“What does it look like when antiestablishmentarianism becomes the establishment?”

In July 2016, in a speech in Cleveland supporting the Republican party nominee Donald Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson highlighted the connection between Hillary Clinton and her mentor, Saul Alinsky.

Famous for his strategies for community organising, Alinsky dedicated his book, “Rules for Radicals,” to “Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.” Carson said:

One of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors, was Saul Alinsky. And her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone that she greatly admired and that affected all of her philosophies subsequently. Now, interestingly enough, let me tell you about Saul Alinsky. He wrote a book called “Rules for Radicals.” On the dedication page it acknowledges Lucifer, “the original radical who gained his own kingdom.”

Now think about that. This is a nation where our founding document the Declaration of Independence talks about certain inalienable rights that come from our Creator. This is a nation where our Pledge of Allegience says that we are “One Nation under God.” This is a nation where every coin in our pocket and every bill in our wallet says “In God we Trust.”

So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that. The secular progressive agenda is antithetical to the principles of the founding of this nation.

And if we continue to allow them to take God out of our lives, God will remove himself from us, we will not be blessed, and our nation will go down the tubes and we will be responsible for that. We don’t want that to happen.

Despite the continued mantra of Hope and Change, the Democratic agenda was nothing more than Alinsky’s “Eight Levels of Control” reheated, garnished with positive spin, and served up to a population now willing to trade true freedom to support an addiction to free sex and free money. Behind Obama’s (very selective) crocodile tears over tragic mass shootings were the cold eyes of Leviathan.

1. Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people.
2. Poverty – Increase the poverty level as high as possible; poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3. Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes and this will produce more poverty.
4. Gun control – Remove people’s ability to defend themselves from the government. That way you are able to create a police state.
5. Welfare – Take control of every aspect of people’s lives (food, housing and income).
6. Education – Take control of what people read and listen to; take control of what children learn in school.
7. Religion – Remove the belief in God from the government and schools.
8. Class warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take from (tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.

Throughout her college career, Clinton followed the community organiser closely, and even dedicated her senior thesis to his strategies for political subversion. Despite her public statements, it is clear from leaked emails and reports from staff that, like Lenin, she regarded her supporters as “useful idiots.”

However, the problem for those who gain power by subversion is that their strategy consists only of deconstruction, of negativity. Despite their empty promises, they are not really for anything but power. Once that power is gained, their incompetence is gradually exposed. The promised Utopia fails to materialise because dissatisfaction and entitlement are out of step with the way the world actually works. Robbery might lead to short term gains but always results in long term losses. This is exactly what the Man discovered in the Garden of Eden. The inability – or perhaps deliberate unwillingness – of even educated people, including the media, to consider the obvious connection between Obama/Clinton and Alinsky reveals just how keen human beings are to facilitate their own destruction for the sake of temporary trinkets and pleasures. Without Christ, even the wise of the world are no different at heart from our first father. So much for the “progress” in Progressivism. The apple never falls far from the Adamic family tree.

For Communism, Socialism, and Progressivism, the abstraction from reality of unworkable policies always becomes apparent in their bitter fruits. Hillary Clinton could not credibly promise any Hope because she offered no discernible Change. The silver lining in the dusty cloud of Obama’s second term was the opportunity it gave him to “reduct” his own agenda “ad absurdum.” Hope and Change turned out to be bribery and bullying, long running scandals, lack of transparency, a Supreme Court ruling that overturned democratic votes on marriage, unaffordable healthcare, gender neutral toilets and continued disasters in foreign policy. History has a habit of revealing what things – and people – really are, and the impotence of “Rabble-Rouser-as-President” has become plain. Woodstock’s laziness, promiscuity and lack of experience are fine until one actually has to produce something, whether it be GDP or the next generation of children, the modern equivalents of the “land” and “womb” curses in Genesis 3 and promises in Genesis 15.

What does it look like when antiestablishmentarianism becomes the establishment? One can only incite hatred between rich and poor in the name of generosity, between black and white in the name of unity, and work to excuse and empower bloodthirsty Islam under a banner of international peace, so many times, before the stench becomes undeniable even by a sycophantic mass media. The inspiring speeches of Obama and Clinton can no longer cover the red-handed evidence of their hypocrisy. Their pretty speeches tinkle emptily from mouths that are gaping, ravenous graves. What they sold as fairness and generosity was in fact the removal of personal, familial and national sovereignty – complete nakedness before enemies of every stripe and at every level. It is one thing to share America’s wealth and power with the world. It is quite another to cut America open, bleed it dry with parasites, expose it to predators and leave the remains for waiting scavengers. The death of America, as with the demise of all great civilisations, would be an inside job.

