of the modern world a la Edison, Bell, etc. Custance puts paid to that notion giving page after page after page of various native innovations which, while looking simple at first glance, are really not. Items such as the igloo, snow-blindness goggles by Eskimoes are just two such items which formed the pre-cursor of more modern, later adaptations and inhancements by more scientific and marketing-minded westerners.

Thus, Custance's work gave me no room for feelings of superiority. Rather, it has at least caused me to consider more carefully his major thesis, namely that it was and is God's intention for the three racial lines to live and work complementarily in a cross-cultural, sacred dance, with each group constributing as per its God-given bent to bring God's fullest dominion on earth.

When Justice is Aborted

2010-08-28T19:57:00.000-07:00

I would like to review When Justice Is Aborted: Biblical Standards For Non-Violent Resistance, written by Gary North. It is available for free download (PDF or HTML) from The Institute for Christian Economics.

While abortion is an accepted practice in both Australia and the United States, not to mention much of the rest of the world, it remains a hot topic, certain to stir passions on all sides of the issue. Abortion in the minds of many (including some Christians) has, unfortunately, morphed into yet another 'human right', even at the expense of millions of innocent unborn. Is the battle lost for Christians? If not, how should we fight? What are our tactics, our strategy, our weapons? Can we turn back the clock?

"When Justice Is Aborted presents an explicitly Biblical discussion of the question of non-violent protest by Christians. Its discussion relates to the abortion fight, but is not confined to it. These issues will surface again as the battle between secular humanism and Christianity escalates, as the battle between church and state escalates. There can be no compromise here, any more than over abortion. There is no halfway house position available any longer.

Where should Christians stand? On the sidewalk or in the doorways of injustice? When Justice Is Aborted shows where Christians stand if they are to remain faithful to God, and why.

And having stood, the next question is inevitable: Should Christians march?"

Published in 1991, this book "... book is an extensive discussion of nonviolent resistance to tyranny from a biblical perspective. North take up the question of what the Bible teaches on the subject, shows how Christians have responded historically, and addresses the question of Operation Rescue and other similar movements today. As the battle between secular humanism and Christianity escalates, these questions will become more and more important. As an experienced social critic and philosopher, North provides a sane alternative to the extremes of hyperactivism and sheer passivity." (from the online catalog description)

It seems so very long ago that Ronald Reagan was President of the United States. In the memories of Americans, he is either highly revered or airily dismissed as an actor who somehow stumbled into the White House. 'Stumble' he did—twice in elections, both times by true landslide margins and once at the hands of an attempted assassination. I count myself as one who reveres his memory—unashamedly. Recognising that the man had the usual bundle of compromises and flaws as a leader, it is nonetheless true that he attempted at least one thing that, for the purpose of comparison, his predecessor to the American Presidency Jimmy Carter did not—he attempted to outlaw abortion. That Jimmy Carter was widely regarded as an upstanding Baptist, a teacher of Sunday School no less, adds to the tragic irony of their respective histories as relates to this divisive issue.

North’s book begins with these words from Ronald Reagan:

“Our Nation cannot continue down the path of abortion, so radically at odds with our history, our heritage, and our concepts of justice. This sacred legacy, and the well-being and the future of our country, demand that protection of the innocents must be guaranteed and that the personhood of the unborn be declared and defended throughout our land. In legislation introduced at my request in the First Session of the 100th Congress, I have asked the Legislative branch to declare the ‘humanity of the unborn child and the compelling interest of the several states to protect the life of each person before birth.’ This duty to declare on so fundamental a matter falls to the Executive as well. By this Proclamation I hereby do so.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim and declare the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death, and I do proclaim, ordain, and declare that I will take care that the Constitution and laws of the United States are faithfully executed for the protection of America’s unborn children. Upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. I also proclaim Sunday, January 17, 1988, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon the citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in their homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life they enjoy and to reaffirm their commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of every human life. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.”

I do not remember celebrating National Sanctity of Human Life day on January 17, 1988. My young family and I would have been in Dallas, Texas at the time, between field terms as missionary Bible translators to Australia. I also do not know whether or not the 100th Congress passed the above-mentioned piece of legislation. I do know that it is still possible to legally obtain an abortion in the United States without fear of prosecution. I also know that, due to the activities of Christian men and women since that day, there remains in the entire United States only one doctor who still performs late, third-trimester abortions not necessitated to save the life of the mother. But if anything, in the United States the abortion issue has become even more intense, more pointed, in the twenty-one years since North wrote this book.

In this book, North does not argue the matter of abortion as might be expected. That is, he assumes abortion is wrong because it is murder, as God has defined it. He does not devote any ink to arguing the point as to when life begins. Again, he assumes life to begin at conception. Thus, this book is not intended to persuade pro-abortion advocates that their position is wrong. It is designed to provide a sound, rational and Biblical basis to assist Christians to understand the Biblical parameters for protesting any State law that is morally offensive. Written from an obviously American perspective and in reference to laws of that country, North’s book can nonetheless provide a useful tool for Christians within Australia who likewise would like to see the scourge of abortion removed from our land.

If anything at all can be learned from the abortion debate over the past 30+ years, it is that both sides of the debate are seemingly frozen into their positions, based upon their iron-clad presuppositions regarding, first of all, God (or His absence) and secondly, His Law (as opposed to humanistic, natural and eveolutionary law). Changing one’s position on abortion comes through conversion. I surmise that North would attribute a change from pro- to anti-abortion, to spiritual regeneration and conversion to Christian faith. The opposite—a change from anti- to pro-abortion—I surmise, North would view as tantamount to treason/apostacy against God's covenant Law.

The remainder of this review can be read in one of two ways. Helpfully, North provides at the end of each of the five chapters a list of summary statements, outlining his logical progression through the chapter. Within the chapter itself, he expands, explains, supports and argues each of these statements. So, if you would like to 'read through' his book and this review in about 5-10, skip down now to the triple-asterisks (***). If you want a more leisurely stroll through his book, keep reading from here. What follows are substantial quotes by North interspersed with the occasional comment by me.

Preface

“Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to p-w them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day ad night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and km thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with the whithersoever thou goest (Joshua 1:6-9).”

Much of North’s analysis in his many books relates to the five-part covenantal pattern found throughout Scripture. He does so as well with the above passage which recounts Joshua’s words to the people of Israel as they embarked on their seven-year campaign of conquest in Canaan, the Promised Land. North writes (p. x), “Notice the five major points of God’s instruction to Joshua. First, God, the sovereign Lord of history, is commanding them. He is present with them. Second, He refers to Moses, His representative and national leader over Israel, in His instructions to Joshua, His new representative and national leader. Third, He tells Joshua to honor and obey the law of God. Fourth, He tells him that if he and the people obey this law, they will prosper. Fifth, He tells him that they will inherit the land.

“This is the Bible’s five-point covenant model. God reminded Joshua of all five points before He led them into battle. It was on the basis of the covenant and its promises that Joshua was expected to have courage.”

From this North encourages Christians to take seriously the power given them by the resurrected and ascended Christ. He then details the Nebraska School War, 1981-84, as an example of how it is still possible for Christians to stand up against the seemingly all-powerful State through non-violent resistance. He writes (p. xvi), “Christians had protested. They had run a successful challenge to a well-entrenched humanist tyranny. Nebraska’s Board of Education had been tyrannical throughout the century. It was Nebraska which, in a “patriotic” fury during World War I, restricted the teaching of foreign languages in the public schools, since the most popular foreign language was German. With very little support from the Christian community, locally or nationally, and with many arrests and the dedicated opposition of both the state and local civil government, Christians won the battle in 1984.

“This precedent should not be forgotten today.”

North concludes his Preface with another encouragement to internalise the five-point covenantal model, something that I have begun doing. He writes (p. xviii), “Once you understand the Bible’s five-point covenant model, you can solve lots of intellectual, moral, and judicial problems fairly easily. In fact, once you memorize this model, you will recognize it again and again as you read the Bible. Much of the Bible is structured in terms of this model. Once it gets into your mind, it does not get out. Without this model, biblical solutions are far more difficult to come by. So, I strongly suggest that you take this five-point model seriously, keeping it in mind as you read your Bible, and turning to it whenever you are called upon to defend what you are doing in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Introduction

(pp. 5-6) “If God says that a law is wrong, then Christians know that eventually – if only at the day of judgment – the law will be changed. But God usually. persuades civil magistrates of the immoral nature of their laws long before the day of final judgment. He first destroys their power in history, sometimes by destroying their nation. The Old Testament is filled with examples of this. A Christian who publicly disobeys a law that is condemned by the Bible is taking a major step in delaying the wrath of God on his society, Disobedience to bad laws is therefore an act of patriotism. But it will be criticized as an act of anarchism. How can Christians distinguish between legislation-defying acts of anarchism and legislation-defying acts of patriotism? Only by going to the Bible to test the spirits of disobedience. Above all, we must understand that the Bible is a covenantal document. To understand the difference between good and evil, we must understand what God’s covenant is.”

An understanding of the covenantal-model of Scripture is vital to understanding this book. So North summarises this system of thinking, discussing briefly the work of both the theologian Meredith G. Kline and Pastor Ray Sutton who, in 1985, first delineated this five-point covenantal structure in his book That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987). This, then, is the structure of a Biblical covenant (p. 7):

1. The transcendence yet presence of God
2. Hierarchy/representation (government)
3. Ethics/law (dominion)
4. Oath/sanctions (blessings and cursings)
5. Succession/inheritance (continuity)

This structure can be easily remembered by the acronym THEOS (Greek for ‘God’). North continues (pp. 7-8), “The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, conform to this five-point outline. Genesis tells us who God is: the sovereign creator who is transcendent, yet filly present with His people. Exodus tells about God’s hierarchical government (especially in Exodus 18), with Moses as God’s representative. Leviticus sets forth the laws of the sacrifices. Numbers tells the story of God’s sanctions against the disobedience of Israel and also against the pagan nations that Israel battled against. Finally, Deuteronomy is the second reading of God’s law, just before the second generation entered the land of Canaan to possess the inheritance promised to Abraham. I discuss all this in greater detail in the Introduction to my commentary on Genesis, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis, second edition (Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).”

North then contrasts this Biblical covenant with its humanist counterpart (pp. 10-11), "We live in an era of humanism. Humanism is a simple enough religion. The humanist believes the following

1. Man owns the earth. Original ownership, meaning the original title to the earth, belongs to collective mankind. It is ‘his’ to use as ’he’ pleases.