What follows here is an excerpt from Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved? by Richard Bledsoe, and a recent comment by the author which inspired this post, relating to the recent U.S. election result:

One of the great difficulties that theorists and practitioners are up against—from Blake, Shelley, and Byron to Alinsky—is what happens if their protagonists win? From Robespierre through Lenin to our current time, this becomes an insoluble dilemma. They now become the new Establishment. They have no doctrine of authority that does not see authority as oppressive and inherently evil. The only solution to this dilemma is to promote “eternal revolution,” endless chaos and endless opposition. That culture will masochistically undermine and destroy itself in orgies of self-hatred and self-contempt. Eventually, one reaches an inevitable point where chaos can only be completely destructive and nothing is left to rule. One reaches for the final possibility, which is simply to become an oppressive tyrant. Modern history is littered with terrible examples.

How remarkable that this entire election was an election that was in rebellion against The Establishment! Oh, how times have changed. Once upon a time, The Establishment meant Richard Nixon, Republicans, small businessmen, the mores and ethics of sexual prudes and the straight laced who condemned homosexuality, pre-marital sex, pornography, and promiscuity. It meant, above all, The Protestant Ethos and Churches. Things have completely turned upside-down since the 60s. We are the anti-60s now.

But alas, what happens when Leftists win, and they then become the Establishment? What follows is all that can follow. They have placed themselves in the same impossible position as Lucifer himself, who Alinsky very insightfully dedicated his Rules For Radicals to. What is that impossible position?

Michael Polanyi’s very great work, Personal Knowledge, outlines it all. Knowledge can never, never, never begin with doubt and rebellion as the first movement. All knowledge must begin by first believing something, and acting on that. All later doubt is built on a deeper belief. Lucifer wanted to make doubt and rebellion the first and foremost and even only foundation. After one has rebelled against all that is, there is nothing left, and one can only fall into the abyss. Alinsky is dead right. All Leftism is built on the rock solid foundation of ultimate doubt and rebellion. So what happens after you have won, and then become the Establishment yourself?

All that can happen is fake, fraud, and optical illusion. You become everything you originally claimed to hate and imputed and projected onto your enemy. You become a hypocrite.

The Progressive clatch has become the mirror image of the Ku Klux Klan. If you are a Klansman, you are righteous, and your enemy is the Jew and the Uppity Nigger. The righteousness of the Klansman is beyond doubt. There is no doubt, not about that. That is believed. One only believes in ones’ own outlook and righteousness. It is so beyond doubt that if anyone does doubt a Klansman, it is only because he is a traitor, a hater of all previous glories, a destroyer of civilization.

Now, the righteousness of the Progressive is so complete, so beyond all question, that to not agree with a Progressive can only be for the lowest of motives. To disagree, to vote otherwise, can only be because you are a racist, a homophobe, a misogynist. Riots are in order. Lynchings are in order. The enemy must be cleansed.

The hypocrisy is complete and total. One can only mimic the devil himself, who can be nothing but a hypocrite.

The rabble-rousing of king-of-the-trolls Donald Trump was poetic justice for the creeping death of the globalist “Nothing” of the Left. Just as Jacob outcrafted every serpent in his path, Trump turned the tactics of Alinskyites back upon themselves, and the “consensus” of the principalities and powers was exposed for what it really is – a lie. Trump is a man who has seen it all and done it all, and thus cannot be bought and cannot be shamed, like the world-weary but inevitably wiser author of Ecclesiastes. The major difference is that Shepherd-elect Trump and those with whom he is surrounding himself actually believe in Something. This is something beyond rabble-rousing which for Trump was a means to an end, and even beyond power, which for Trump means the power to serve. This something is a different solution to discontent, not a spiral of never ending revolution but an agenda of strategic construction. Unlike Obama and Clinton, the Washington DC swamp and the now-discredited mass media, the members of Trump’s dream team, despite their flaws, have a history of ingenuity, innovation and productivity.

However, as Voltaire famously said, “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” Turning around a big ship not only takes time, the ship has to really want to turn around. The next four years will certainly be interesting for the United States and for all of Western Culture. Christians know that the iron rod of Jesus, facilitating His agenda of not only salvation, but also of wisdom, among the nations, is the only true source of Hope and Change.

Richard Bledsoe’s Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved?: Jesus Christ in the Obama and Post-Obama Era is available here.

The disintegration of the EU is not the end of the world. It is a sign that the end of the world is anything but nigh.