2. Man the creature rules God the Creator. In fact, man is the creator, for he alone understands and controls nature through science. He runs the show.

3. Man, therefore, makes the rules, which means that an elite group of men make the rules for everyone else. 'Man proposes, and man disposes.' He alone is to subdue the earth.

4. Man is the sovereign judge of the universe. He answers only to man, which means of course that the vast majority of men answer to a handful of other men, the elite scientific, political, and bureaucratic.

5. The future belongs to autonomous (self-ruled) man, meaning to those people who worship man as God. Autonomous man inherits the earth.

Christians disagree with each of the above humanistic assertions.

1. Original ownership belongs to God, not man,

2.God, not man, owns, and controls the earth.

3. God, therefore, has made the rules (laws). Men prosper or fail in terms of their obedience or disobedience to these rules.

4. God judges man in terms of Hls law. Men are responsible before God to abide by His rules. Man proposes and disposes only within the decree and plan of God.

5. The future belongs to God and God’s people. Those who are meek before God ‘will inherit the earth.

North then explains the role of the Old Testament prophets as well as, in the New Testament, John the Baptist who announced the arrival of the Christ.

(p 11) “The prophets of the Old Testament were authorized agents of God. They were His prosecuting attorneys. They brought a covenant lawsuit against the nation. They reminded the people, the nobles, and the king of the covenant that God had made with their forefathers at Sinai. Then they reminded the listeners of the stipulations (laws) of that original covenant. They pointed to the obvious violations of these stipulations in their day, Then they warned everyone of the fact that God, the true king of Israel, would bring His negative sanctions against the nation: war, pestilence and famine. All of these negative sanctions had been spelled out in the original covenant document (Deuteronomy 28: 15-68). Finally, the prophets called the nation to repentance, promising the blessings of God - positive sanctions (Deuteronomy 28:1-14) -if the nation did repent.”

North then details discernable and progressive stages of protests, Biblically-based, for Christians (pp. 12-14):

“First, there is the case of an individual who knows that a law is wrong, and who protests verbally. He obeys it, but he warns the civil magistrate that it is an immoral law and recommends that it be repealed….” Joab, who protested against David’s census-taking exemplies this (II Samuel 24: 3-4).

“Second, the protester protests verbally and refuses to obey the order. The protester then voluntarily suffers the punishment. This is what the three young men did when Nebuchadnezzar told them to worship the image or suffer death in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3).

“Third, the protester rebels against civil authority, warning the civil ruler of the evil that he is doing, but then leaves the geographical jurisdiction of the civil government. This is what Elijah did when he warned the king about God’s coming judgment of drought, and then hid in the city of Zarephath in the nation of Sidon (I Kings 17).”

“Fourth, the protester refuses to comply with the law….” This is exemplified by the Hebrew midwives (Exodus 1).

“Fifth, the people as a corporate assembly intervene and tell the ruler (executive) that he will not be allowed to bring sanctions in order to enforce a bad law. The people of Israel did this when they refised to allow Saul to execute Jonathan for having eaten some honey during a battle, which Saul had previously prohibited (1 Samuel 14:43-46).

“Sixth, a, God-anointed protester warns the representatives of the people and challenges them to rebel against lawfully constituted authority. This is what Elijah did when he directed the assembled representatives of Israel to kill the 850 priests of Baal and Ashemh after God had publicly intervened in history to prove that these priests were false priests (1 Kings 18:40).

“Seventh, the God-ordained lower official joins with other officials and revolts against unlawfid central government after a series of official protests. This is what Jeroboam did when Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, imposed harsh new taxes (or possibly a system of forced labor). Jeroboam created a new nation, the northern kingdom of Israel….(I Kings 12:19)."

North concludes this listing (p. 14), “There is no indication in the Bible that any of these acts was morally or judicially improper, and in most cases, God granted visible positive sanctions as rewards for such action. Anyone who says that resistance and even revolution (rebellion) are not morally and judicially justified in the Bible has to ignore or deny a great deal of Scripture, and also renounce the legitimacy of the English Revolution of 1688 and American Revolution of 1776, as well as renounce the various anti-Nazi national underground resistance efforts during World War II.”

Chapter 1 is entitled The Author of All Authority and is written in reference to the first part of the covenant, namely, the Transcendence of God.

(p, 17) “When a Christian asks himself the question, ‘Why should I obey an immoral law?’, he has taken the first step in developing a theory of Christian social ethics.

“When he asks himself the question, ‘How far should I go in obeying an immoral law?’, he has taken the first step on the road to social activism.

“When he asks himself the question, ‘In what way should I oppose an immoral law?’, he has taken the first step on the road to Christian resistance.”

North summarises Chapter 1 as follows (pp. 37-39):

“We must preach Christ and Him crucified. But we must also preach Christ resurrected and ascended, seated on the right hand of God in full authority. We must preach the Holy Spirit, God’s representative who guides His people into all truth. We must preach the transcendence of God on high and the presence of God in our hearts and in our midst. Nothing less than this will do.

“Christians need to challenge the lies and evils of our day – personal lies and evils, but also institutional lies and evils. Both challenges are important. To ignore either is to ignore God’s offer of comprehensive redemption from sin. This inevitably means confrontation. It did in the early church, and it has ever since. Rome did not want to abandon the worship of the state. Neither does the modern world.

“The decision of Christians to confront the institutional evils of their day is a prelude and handmaiden to revival. Without this willingness to become confrontational, God need not take us seriously. If we do not want comprehensive revival, we may not get even ‘soul-winning’ revival. In the 1820’s through the 1850s, the revivals of the Second Great Awakening were closely associated with the political and legal protest against the institutionalized evil of chattel slavery. Today, the protest against abortion seems to be the visible sign of Christian revival. If Christians fail to take this opportunity to challenge known evil, will this generation perish in the wilderness?"

Chapter 2 is entitled The Voice of Lawful Authority and is written in reference to the second part of the covenant, namely, Hierarchy/Representation (government).

North gives a new (to me) twist to the meaning of baptism (p. 41), “They have been baptized in His name, and therefore they are legally under His jurisdiction. This, in fact, is the primary meaning of baptism: to place oneself under the judicial authority of God. When someone has been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, he or she has become God’s man or God’s woman. Once this mark of God’s authority and man’s subordination has been placed on a person, there can be no legal escape.”

This actually makes a lot of sense, given that baptism is widely regarded as the New Testament equivalent of Jewish circumcision, even by Christians who are unaware of, or don’t subscribe to, North’s five-point covenantal model. However, North’s explanation points to a serious deficiency in the understanding of many Christians, namely, that baptism represents a person’s individual decision made in obedience to Christ’s command as recorded in Matthew 28: 18-20. Asked what that command might be, I suspicion most would answer simply, “Well, He commanded us to be baptised, and so we do.” That His command to be baptised entails five-fold covenant obligations would be a great surprise to many Christians. That becoming baptised potentially calls down God’s curses as well as His blessings would be an even greater shock!

North then introduces the doctrines of representation and interposition (p. 49), “Christians must protest against injustice. This is basic to evangelism: If we preach against sin, then we must preach against injustice. But how is this to be done biblically? It must be done representatively. The Christian who gets involved in an organized protest against civil injustice is acting as a covenantal agent on someone else’s behalf. He is interposing himself and his associates in between a corrupt civil government and its innocent victims. This is why we say that he is acting representatively. Thus, before a Christian joins such a protest or movement, he should have some idea about the biblical doctrine of representation. This doctrine, if properly understood, leads to another doctrine, the doctrine of interposition. The biblical doctrine of representation begins with the concept of the covenant, the foundation of all lawful government.

“It should be obvious that the most important representative agent in man’s history was Jesus Christ, who interposed Himself in between God the Father and rebellious humanity. Without this interposition, there would never have been history. On the day that Adam sinned, God would have killed him, body and soul. It is only because God looked forward in ‘history to Jesus Christ’s act of interposition that He spared the family of man. This was an interposition of grace between God’s sovereign justice and judicially guilty mankind, for man deserved to die. Jesus Christ interposed Himself judicially and physically. How much more should Christians become involved in interposition between injustice and judicially innocent victims!”

According to North, there are four voices who, according to their spheres, speak for God (p. 41), “...civil rulers, church rulers, family rulers, and the conscience. All four are God’s lawful covenantal agents. All four have taken binding oaths, either explicitly or implicitly.”

Of human conscience, North states (p. 46), “Each person is responsible before God for everything he says and does in his lifetime. Jesus warned us: ‘But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment’ (Matthew 12:36). Thus, a person’s conscience is a lawful authority. The fundamental rule of government is self-government under God’s law. The primary enforcing agent is the conscience. No other human government possesses the God-given authority or the God-given resources to police every aspect of each person’s daily walk before God. Any government that attempts this is inherently tyrannical….

“…the fundamental representative voice of God’s authority in each person’s life is his own conscience. Because the individual will face God on judgment day, the fundamental form of human government is self-government. This is basic to Christian ethical, social, and legal theory. Any society that attempts to deny this principle of justice is in revolt against God.

“This is not to say that a person’s conscience is absolutely sovereign. There has been no single, God-authorized human voice of absolute authority on earth since the ascension of Jesus Christ to the right hand of God. The conscience is a person’s primary voice of authority, but a wise person will defer to other God-ordained human authorities. The Bible is clear about this. There is a division of labor in every area of life, including the proper interpreting of God’s law.”

North summarises Chapter 2 as follows (pp. 57-59):

“We have seen that all covenantal government is hierarchical. Someone or some lawful agency must speak in the name of the god of that society or group. Biblically, men are required by God to speak only in His name, according to His revelation of Himself in the Bible and in history. Because rulers often refuse to acknowledge that God is above them, they refuse to speak God’s name. They become representatives of another god.

“This makes decisions far more complex for Christians. Should they obey God or the civil magistrate? They must obey God. But as in all other decisions in life, there are levels of importance in decision-making. Some issues are more important than others. The human conscience needs earthly counsel in sorting out God’s hierarchy of values and the hierarchy of assigned responsibilities that God presents to each person, moment by moment. We cannot fight every evil, right every wrong. We are creatures. We have limits on our lives. Thus, we must seek out our own specialized areas of service to God, which includes our own specialized areas of resistance to rebellious authority…. patience is basic to successful Christian recruiting and mobilization - in evangelism surely, but also in Christian activism.

“When an individual decides what his priorities are, meaning God’s priorities in his life, he must act in accordance with his conscience. He must march forward. If a Christian lives in a pagan culture, then his long-term goal should be the undermining of the present order and its replacement with a righteous order. This is the biblical concept of the leaven principle (Matthew 13:33). Evil must be replaced by good. You cannot beat something with nothing. You must have a positive program.

“We cannot fight every fight, right every wrong, or save every life. We must pick and choose our tactical confrontations in terms of an overall strategy. We may concentrate our limited resources on one city, one project, or one person. We do this because we believe in the biblical doctrine of representation. We understand the use of symbols. If we can hinder or stop a representative evil locally, we thereby give visible warning to our enemies and visible
encouragement to our allies.

“Choose your allies well. Most important, choose your leaders well. Do your best not to go into public confrontation with your family and church against you, as well as the state. Subordinate yourself to God through His lawful institutions. If your pastor and elders are opposed to what you are doing to challenge the state, it is time to start looking for a new church."

Chapter 3 is entitled Honoring God’s Law by Disobeying Evil Humanist Laws and is written in reference to the third part of the covenant, namely, Ethics/Law (dominion).

North contrasts the immutability of God’s Law, reflective of His Nature, with the changeability of human law, reflective of fallen human nature. He states (p. 63), “In modern times, however, all this has changed. The hallmark of all law, ever since Darwin’s concept of evolution through natural selection captured the minds of most intellectuals a century ago, is relativism. The law changes when the sovereign people change their minds, meaning when their true spokesmen, the law-makers and especially the judicial interpreters of the law, change their minds. Legal positivism teaches that law is what the state says it is….

“Undergirding the biblical concept of law is the doctrine of an all-knowing, perfectly just God who will bring all things to light on the day of final judgment. Biblical law is grounded in the objective fact of the Creator God who speaks the law, enforces His law in history, and will serve as Final Judge. Darwinian law in the United States is grounded on nothing more substantial than temporary 5 to 4 decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

North views this simple fact as extremely important strategically and tactically for Christians. He writes (p. 64), “The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed itself over 150 times in its history. This is an extremely important fact for all those who are considering the legitimacy of non-violent public protests against some law. The so-called law of the land keeps changing. The Court responds to public pressures. It is subject to new appointments by the President. In short, the modem concept of law is wholly statist, divorced from any concept of permanent moral truth or even logical truth. The law is little more than a fluctuating majority of Supreme Court justices.”

(p. 66) “The lesson that must be learned from the experiences of previous non-violent protest movements is this: personal salvation is achieved solely by the absolutely sovereign grace of God through faith in the atoning work of Jesus Christ at Calvary. Corporate or social salvation (healing) is by means of external faithfulness to the terms of God’s covenant law. The state is an instrument of justice, not salvation. It imposes negative sanctions against public evil acts. The state should not be expected to achieve anything more than the slow but steady reduction of public evil.”

Speaking of the high moral ground of protest, North writes (p. 67-68), “When Christian protectors confront the state in the name of a higher morality, they should not expect to do much more than to reduce the most obvious of public moral evils. In fact, it is through ‘non-violent protest, and especially through the oppressive, immoral, and nearly demonic reaction of the police and politicians, that the moral evil of a public policy is exposed to the general public. Only if the public is totally corrupt can this reaction fail to gain supporters. The authorities’ over-reaction will also attract outraged supporters who then join the protests. The protest then benefits from the snowball effect. The authorities’ brutality backfires.

“Viewers can see the overreaction by the authorities. This over-reaction points beyond the visible confrontation to the overall immorality of the authorities’ cause. This in turn points to the focus of the protest. The immoral civil authorities are increasingly seen by the general public as villains; so are the evil people who are being protected by the authorities. The general public, usually indifferent, can be aroused. The primary political objective of the tactics of Christian covenantal confrontation must be to arouse the suspicions and then the ire of the general public. The protest expose the immorality of the authorities’ cause. This must be tactical objective number one.

“This tactic always requires visible victims, as we shall see in Chapter 4, which deals with covenant sanctions. The visible victims must be those taking the high moral ground. In fact, the public will almost always decide who has taken the high moral ground in terms of the level of victimization. In the case of abortions, the public cares little about what goes on behind the closed doors of the physician’s office. They can be lured into caring about what goes on in front of them during the evening television news broadcasts. Their concern will be for the victims of police brutality, not the millions of murdered babies. They cannot feel sentimental about fetuses they never see and do not wish to see. They can be made to feel sentimental about the victims of police brutality.

“The Christian’s primary moral goal must always be witness-bearing the upholding of God’s name through his obedience to God’s revealed law. Second, his goal must be to save the greatest number of lives of the judicially innocent. Third, the goal is to change the minds of the voting public. Fourth, the goal must be to bring the murderers to public justice. In shore God first, babies second, votes third, and civil vengeance fourth. We need not be so concerned about civil vengeance because God will bring perfect vengeance eternally against evil-doers in eternity.”

(p. 70) “It is not the lives of the local unborn babies that the local anti-abortion protest should focus on. There will be few lives saved initially. There is always another abortion mill down the street or outside of town; murderous women always have another opportunity to abort their offspring. What really counts is the total number of lives saved after the voters change their minds or the Supreme Court at last reverses itself on the abortion-on-demand question. Thus, tactics of local civil disobedience must be designed and enforced that produce the sought-after national judicial goal, not the short-term goal of saving lives locally. What the organized protests should be designed to accomplish is the national reduction of the opportunities to commit legalized murder. This reduction may come because other physicians and hospitals become frightened of the bad publicity, and they then decide to stop making abortions so easy for mothers to buy. The reduction may take place because voters at last change their minds. What must be understood well in advance is this: a protest that temporarily hampers a local clinic but whose tactics turn off the television-viewing or newspaper-reading audience has not been an effective protest. Few lives will be saved locally, and none nationally.”

Warning against the possibility of a mob violence fanaticism developing, North writes (p. 72), “Christians must be confident that it is their absolutely sovereign God who will bring justice in history, and not their own passions or level of personal commitment, The protest’s leaders must take steps to inform each of the protectors of the covenantal theology of Christian non-violence. The strategy of Christian non-violent civil disobedience must honor all five points of the biblical covenant model if the protest is to be kept within God’s lawful bounds. To keep a legitimate corporate protest horn becoming an undisciplined mob, each individual in the protest group must be committed to five principles of covenantal confrontation:
1. Confidence in a God who is sovereign;

2. Acceptance of a responsible hierarchical authority governing the organized protest

3. Commitment to self-government under God’s law during the protest

4. Faith in a biblical concept of sanctions (blessing and cursing): God will bring His judicial sanctions against those who use physical violence against the innocent

5. Faith in the long-term reliability of the promises of God.”

The rest of Chapter 3 is taken up with some of the practical aspects of staging effective, non-violent protests against abortion, citing historical examples such as Ghandi in the late 1940’s in India and Dr Martin Luther King in the 1960’s.

North summarises Chapter 3 as follows (pp. 80-83):

“C. S. Lewis, in his novel That Hideous Strength (1946), presents in fictional form the nature of the religious warfare of this century. It is subtitled, ‘A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups,’ but it is in fact a far more accurate literary prophecy than George Orwell’s
1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It describes the coming of a huge government-financed ‘research foundation’ which is fusing experimental science and occultism as a means of taking control of the world. This was also the dream of the Renaissance, as Lewis discusses in Chapter 3 of his brief book, The Abolition of Man (1947).

“In the novel, one of the characters describes the nature of a long-term escalation of conflict between Christianity and demonic humanism. The character is a college professor of medieval literature, which is what Lewis himself was. Thus, I think this statement represents Lewis’ own thinking. It shows why the theological and moral issues are getting clearer as time passes, and why the conflicts between Christians and their opponents will get worse: ‘If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family – anything you like – at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.’

“The ethical issues are getting sharper. The differences between man’s law and God’s law are becoming clearer. Thus, there has been an escalation of the confrontations between Christians their opponents, This escalation will continue.

Chapter 4 is entitled Whose Sanctions Will Prevail and is written in reference to the fourth part of the covenant, namely, Oaths/Sanctions (blessing and cursing). In it, North recounts at length the story of Jeremiah’s warnings of impending Babylonian invasion and King Jehoiakim’s refusal to listen. This provides a model for those wishing to serve as covenantal protestors bringing before the nation the reality of God’s sanctions against unjust laws, such as those permitting abortion.

North summarises Chapter 4 as follows (pp. 100-102):

“The prophet’s role is to bring a covenant lawsuit against the society. He brings it especially to the civil magistrates. They act representatively in the name of the people. The survival of the nation is at stake; the ruler can make or break the nation depending on his response to the prophet….

“The goal of the prophet is to bring God’s covenant lawsuit against the nation. He is to bring it publicly. He must capture the attention of the whole nation and its civil and ecclesiastical leaders. This means that the confrontation must be public. The confrontation is ultimately covenantal, but it must also be verbal and visible confrontation.

“This is why in today’s world the media is vital, It is through public confrontation between God’s prophets and the nation that the issue is made visible. Gandhi knew, Martin Luther King knew, and the radicals of the late 1960’s knew. The media is the way to the people.

"It is time for Christians to bring covenant lawsuit. If they do not, or if they do it ineffectively, God will bring His sanctions. At that point, a Christian does not want to be a watchman on the watchtower who had failed to sound the warning. The warning above all is covenantal.”

Chapter 5 is entitled The Author of All Authority and is written in reference to the final part of the covenant, namely, the Succession/Inheritance (continuity).

North summarises Chapter 5 as follows (pp. 116-119):

“There is an inheritance promised by both Satan and God. Satan lies about his inheritance. He offered Jesus Christ the kingdoms of this world, when in fact he possessed no lawful ,title to any aspect of this world. God, on the other hand, tells the truth about the nature of His inheritance. He tells us that this is His world, and that we have become fellow heirs with Christ. Heirship in God’s family is covenantal: by adoption. It is therefore also ethical….

“Satan is the great promoter of abortion. He delights in destroying man’s inheritance. He is at war with life. God says, ‘All those who hate me love death” (Proverbs 8:36b). Satan hates God, and Satan loves death, especially the death of man. Thus, we should not be surprised to see the battle for the soul of the modern world being fought over the abortion question. It will never be settled until Satan’s kingdom is obliterated.

“Christians must become consistent with their religious presuppositions. They must affirm the right to life. They must commit personally and publicly to the principle that execution is only legitimate for criminals convicted in a court of law for a biblically defined capital crime. Anything else is murder.

“If Satan persuades Christians to retreat from this fight, then he will have brought God’s sanctions onto the heads of those who became the apologists for abortion. But covenant-keepers may suffer in the period of judgment, just as Jeremiah and Ezekiel went into the Babylonian captivity.

“God is not mocked.

In his conclusion to his book, North encourages Christians to realise that we are to be salt in all of its three Biblical functions: savour, preservative and judgment. He warns against the social paralysis caused by pietism, stating (pp. 126-127), “This view of life teaches at least three things:

1. This world cannot be progressively brought into conformity to God’s social standards because a) there is insufficient time to reform the world’s institutions, and b) the Holy Spirit will never perform anything like the worldwide transformation of men’s hearts.
2. The biblical concept of progressive sanctification is therefore limited to the individual soul, the family, and the local church.
3. The mark of personal holiness is withdrawal from the cultural, political, and social affairs of this world. This outlook is analogous to the heresy of Deism. The Deist god is so far removed horn the creation that he does not call ‘it to repentance; He does not bring sanctions in history. Similarly; the pietist is ‘so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good.’ Because Christians have not had a biblical concept of transcendence – the absolute sovereignty of God – they have adopted an implicitly Deistic concept of God’s transcendence, and therefore Christian man’s covenantal distance from this world.”

Appendix A is entitled Are Operation Rescue’s Critics Self-Serving?

So, how to sum up and evalutate North's book on abortion? First, it is very useful for the protest against abortion to be placed in the context of an over-riding theology--in this instance, five-point covenantalism. Second, North makes very clear that evangelism takes precedence over political action. This may help put at ease those who oppose a Reconstructionist perspective and agenda on an unwilling public. As North makes clear here, the post-millenial reality is that over time (hundreds if not thousands of years), pagans will eventually see the wisdom of obedience to the Law of God and will gladly put themselves under a Godly national government, even if they do not convert to the faith. (That conversion is, of course, God's initiative, not human initiative.) Third, North's book is an encouragement for Christians to make full use of, and take very seriously, their democratic rights and responsibilities to oppose the sin of abortion. Fourth and finally, North details a multi-step, escalating strategy for legitimately and Biblically opposing abortion, as well as any other morally-objectionable piece of legislation.

As always, I find North's writing very clearly expressed and highly organised. That he wrote this book in just six days is rather amazing. I commend it to your reading and edification

***

Chapter 1 Summary (pp. 38-39):

1. To raise the question of obedience to unjust laws is to raise the question of social ethics.
2. We must ask ourselves: To what extent me we bound by sinful laws?
3. We must ask: By what right do unjust men rule over us?
4. We begin our search for answers with a consideration of the nature of God.
5. God is both transcendent and present.
6. God is wholly personal.
7. He is the Creator
8. His universe is therefore wholly personal.
9. He claims absolute sovereignty.
10. Covenant-breaking people deny this claim.
11. There is a war on between rival views of authority.
12. This war is political as well as theological.
13. The god of a society is its source of civil law,
14. The law will reflect the ethics of the god.
15. God is the only true source of law in society.
16. Christians deny the false gods of men and therefore the false legal orders that testify to such false gods.
17. Christians are therefore implicitly revolutionaries against all non-Christian social and legal orders.
18. Christians are in principle at war with much of society.
19. Christians want peace, but find themselves at war.
20. The comprehensive nature of Christ’s claims forces them into a confrontation with anti-Christian societies.
21. Sin is comprehensive; therefore, the gospel’s healing power is equally comprehensive.
22. God promises to bring healing to society in history.
23. Jesus fulfilled the Jubilee Year.
24. This jubilee has been proclaimed to the Gentiles.
25. God’s covenant now extends to all nations.
26. The Holy Spirit empowers Christians to obey and extend this covenant.
27. Christians lack Confidence because they do not understand how transcendent God is and how present He is.
28. Christians have been on the defensive.
29. God is not judicially absent.
30. The Gospel is confrontational.
31. Christians should think in terms of extending Christ’s kingdom (civilization) in history before the Rapture.
32. We need revival: continuity, discontinuity, and continuity.
33. Christians need to challenge all the evils of our day.”

Chapter 2 Summary (pp. 59-60):

1. Christians are called upon to obey the civil government (Remans 13:1-8), but also to disobey evil laws (Acts 5:29).
2. We are baptized into God’s covenant.
3. The covenant’s five principles are binding on us.
4. The question of the lawful voice of authority is the question of lawful representation.
5. Only God and the Bible are absolutely sovereign.
6. Every society needs a hierarchy.
7. The question is: Who runs it?
8. Every hierarchy will eventually ask people to do something immoral or illegal.
9. Who represents God in such a situation?
10. Men must obey lawful authorities (plural).
11. Orders usually have more than one goal.
12. Subordinates must determine which is more fundamental.
13. God is the supreme commander.
14. The Bible teaches the doctrine of judicial interposition.
15. This also can involve bodily interposition.
16. The crucifixion displayed both aspects.
17. Each person is directly responsible under God.
18. Each person will be judged individually by God at the final judgment.
19. The representative between God and man is the human conscience.
20. Each person is under God’s direct authority.
21. His own conscience is his representative for God.
22. No conscience is autonomous.
23. The work of the law is written on all hearts (though not the law itself).
24. Some consciences are seared by evil;
25. God’s church supplements the human conscience.
26. The church’s hierarchy is a bottom-up appeals court.
27. Satan’s bureaucracy is a top-down command system.
28. An individual must decide for himself which church is closest to God’s hierarchy of values and requirements.
29. He must do the same with civil government.
30. God’s rule is: Whatever is not forbidden is allowed.
31. People can lawfully protest a civil violation of God’s law.
32. They can lawfully use deception as a means of circumventing a biblically immoral law.
33. Permission of lower magistrates is not required for non-violent resistance.
34. God is right, and He possesses absolute might.
35. Honest men disagree regarding God’s hierarchy of values.
36. They disagree over tactics and timing.
37. This is inevitable in a division-of-labor world.
38. We should choose our allies in terms of our assessment of both principles and tactics.”

Chapter 3 Summary (pp. 81-83):

1. Moses’ parents and Pharaoh’s daughter disobeyed Pharaoh’s law of infanticide.
2. God’s law is unchanging in principle because He is changing.
3. Changes in the law are made for our sake, not God’s.
4. Modern jurisprudence is evolutionary.
5. Modern law is said to change in response to a changing environment.
6. Law has been defined as a prediction regarding what the courts will say.
7. Biblical law is grounded in the Word of God and His perfect justice.
8. The U.S. Supreme Court has often reversed its predecessors’ decisions.
9. For a Darwinist, no social law is sacrosanct, for nothing is seen as sacrosanct.
10. Darwinism rejects the idea of a permanent moral order.
11. Christians must oppose unjust civil laws.
12. Darwinists have no moral or legal principle that would allow them to reject this right of Christians (or anyone) to protest.
13. The modem state operates in terms of sentiment and power, not permanent moral principles.
14. Non-violent protests can get out of control.
15. Christians must begin a protest with the presupposition: ‘Protests cannot save mankind.’
16. The state cannot save mankind, either.
17. To trust the state to save is to guarantee frustration.
18. Christians must take the moral high ground.
19. The immoral and violent reactions by civil authorities show the public who is on the moral low ground.
20. The political goal of the protest is to arouse the ire of the public against civil injustice.
21. This tactic requires visible victims.
22. The level of victimization identifies those on the high moral ground.
23. The public cares more about visible victims than about the hidden victims (unborn infants).
24. There are four moral goals of the protest: upholding God, saving the greatest number of innocent lives, changing the minds of the public, and bringing evil-doers to justice.
25. Life is a positive goal.
26. The basic tactical principle of protest is Gideon’s: The action is the reactiom
27. Lives saved nationally should be the national strategic goal, not lives saved locally.
28. The strategy is to change the minds of voters and Supreme Court judges.
29. Protesters should assume that the civil authorities will escalate their violence.
30. Christians must adopt institutional rules that will reduce the likelihood of violence and bad manners within the ranks of the protesters.
31. The protesting group should be committed to the five covenant rules of protest.
32. We need a fanaticism of relentless perseverance.
33. Protesters should first count the cost.
34. The goal is long-term political victory.
35. The protest tactics must be structured in terms of self-government under biblical law.
36. Biblical justice still appeals to the hearts of men (Deuteronomy 4).
37. There will be an escalation of confrontation as time goes on (C. S. Lewis).
38. ‘Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.’ - Ben Franklin”

Chapter 4 Summary (pp. 101-102):

1. Jeremiah was a covenantal agent of God.
2. He brought God’s covenant lawsuit before Judah.
3. The people initially listened to Jeremiah’s message (given through Baruch the scribe).
4. The lesser magistrates initially listened.
5. The king cut the scroll into pieces and tossed them in the fire.
6. The lesser magistrates sided with the king.
7. Jeremiah sent another scroll: the double witness.
8. Christians can lawfully speak prophetically today.
9. Christians must protest publicly because we do not know whether God has given up the nation to the invaders.
10. There are always false prophets who deny God’s covenant sanctions in history, especially negative sanctions.
11. Churches should call publicly to account wicked behaviour by civil rulers.
12. Churches should use the imprecatory psalms - psalms of negative judgment.
13. The intercessor is a saint.
14. The saint has access to God’s holy sanctuary.
15. The saint is God’s counselor.
16. The saint calls down God’s sanctions.
17. The next stage of protest is civil disobedience.
18. The watchman who fails to warn men of the impending negative sanctions must bear those sanctions personally.
19. The final stage of protest is armed revolution: corporate interposition.
20. This can be organized lawfully only by lower magistrates.
21. ‘Single-issue’ political action is biblical.
22. When the enemy imposes negative sanctions, the proper response is personal interposition, either legal or physical.
23. Non-violent interposition does not require the approval of lesser magistrates.
24. Jesus was the ultimate interposer.
25. He bore the sanctions of God, administered by unjust men.
26. The interposer may sometimes bear the state’s physical sanctions.
27. Christians must resist the evil one.
28. This resistance can be non-violent.
29. If protesters are unwilling to bear the state’s sanctions voluntarily, then they should not escalate the level of protest.
30. The confrontation is ultimately covenantal: bringing God’s covenant lawsuit.

Chapter 5 Summary (pp. 118-119):

1. Christian protesters are called revolutionaries by non-protesting Christians.
2. Revolution is a discontinuous disruption in history.
3. The Bible teaches that social continuity is God’s gift to those societies that are covenantally faithfull: inheritance.
4. A revolution against evil is a curse from God: disinheritance.
5. Evildoers get a few generations to repent or to compound their evil.
6. They are cut off in history if they persist in their evil.
7. God grants long-term peace to covenant-keeping societies.
8. The saints persevere.
9. A saint is someone who has legal access to God’s sanctuary.
10. He is God’s counselor, just as Moses was.
11. Moses appealed to covenant promises: continuity.
12. The true saint finishes what he begins.
13. If a protest is righteous, it will draw righteous followers.
14. This sometimes takes many years (Roe v. Wale).
15. The longer a righteous person waits, the higher the costs.
16. Protests escalate over time greater risk.
17. Fanatics on both sides are also attracted as the protest escalates.
18. God will disinherit a society that allows public evil to escalate unopposed.
19. Satan’s revolution was a discontinuity against righteousness.
20. Adam was disinherited by execution.
21. God the Father restores righteous continuity with the ultimate discontinuity the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
22. This re-established continuity is unbreakable.
23. Satan seeks a continuity of evil.
24. The gospel’s ethical discontinuity (adoption), threatens Satan’s continuity.
25. Satan is progressively disinherited as God’s regenerating grace spreads.
26. God’s continuity is ethical: biblical law.
27. Covenant-keepers affirm a continuity of obedience.
28. The true revolutionary is the one who seeks to maintain the continuity of Satan’s evil reign.
29. The true counter-revolutionary is the one who brings Christ’s discontinuous gospel to the lost.
30. The discontinuity of the gospel is from wrath to grace, from death to life.
31. Rahab was a righteous revolutionary.
32. Conversion is a revolutionary act against the continuity of evil.
33. Both Satan and God offer an inheritance.
34. Satan lies about his offer.
35. Satan hates man and hates life.
36. Satan is the great promoter of abortion: the death of man.

Political Polytheism -- Start Here

2010-08-25T00:15:00.000-07:00

I would like to introduce a four-blog book review of Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism by Gary North, published in 1989 by The Institute for Christian Economics, Tyler, Texas.

This book is over 700 pages long and contains over 290,000 words. In my four-part review, I manage to reduce this down by 90%, or approximately 29,000 words. Even that is an awfully lot for many people, and so in the interests of reaching as many people as possible, who may not have time to read the book, let alone my blog, I offer the following shortened reviews (to be read in descending order relative to your attention span!):

Sonnet (apologies to Shakespeare):

There is a stubborn man named Gary North,
Who writes things that would raise the very ire,
Of Christians raised on flags red, white and blue,
Who’ve died to save its Constitution rare!
But No, says North, its founders lost their way,
Rejecting Pilgrims’ plan of Covenant,
Before Almighty God and His sound Law,
On Western shores escaping England’s king.
And placed instead before the people dim,
A Unitarian’s delightful fare,
The dreams of Masons, Deists—lawless all!
And so we languish here e’en ‘til today,
Awaiting God’s just wrath upon our land,
Until Christ’s reign comes forth in space and time.

Gothic (apologies to Edgar Allen Poe The Raven):

Once upon a nation's founding,
Came Monroe with freedom sounding,
Liberty and peace abounding,
Bounding round from shore to shore.

Articles Confederated,
Quickly deemed too antiquated,
Puritans black and much out-dated,
Gated out and shown the door.

Rousseau, Locke and sundry thinkers,
Masons, Deists, other thinkers,
Plotters deep and all them stinkers,
Tinkers of th'American Way.

States thirteen now stand united,
Bound by human god beknighted,
Trinitarian God not cited,
Set aside by sleight of hand.

Constitution over-rated,
Pluralism soon outdated,
Christians almost now sedated...
Gary North says, "Nevermore!"

Christians rise reclaim your charter,
With pluralism do not barter,
Let Covenant God become your starter,
Starting new with Christ the King!

Haiku (apologies to the Japanese):

Constitution’s fine,
Unless you’re a true Christian.
Otherwise, decline!

Washington et al,
Masons and/or Deists all.
U. S. up the creek!

Reading North is a pain,
If you believe all is well.
Avoid him and risk hell!

Yank Constitution
Christian? It really is not--
Christ nonetheless reigns!

One thing’s for certain,
The Puritans had it right,
God’s Law IS for today!

Our mission is clear,
Christ’s Kingdom must reign on earth,
In space and in time.

Limerick (apologies to the Irish):

America founded by Christians?
North views it with solemn suspicion.
The Deists and Masons,
Took over the nation,
Before it set forth on its mission!

Twitter (apologies to people with attention spans greater than 10 seconds):

The American Constitution’s supposedly Christian, but its origins are Unitarian. God’s covenant sanctions still apply, so let us amend it or die! There’s no neutrality!

Click on the following links to proceed to the other sections of this review.

Introduction

Political Polytheism -- Part 1

Political Polytheism -- Part 2

Political Polytheism -- Part 3

Political Polytheism -- Part 4

Political Polytheism -- Part 4

2010-08-23T01:16:00.000-07:00

Click on the following links to proceed to the other sections of this review.

Introduction

Political Polytheism -- Part 1

Political Polytheism -- Part 2

Political Polytheism -- Part 3

Political Polytheism -- Part 4
This is the last of a four-blog book review of Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism by Gary North, published in 1989 by The Institute for Christian Economics, Tyler, Texas.

As in the earlier parts of my blog, Part 4 consists primary of substantive quotes taken directly from North’s book, along with occasional comments.

Part 4 of North’s book is labelled Restoring the National Covenant. Chapters 11-12 outline North’s strategy for reclaiming and re-establishing the United States as a nation truly under God.

In the Introduction to Part 4, North moves from the theoretical to the practical, from the realm of ideas to the realm of action. He states (pp. 558-559), “…the long-term goal of Christians should be the preaching of the comprehensive gospel of salvation, including the supernatural healing of all institutions. Christians should also pray for and expect a huge revival, so that a vast majority of Americans will convert to saving faith in Jesus Christ. If this future postmillennial revival does not take place, then any attempt to establish a national covenant will fail, long-term. It is not our job as Christians to ram religion down everyone’s throat. We must recognize that if postmillennialism is wrong, then the pursuit of the national covenant really is utopian. Worse; it would require massive coercion or deception. We dare not imitate the deceptive strategy of James Madison and his national covenant-breaking accomplices. We also dare not be premature, as Cromwell was.

“The first step is to adopt a slogan. Every revolution needs slogans. Here is mine: politics fourth. First comes personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (not just Savior). Second comes Church renewal. There can be no successful reformation of society without first beginning a reformation of the Church. s Third comes family renewal. This involves pulling your children out of the public schools. Fourth comes local politics. At a minimum, this would involve public protests against abortion. From there we go to state and national politics….

“Where should Christians begin? What is required by God today is for His people to press for comprehensive covenant renewal at every level of civil government? Christians must bring a covenant lawsuit against this present social order.”

Chapter 11 A New National Covenant

Chapters 1-10 notwithstanding, North is not ready to abandon all hope for the United States, and he is certainly not planning to ‘down tools’, climb up onto his rooftop and gaze longingly with pre-millenial, Rapturist eyes into the heavens, awaiting transport out of this veil of tears. Instead, he begins discussing the strategy for national renewal, and states (p. 565-566), “The continuing presence of the Church in the United States provides the covenantal continuity with the true founders of this nation, those bands of Calvinistic Christians who fled from Europe in the seventeenth century and came here to build a city on a hill. The Founding Fathers were the nearly forgotten men like William Bradford of Plymouth Colony and John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony….

“There is covenantal continuity in the United States as surely as there was in the Northern Kingdom in Elijah’s day. It is the continuing presence of people who affirm the gospel that provides covenantal continuity with the past, as well as with the future. It is this covenantal continuity that will bring forth (and has brought forth) God’s historic sanctions – sanctions leading either to national oblivion, as they did in North Africa in the seventh century, or to covenantal restoration. Let us pray that it will be the latter….

“The U.S. Constitution is one step beyond Jeroboam’s golden calves, but not yet the covenant of Ahab and Jezebel. Today’s political leaders are the judicial equivalent of Jeroboam’s priesthood. They are morally superior to Ahab’s 450 priests of Baal and 450 priests of the groves (Asherah). Christians therefore should defend the golden calf of the Constitution as a temporary device that gives us freedom to work for an eventual return to Jerusalem.”

To forestall the even-more-disastrous slide into Baalistic paganism, North advocates two immediate measures to be taken (pp. 567-568), “…the first step: churches must excommunicate anyone who remains a Mason…. Step two is also clear: Christians must pull their children out of the public schools….

“These steps are both positive and negative. Excommunicating Freemasons purifies the body of Christ. It makes plain the covenantal choices involved in taking self-valedictory oaths. Pulling children out of government schools means putting them into Christian schools. But these steps are only the beginning. Much more needs to be done. The long-term national political goal has to be the substitution of a Trinitarian national oath for the present prohibition against religious test oaths. We need to fight nothing (no test oaths) with something (Trinitarian test oaths). So far, Christians have accepted nothing on principle. In the world of political pluralism, nothing (no test oaths) is something (judicial atheism).”

North concludes Chapter 11 (p. 572), “The Constitution will eventually be amended, so that the religion of the nation is at last consistently manifested in its incorporating covenant document. Either the society will be remade by the politicians, bureaucrats, and hidden hierarchies into a secular society, top to bottom, or else it will become a Christian society, bottom to top. A halfway covenant Christianity cannot survive this clash of irreconcilable worldviews. Neither can a halfway covenant secular humanism. One or the other will triumph, or else lose to a third unified worldview.”

Chapter 12 The Restoration of Biblical Pluralism

A disturbing, yet possibly relevant, thought just passed through my head. North published Political Pluralism in 1989. This was a full twelve years before the events leading up to and subsequent to 9/11. It was before the wars in Kuwait, Iraq and now Afghanistan. It was, in short, before the no-longer-secretive/hidden rise of radical Islam (the adjective ‘radical’ being, perhaps, redundant). How does North’s thesis stand up, namely, that the issue is between the covenant theologies of Christianity vs secular humanism and statism?

Personally, I cannot easily return to what my thinking was like in 1989 vis a vis Islam. I probably didn’t think about it much at all, and did not do so until the first President Bush led the push to defend Kuwait against the invasion by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. All of that perspective has change markedly since 1989, and now throughout the world we see the rise in influence and militancy of Islam, a decidedly and unabashedly covenantal faith, declaring both the blessings of Allah on those who worship Him and the curse of jihad upon infidels who don’t. So I am wondering whether either American or Australian society has the necessary time required for events to play themselves out between Christianity and out-and-out paganism, when both now face being overwhelmed politically by Islam? The seeds are certainly there, and this third member has well and truly forced its way onto a stage set out by North to consist of just two players: covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers. Islam certainly sees itself as working to transform societies in which it exists to live and be governed by the dictates of Sharia Law. Would that Christianity took its faith as seriously!

Further, many secularists within both American and Australian societies view conservative Evangelicals with disdain and/or loathing, They see this ‘brand’ of Christianity as what needs expunged from the debate about the emerging Australian society of the 21st century. Fully embracing multi-culturalism and opening Australia up to all manner of immigration (while at the same time completely rejecting any discussion over Christian influences in the building of Australia as a nation), the secularists nonetheless are exposing themselves unwittingly to the potential of Islam overwhelming Australian secularism far before the time when Christian Reconstructions can reform it along the lines North is proposing. In actual fact, the danger posed to secularism by Islam far exceeds the danger Islam poses for Christians! England and Europe are much farther down the path of national Islamisation than either Australia or the United States, but the process is the same. But I digress...back to North.

Plunging, into Chapter 12, it would seem that North also had forebodings of future disaster (pp. 577-578), “I am convinced that both the West and the Far East are about to experience a major transformation. It has already begun. The pace f social change is already rapid and will get faster. The technological possibility of a successful Soviet nuclear strike against the United States grows daily; so does the possibility of chemical and biological warfare; G so does the threat of an AIDS epidemic. None of these threats to civilization may prove in retrospect to be devastating, but they are certainly perceived today as threats. Added to these grim possibilities is the much more predictable threat of an international economic collapse as a result of the vast build-up of international debt; this in turn could produce domestic political transformations.

"Also possible is the spread of terrorism and Marxist revolution. Drug addiction is spreading like a plague. Changes in the weather as a result of the use of fossil fuels (the ‘greenhouse effect’) are in the newspapers because of international drought. Agricultural output may be endangered, long term, by weather changes and also by soil erosion. We are not sure. What Christians should be certain of is this: God has been plowing up our ethically erosion-prone world since World War I, and this process is accelerating.”

So, how would North’s theocracy be implemented? He states (pp. 584-585), “I suspect that we Reconstructionists… are the only Christians on earth calling for the building of a biblical theocracy. What I also suspect is that what really disturbs our neo-evangelical academic critics is that we perceive this theocracy as a system of decentralized power. We call for a vast purging of present-day national power, both political and economic. We call for the dismantling of the welfare-warfare State, most notably every aspect of taxpayer-financing for education (except for the national military academies . . . maybe). I have called for a reduction of aggregate taxes to the level required by I Samuel 8: where all levels of civil government combined are allowed to collect less than 10 percent of people’s annual income. I support the abolition of the local property tax, as well as all state and national direct taxation of individuals and corporations, which includes the graduated income tax, the Social Security tax, the corporate income tax, the capital gains tax, and all sales taxes. I recommend the abolition of all direct taxation by any agency of civil government above the local township or county; every other level of civil government would be forced to seek its revenues by taxing the level of civil government immediately below it. Civil governments above the most local would have to live off the revenues collected from other civil governments. This would decentralize power with a vengeance. The Reconstructionists’ version of theocracy is a decentralized system of multiple competing governments in which the modern messianic State and its economic subsidies would be dismantled. By modern political standards, such a vision of the shrinking of the centralized power of civil government is nothing short of utopian.

“In short, if the Reconstructionists’ version of theocracy were to be voted into operation, the tenured, subsidized intellectual class to which our academic critics belong would experience the end of its taxpayer-financed bonanza. An entire class would have to enter the competitive free market and seek productive employment. Consumers would reward former college professors in terms of what consumers want to buy, not what state legislatures want to buy. There would be no more compulsory education and no more tax support of existing schools. This fear, rather than the fear of theocratic tyranny, may well be the true underlying concern of our critics. If not, it should be….”

“The basis for building a Christian society is evangelism and missions that lead to a widespread Christian revival, so that the great mass of earth’s inhabitants will place themselves under Christ’s protection, and then voluntarily y use His covenantal laws for self government.”

TOTAL TAXATION TO BE LESS THAN 10%! The notion is so astounding as to border on the preposterously ridiculous! It is hard to even imagine anything close to it, given that within Australia the GST (Goods and Services Tax) alone amounts to 10% on most purchases barring food and medical services. The sad reality, however, that Christians are no less addicted to the public teat than the rest of society. We have not so much left the stage to the forces of pagan Statism—we have exited the theatre of world dominion under Christ entirely!

North continues (p. 586), “Let’s get this straight: Christian reconstruction depends on majority rule. More than this; it depends on overwhelming acceptance of the biblical covenant, perhaps as high as the 80% range of adult acceptance. In the initial stages of the Constitutional reform movement, such as today, Christians are under the civil rule of the majority. We must work within a covenantally alien system, and we must do so peacefully. We expect positive feedback in history for covenantal faithfulness. Over a long period of time — or in a shorter period in the midst of a massive revival and national crisis — the majority of the society then becomes Christian. After the Christians have had decades of experience in many areas of leadership and followership, they will have proven to themselves and to non-Christians that they are competent to rule because the law of God is reliable. People will have seen biblical casuistry in action for generations. Only then can a broad consensus arise in both Christian and non-Christian segments of the population that a theocratic republic is the best way to organize the decentralized, limited-State system of civil government.”

North then launches into an extended exposition on the post-millenialism that underpins his point of view. He states (p. 588-589) “First, we Calvinistic postmillennialists disagree with both groups concerning the supposed impotence of the gospel in history in changing whole societies, person by person, covenant institution by covenant institution. We believe that the Holy Spirit will impose His will on the recalcitrant hearts of huge numbers of people, just as He has always imposed His will on each recalcitrant heart every time He has saved anyone from his sins. God is utterly sovereign in election and salvation….

“I short, man does not have free (autonomous) will. Paul was correct. Augustine was therefore correct against Pelagius; Luther was correct against Erasmus; Calvin was correct against Pighius; and the Puritans were correct against the latitudinarians. Man’s lack of free will is why God can easily change the spiritual condition of this world in order to give the human race freedom.

“Second, because we Calvinistic Christian Reconstructionists believe that the Holy Spirit forces hearts to change – the doctrine of irresistible grace — we also believe that human institutions are not allowed to seek to coerce men’s hearts and minds. Such coercion of the human will– its transformation prior to the permission of the individual whose will is being transformed — is a monopoly that belongs exclusively to God….

“Third, because we postmillennialists find it taught in the Bible that there will be a future outpouring of this soul-transforming Holy Spirit — the only possible basis of the Bible’s prophesied millennial blessings — we disagree with premillennialist and amillennialists concerning the limited extent of the Spirit’s work in the future. The kingdom will not be brought in by a bureaucratic theocratic regime, but by the heart-transforming work of the Holy Spirit.”

(p. 590) “Christian Reconstructionists call instead for a decentralized, international, theocratic republic. Such a republic is ethically necessary, now and in the future, and it will be historically possible in the future, when the Holy Spirit begins His visibly triumphant sweep of the nations.”

North describes his ideal, reconstructed society, (p. 594), “What I am talking about in this book is a republic in which legal access to the franchise and seats of elected and appointed political authority are open only to those who take a Trinitarian civil oath of allegiance and who are also communicant members in good standing in churches that profess a Trinitarian creed. I call this Athanasian pluralism….

“What Christian Reconstructionists are saying is that the mark of judicial sovereignty in a Christian civilization will be membership in a Trinitarian church. The issue here is civil sanctions. Those not formally under God’s eternal sanctions — the ecclesiastical marks of baptism and regular holy communion – in a Trinitarian society would not be biblically authorized to impose God’s negative civil sanctions.”

(p. 595) “We are therefore once again brought back to the question of judicial sanctions, the stumbling block of the Protestant era. We need to understand that the sacraments are judicial, not merely memorial (nominalism) and not ‘infusional’ (realism). They are judicial and covenantal. They identify the person who acknowledges that he or she is under God’s historical and eternal sanctions, both positive and negative. By placing oneself under these sanctions, the person is enabled to bring God’s dominion covenant into effect. He works out his faith in fear and trembling under God (Phil. 2:12). He executes judgment in history as a covenant-keeper under God’s sanctions.

“We acknowledge that a person under God’s sacramental covenant obligations aid blessings has implicitly and visibly affirmed the covenant’s sanctions in history. If a person has lawful access to the sacraments, what would lawfully keep him from exercising the church franchise? Only his refusal to pay the required tithe. This raises the question of the suffrage and taxation.”

(pp. 596-597), “The principle of suffrage is covenantal: one must be formally under the eternal sanctions of God in order lawfully to execute the sanctions of God, in both Church and State. One must be under the penalties of equal-percentage taxation in order to have authority in allocating the revenues from taxation. The biblical model for a theocratic republic would restrict voting to those who are voting (i.e., tithe-paying) members of local churches, and who are also taxpaying citizens. The payment of taxes is not sufficient to gain a person access to the ballot box; resident aliens pay taxes today, but they do not legally vote. There must be something more: a voluntary acceptance of the national covenant. So it is with theocratic republicanism, but with this added provision: there must also be a voluntary acceptance of the Church covenant. Strict voluntarism means judicial independence, i.e., adult status. In Old Testament Israel, this occurred at age 20, when a man became eligible for military numbering (Ex. 30:14). There seems to be no New Testament reason to change this age standard.”

(p. 598) “Church discipline must be imposed in terms of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Because the churches have not taken seriously baptism, the Lord’s Supper, membership rolls, and excommunication for well over two centuries, the civil government has had no clear model. When the churches do start taking these things seriously, persecution and lawsuits against Church leaders will begin. Our enemies who now control civil government will instinctively perceive the threat to their power, and they will take steps to stop it. They cannot safely allow the Church to begin imposing sanctions against the sins of this age.”

North is 100% serious about the matter of Church-imposed sanctions (p. 599-600), “But the long-term goal is clear: infant baptism and also week~ communion for all baptized church members. If God’s people reject the legitimacy and necessity of the sanctions of covenant theology in the churches, then surely they will not persuade anyone else regarding the sanctions of covenant theology in civil government.

"Once this is done, the negative sanction of public excommunication will become meaningful. People must be consigned to hell verbally from the pulpit after excommunication. This is not done today. Other churches must honor these excommunications. This is also not done today. The modern Church simply pays no attention to God’s ecclesiastical sanctions. Therefore, pagans pay very little attention to the churches. Why should they? The church is like an army without hierarchical order and without sanctions against mutiny. Such an army cannot win a battle. Pagans instinctively recognize this; Christians may also sense it, but then they blame eschatology rather than their own judicial cowardice. Reform must begin with self-government under God’s law.”

North moves on to family sanctions. For example, (pp. 600-601), “Parents should not finance, attend, or in any way sanction a marriage of a communicant member child to anyone who is not a communicant member of a Trinitarian church. That Christian parents refuse to honor this requirement is one reason why they are losing their children. They are afraid to apply sanctions. They think this would not be loving. So their children conclude that God really does not care if they marry pagans, since God’s lawful representatives over them, parents and churches, do not care enough to threaten public sanctions. Church leaders should prohibit parents from participating in such wedding ceremonies. When a father symbolically delivers his daughter to the covenantal authority of a pagan husband, he is covenantally sending her into bondage, a symbol of hell. Christian parents are so utterly ignorant of covenant theology and the concept of authority and sanctions that they do this without a thought….

“The second area of family responsibility is also flagrantly ignored: the responsibility of parents to educate their children. Christian parents send their children into the judicially and self-consciously pagan environment of the public schools. Parents are not acting faithfully as representatives when they do this. They are tithing their children to the State. They are tempting God to break the covenantal inheritance of their children. Until the vast majority of Christians pull their children out of the public schools, there will be no possibility of creating a theocratic republic. The Unitarians who invented modern public education...and the Masons in churches today who religiously support the public schools have done their covenantal work well.”

Finally, and in regards to the re-imposition of civil sanctions under a reconstructed theocracy, North states regarding abortion (p. 602), “When the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 made illegal all state and local civil sanctions against the practice of abortion, it thereby sanctioned murder. There is no neutrality. This ethical fact is clearer on the abortionists’ table than anywhere else in America. This is why a growing number of Christians have been mobilized on this point. But this is still a minority of Christians in America.

“We need prayer in the churches that God will withhold His judgments in history against the United States so that Christians can gain more time to fight this intolerable evil. If Christians do this, they will step by step be led to the philosophy of Trinitarian politics and away from political pluralism. This is what the abortionists failed to recognize in time. The tide has begun to turn. It is time for each Christian regularly to picket a local abortion clinic or even stand together with others (under publicly stated church sanctions) in the doorways of abortion clinics to close them for a day or more (if possible).”

North concludes Chapter 12 with these words (p. 603), “Christians in the Protestant era have not wanted to think about God’s sanctions in history. This has been the number-one ethical, theological, and institutional problem ever since the Protestant Reformation: the nature of legitimate sanctions in Church and State. (The Roman Church abandoned biblical law early in the Middle Ages; this rejection of point three of the biblical covenant has been an ecumenical sin of omission ever since. ) Because Christians have self-consciously refused to exercise God’s sanctions in history — in Church, State, and family – we are now facing an escalating series of crises in Church, State, and family. Only repentance and reform will change the modern world’s course toward a head-on collision with God’s historical sanctions. Reform must begin with self-government under God’s law.”

Chapter 13 Winners and Losers in History

Referring to three key Scripture texts (Psalm 1101-3, Isaiah 65:20, 1 Corinthians 15:25-20), North begins with these words (p. 605), “The Bible is clear: Jesus Christ sits at God’s right hand until the final judgment, at which time He will leave the throne, return in glory, and end the curse of bodily death. Premillennialism denies this; Jesus is supposed to leave the throne in heaven to reign on earth for a thousand years – a discontinuity not taught in Psalm 110. Second, before the final judgment takes place, the world will experience increased life spans far beyond what is common today. This extension of life has to take place before the final judgment, since there are still sinners operating in history (Isa. 65:20). Thus, there has to be a literal era of earthly blessings ahead of us before Jesus returns to earth at the final judgment: a continuity marked by God’s visible blessings for the culture at large, in response to covenantal faithfulness. Amillennialism denies this; the continuity of history for amillennialism is downward, spiritually, for the culture at large. In short, postmillennialism is the only possible valid eschatology. All other eschatologies are incorrect. (Why beat around the bush? , I always say.) Only postmillennialism affirms and explains both the biblical doctrine of historic kingdom continuity (Matt. 13:24-30; 36-43), which premillennialism denies, and also the biblical doctrine of God’s external covenant sanctions in history, which amillennialism denies.”

North summarises his assessment of amillenialism (pp. 609-610), “Amillennialism’s eschatology is a product of its view of covenant sanctions in history. Evil men become more powerful as time goes on, while covenant-keepers become culturally impotent. Amillennialism therefore preaches postmillennial victory for covenant breakers. Its advocates refuse to say this publicly, for obvious reasons, but this is exactly what they preach. It-is not that the amillennialist denies postmillennialism. He affirms postmillennialism wholeheartedly. He just says that it is a manifestation of Satan’s kingdom in history rather than God’s kingdom in history.

"Try to recruit a volunteer army of Christian soldiers with this eschatology. Try to sell ‘defeat without a Rapture’ to people who are not theological masochists. The Greek Orthodox Church has such a view of history; so does the Russian Orthodox Church. Both churches have a false view of the Holy Ghost: kenotic theology, a theology of victory in eternity through inevitable Christian suffering throughout history. What this view got them was, respectively, Islamic tyranny and Communist tyranny. We need to do better than this….

“Nothing less than a comprehensive replacement of humanism and occultism with Christianity will suffice to please God. We are called to work for the progressive replacement of humanist civilization by Christian civilization, a replacement that was definitively achieved with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, and manifested by the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We are to replace Satan’s humanistic kingdoms.”

North anticipates worldwide revival (pp. 610-611), “Christian Reconstructionists are self-consciously attempting to lay new intellectual foundations for a comprehensive moral and therefore intellectual, social, political, and economic transformation of the world. Not until at least the preliminary steps in this theological and intellectual transformation are accomplished can we expect God to send worldwide revival. If the coming revival is not comprehensive in its effects, it will no more change the world permanently than earlier revivals have changed it permanently. The regeneration of people’s souls is only the first step on the road to comprehensive redemption. Cornelius Van Til, who died in 1987, has issued this profound warning: ‘The temptation is very great for the believers in these times when the Church is in apostasy, and its conquest of the world for Christ seems to be losing out, that they shall spend a great deal of their time in passive waiting instead of in active service. Another danger that lurks at a time of apostasy is that the few faithful ones give up the comprehensive ideal of the kingdom and limit themselves to the saving of individual souls.’ We need a comprehensive revival that will produce comprehensive redemption.

“We must understand from the beginning that the message of the kingdom of God rests on a concept of salvation which is supernaturally imparted, not political y imparted. The kingdom of God is categorically not a narrow political program of social transformation; it is rather a supernaturally imposed salvational program that inevitably produces world-changing political, social, legal, and economic effects.”

(p. 612) “Christians who doubt the future earthly triumph of God’s kingdom tend to be less confident and less sure about the practical reliability of the Bible’s blueprints. Sometimes they even deny that the Bible offers such blueprints. If it really does offer such blueprints, then evangelical Christians have major responsibilities outside the comfortable sanctuaries of church and family.

“This prospect of worldwide, culture-wide responsibility frightens millions of Christians. They have gone so far as to adopt eschatologies that assure them that God does not hold them personally or corporately responsible for anything so comprehensive as the ethical and institutional transformation of today’s sin-filled world.”

(p. 614) “This should not be a time for pessimism among Christians. Yet it is. The y are missing an opportunist y that has not been seen since the late eighteenth century, and possibly since the resurrection of Christ. A universal world civilization now exists for the first time since the
Tower of Babel. It is disintegrating morally as it grows wealthy. It is ripe for the harvest. A successful harvesting operation requires tools. To take advantage of this unique historical opportunity, Christians need tools of dominion –blueprints for the reconstruction of the world. But Christians today do not see that God has given them the tools of dominion, His revealed law.”

North concludes Part 4 with these words (p. 621), “God wants every nation to have its political citizenship match its people’s heavenly citizenship. This goal can be achieved positively: by widespread conversions of political citizens to saving covenantal faith in Jesus Christ. This new political order can subsequently be maintained — though not without continuing widespread conversions — on a judicially negative basis: by removing legal access to the franchise and civil offices from those who refuse to become communicant members of Trinitarian churches. Very few Christians believe that the former strategy is possible, and even fewer of them believe that the latter strategy is moral. Christians therefore continue to live under apostate civil covenants. They continue to affirm implicitly and even explicitly that there is one area of life which is immune to the gospel, and required by God to remain immune from the gospel: civil government. They really believe that if every voter on earth were a Christian, all civil constitutions should remain religious y neutral on principle. Meanwhile, they insist: there is no neutrality. They ignore James’ warning: ‘A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.’ (James 1:8).”

North then moves into his conclusion for the entire book. He states (pp. 630-631), “The Constitutional capture of America by the Unitarians in 1788 was based on the myth of neutrality. They destroyed the biblical State covenant at the national level, and then quietly, unobtrusively substituted apostate state and local covenants. This was also done in the name of neutrality, as Rushdoony has said so well. In short, new covenant, new god. This new god is revealed by his law-order in American society.

“Rushdoony writes that ‘in any culture the source of the law is the god of that society.’ The source of biblical law is the God of the Bible. His moral character is revealed in His laws — all His laws, not just the Ten Commandments. Without biblical law at the center of society’s legal order, its legal order testifies falsely regarding the true source of all morally valid laws, namely, the God of the Bible. It testifies falsely regarding God. A society is in rebellion against God to the extent that its people refuse to acknowledge in the civil realm the terms of the civil covenant. There is a specific legal order which God requires in His Word. God is totally sovereign, as manifested by the presence of His required laws and sanctions. A society that denies the continuing judicial validity of Old Testament civil law in general thereby refuses to acknowledge that this world was, is, and ever shall be a theocracy. God rules. How does a nation testify in history to this fact? God’s rules. To the extent that the legal order does not conform to the legal standard that God announces in His Bible, to that extent is a society in rebellion against God….

“That God requires Trinitarian evangelism to be law-oriented is denied by virtually all Christian denominations and congregations today. They deny that God reveals himself in New Testament times as clearly through His law as He did in the Old Testament. Christians should ask themselves: Why would God choose to reveal himself less clearly in the New Testament era by allowing every society except Puritan New England to adopt a law-order other than what He revealed in the Old Testament? The theonomists have an answer to this intriguing question. God allows this only to prove a point: the visible failure in history of all law-orders compared to the visible success of His revealed law-order. This visible failure can then become a tool of evangelism.”

(p. 632) “The question of questions for Christian applied theology, ethics, and social theory is this one: Why should Christians accept as their long-term earthly goal the establishment of any system of civil law other than the one set forth in the Bible? In other words, why should Christians affirm in principle the acceptability of any law-order other than biblical law? Why should they enthusiastically choose second best, third-best, or even totalitarian civil order in preference to biblical law? Why is their last choice always biblical law? We could search for answers in psychology, sociology, education, and in any other academic specialties. I prefer to begin looking for the answer in the area of ethics: Christians prefer irresponsibility.”

(p. 636) “The cultural advantage swings to the covenant keepers whenever they honor the external laws of God’s covenant. Their obedience brings visible, external blessings (Deut. 28:1-14), while the rebellious receive visible blessings more and more in terms of their public honoring of the kingdom principles announced by the covenant- keepers. If they refuse to adapt, they grow weak and eventually disappear in history. Those who survive become increasingly dependent on the good behavior and good works of covenant-keepers. This dependence tends to persuade them to reduce their persecution of covenant-keepers. They hire them because covenant-keepers — when the latter are adhering to the external laws of God’s covenant — are honest, effective workers. They buy from them for the same reason. Service leads to dominion.”

By this stage, if you have managed to plow through over 600 pages of North’s book, you might feel like screaming out, “Hey, I believe you already! But please show me an example or two of God blessing and cursing nations on the basis of their covenant-keeping and covenant-breaking!” This North finally does (pp. 636-637):

“The law of God is the primary tool of dominion that God offers to all men, irrespective of their personal faith. He gives the Holy Spirit to His people, but if His people refuse for a season to honor the terms of the covenant, while God-rejecting men willingly adopt the external terms of the covenant, then the latter will prosper externally. The best example of this process in recent history is the reversal of economic power between Japan and the United States, 1945-1988. The Japanese, not being Protestants, nevertheless adopted the Protestant ethic of their American conquerors. The Americans, having become the richest people on earth by their adherence to this ethic, steadily abandoned it in the post-War era. They concluded incorrectly that the might of their hands had gotten them this wealth (Deut. 8:17). Worse; they concluded that public education had gotten them this wealth. They began to worship at the temple of the State. They began to put more faith in formal tests than in actual on the-job productivity. In this sense, Confucianism progressively conquered America, and one of the worst aspects of Confucianism: the worship of bureaucratic status based on examinations.

“Long-term, it requires that God grant special grace (regeneration) to large numbers of people in order for a society to adhere to the external terms of the covenant. But in the short run, which can last several generations, the appropriate visible blessings of the covenant can go to those who are committed only externally to particular terms of the covenant. Japan, for example, was the first nation to adopt abortion as a national policy. Why should the Japanese be uniquely blessed? It is a case of comparative obedience: the Soviet Union and the Chinese also began to promote abortions as national policy; the United States accepts its legality, and its intellectual leaders are overwhelmingly pro-abortion. So, God looks at other aspects of the covenant, those related to the economics of dominion: honesty, hard work, precise work, rigorous education, thrift, future orientation, etc. In these areas, the Japanese excel. They therefore receive the lion’s share of the external blessings. If they refuse to convert to faith in Jesus Christ, however, they will find it impossible to adhere as a nation to the external terms of the covenant. The rising sun will set.”

One can note here again that, while North published Political Polytheism in 1989, Japan has for the lasts ten years or so been in a period of steady economic decline and stagnation economically. The United States itself, since the Global Financial Crisis, is not far behind. Which nations are next to rise and fall on the basis of North’s theo-economic analysis?

(p. 642) “It is my view that there are three subordinate tests for orthodoxy, once a person has affirmed the obvious: the virgin birth of Jesus, the Trinity, and the bodily resurrection of Christ. These three tests are: affirming the six-day creation, affirming the worldwide Noachic flood, and affirming the doctrine of hell (lake of fire). There are other tests, but anyone who waffles on one of these should be examined far more carefully; he leaks. He is going to leak a lot more. A Christian who is unwilling to affirm publicly the inescapability of God’s eternal negative covenant sanctions is also unlikely to be willing to insist on the temporal, negative, and covenantal sanctions, for such temporal sanctions are an earnest — down payment — on His final sanctions.”

The Puritans were, however, not absolutely perfect in their understanding and practice of God’s Law in their new colony. North writes (pp. 645-647), “The Puritans of Massachusetts had enacted legislation in 1638 that required local town governments to appropriate tax money to support local Congregational churches. This was an implicit denial of the biblical concept of civil government as a negative institution that brings negative sanctions against public evil. The New England Puritans viewed the State as an agency of positive good, as did all Christians in 1638, and to that extent they adopted to some degree the Greco-Roman view of the messianic State. This misuse of Massachusetts public funds was stopped in 1833….”

(p. 647), “…what the Puritans attempted to do in England, 1640-60, was morally wrong and strategically self-destructive because it was a top down imposition of God’s law. What the New England Puritans attempted to do was valid; there was general agreement about biblical civil law when the society was founded in the wilderness. But immigration and defections, coupled with the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, changed the religious environment in New England. The era of the halfway covenant began .”

Regarding public education, North states (p. 646), “Those Christians who adamantly oppose taxpayer-financed education because of its humanism understand that the myth of educational neutrality is indeed a myth. Nevertheless, the theological roots of the public education system are the same as the theological roots of the U.S. Constitution: the doctrine of moral neutrality in civil government. That Christian Freemasons have supported the public schools and opposed Christian schools system should be no more surprising than the fact that Christian Freemasons supported the U.S. Constitution in 1787 and opposed religious test oaths. That Christian opponents of the public school system support without hesitation the Constitutional provision of prohibiting religious test oaths is surprising. Madison’s theory of the neutral State undergirds both institutions. Public money goes to both systems in the name of civic religious neutrality and common-ground morality.

“Education is the working out of a religious worldview. It cannot be neutral. It will reflect either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of man. It is the outworking of kingdom principles. But we should not make the mistake of thinking that education is itself a separate covenantal calling. It is not on the same level that the Church, State, and family are. It is not marked by a self-valedictory oath. It is analogous to a Christian business, not a church. We must be very wary of investing education with sacramental or covenantal language. This leads back down the path of humanism: education as salvational and messianic.”

Of the relationship between theocracy and democracy, North writes (pp. 649-650), “What the critics of theocracy always assume is that the imposition of God’s law in civil government has to be anti-democratic, i.e., opposed to the principle of political representation. It assumes that civil rulers impose God’s law on recalcitrant citizens, who are somehow deprived of their right or actual ability to bring negative political sanctions against their rulers. But if the Spirit of God moves a vast majority of men to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and if they return to the Old Testament in search of biblical blueprints, then the resulting theocratic republic will be legitimate in terms of democratic theory. That this idea is antithetical to the eschatological visions and schemes of humanists, amillennialists, and premillennialist does not refute the theory. Nevertheless, humanists, amillennialists, and premillennialists continue publicly to misinterpret the position of Christian Reconstruction because these critics are intellectually incapable of equating theocracy with democracy. They do not believe that it is possible for large numbers of people voluntarily to become theonomists; after all, they haven’t!...

“As a subset of this broad social goal is politics. Politically, the only legitimate long-term biblical goal is the creation of a worldwide theocratic republic. It is the creation of a bottom-up political order whose civil courts enforce the law of God, and whose people rejoice, not because such a law-order is natural but because it is supernatural.”

North therefore proposes these changes to the American Constitution (p. 653), “What is needed is a very simple modification of the U.S. Constitution. First, the Preamble should begin: ‘ We the people of the United States, as the lawful delegated agents of the Trinitarian God of the Bible, do ordain and establish. . . .’ Second, Article VI, Clause 3, should state ‘The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all the executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; and a Trinitarian religious Test shall be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.’ These minimal steps would mark the overthrow of the Masonic revolution of 1787”

(pp. 654-655), “…the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787-88 created a new nation based on a new covenant. At that point, the nation broke with its previously Christian judicial roots by covenanting with a new god, the sovereign People. There would be no other God tolerated in the new political order. There would be no appeal beyond this sovereign god. This collective god, speaking through the federal government, began its inevitable expansion, predicted by the Antifederalists, most notably Patrick Henry. The secularization of the republic began in earnest. This process has not yet ceased. Brown is correct: ‘The most revolutionary aspect of the founding of the United States was neither independence nor democracy, but the new government’s official neutrality on religion, which has gradually turned into a mild to severe antagonism toward religion. Lamentably, this antagonism is now helping to undermine all the foundations of a humane America.’

“Nevertheless, this surrender to secular humanism was not an overnight process. The rise of Unitarian abolitionism, the coming of the Civil War, the advent of Darwinism, the expansion of immigration, the spread of the public school system, the rise of state licensing and the concomitant growth of university certification, and a host of other social and political influences have all worked to transform the interdenominational American civil religion into a religion not fundamentally different from the one that Jeroboam set up, so that the people of the Northern Kingdom might not journey to Jerusalem in Judah to offer sacrifices (I Ki. 12:26-31). The golden calves may not be on the hilltops, but the theology is the same: religion exists to serve the needs of the State, and the State is sovereign over the material things of this world. There are many forms of idol worship. The worship of the U.S. Constitution has been a popular form of this ancient practice, especially in conservative Christian circles. It is not seen as a flawed tool in need of revision but as a holy witness to the truth of the moral validity of permanent political pluralism.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Click on the following links to proceed to the other sections of this review.

Introduction

Political Polytheism -- Part 1

Political Polytheism -- Part 2

Political Polytheism -- Part 3

Political Polytheism -- Part 4