Western culture as we know it is dying at the hands of usurpers, traitors and prodigals. Even the worst rulers throughout Christian history at least paid lip service to Christ and the Bible, but in Europe today that heritage is openly disparaged.

Race, tribe and religion were rightly identified as the causes of the region’s regular and escalating conflicts and rejected in favor of reason and solidarity. But it turns out that these are not enough to satisfy the hunger for identity in even the most civilized societies. “Blanket” utopian theories of all stripes, left, right and center, have now failed. The prosperity which the secular West aspired to and finally achieved has been quickly exposed as nothing but a means to the same end, and that end is death. Man cannot live on economic theory alone. The voices of the past – ethnicity, territory and faith – still lay claim to the future, and are calling us to violence once again.

Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.

“Virtually every time in the Bible that God gives a promise or a kingdom to someone, the first thing he does is ruin the promise by sinning against God.”

A must-read essay by James B. Jordan   |   www.biblicalhorizons.com

Solomon began to build the Temple of the Lord in the fourth year of his reign, which was 480 years after Israel came out of Egypt, the year A.M. 2993 (1 Kings 6:1).

Seven years later, in the year A.M. 3000, the Temple building was finished (1 Kings 6:38). The many ornate pieces of furniture needed for the Temple were not yet made, however, and during the next thirteen years the palace of Solomon and his royal apartments were built, while the apparatus of the Temple worship was being created (1 Kings 7). Then, in A.M. 3013, both houses were finished (1 Kings 7:51; 9:10).

After Solomon dedicated the Temple and worship began to be conducted there, God appeared to Solomon. This was in the 24th year of his reign. God told him that if he remained faithful, the throne of David would be established over the kingdom of Israel perpetually. If Solomon sinned, however, the rule over Israel would be lost (1 Kings 9:1-9).

Virtually every time in the Bible that God gives a promise or a kingdom to someone, the first thing he does is ruin the promise by sinning against God. Adam did it. Abraham did it (committing polygamy with Hagar right after God told him he would have a son). Saul did it (1 Samuel 9-15). David did it, committing adultery with Bathsheba right after God promised to dwell in his house. Many other examples could be mentioned, but here we see it again.

God had told Solomon through Moses that there were three things the king must not do: multiply gold, reduce the people to servitude to build up a war machine, and commit polygamy (Deuteronomy 17:16-17). Shortly after we read that God appeared to Solomon and gave him the kingdom promise, we read that Solomon broke these three conditions.

First, he multiplied gold (1 Kings 10:14-22). He took in 666 talents of gold per year. The number is obviously significant. The actual weight is about 25 tons of gold per year. That is, 50,000 pounds of gold per year. That is, 800,000 ounces of gold per year. At $400.00 per ounce, that comes to $320,000,000.00. That’s the least it might have been. Using the equivalent figures found in The Open Bible, (one talent of gold = $5,760,000), we come to $3,836,160,000.00. That’s a lot of gold for a nation the size of New Jersey. Every year.

We are told that Solomon made 200 large ceremonial shields of beaten gold, using 600 shekels of gold on each large shield. These were used to form a “glory cloud” around the king (God’s viceroy) when he walked across the common pavement between the royal palace to the palace of the High King (the Temple) (1 Kings 14:28).

Second, Solomon multiplied horses (1 Kings 10:26-29). Finally, Solomon multiplied wives (1 Kings 11:1-8). These marriages were political alliances, and in order to play politics Solomon build temples to the gods of his wives’ nations. This offended the Lord, and the Lord raised up adversaries for Solomon.

The Egypt Factor

Egypt comes to prominence at this juncture of history. One way to understand the relevance of Egypt is to contrast Egypt with Tyre. Hiram, king of Tyre, had been a loyal ally of David. He loved David. He clearly was a converted man. When Solomon came to the throne, Hiram could not do enough for him. He volunteered to help build the Temple, because Israel’s God was his God also (1 Kings 5). He showered Solomon with gifts (1 Kings 9:11, 14). If there was any nation Solomon should have allied with, it was Tyre.

Yet, Solomon gave Hiram a cheap and insulting present, and offended him (1 Kings 9:11-12; 2 Chronicles 8:2). Solomon evidently thought his relationship with Hiram was secure, and so did not try to please him. (I am reminded of how the “conservative” Reagan and Bush administrations constantly offend their Christian supporters—evidently because they regard them as “in their pocket”—while they pursue the goodwill of liberals and degenerates.)

Solomon chose to pursue Egypt instead, marrying the daughter of Pharaoh (1 Kings 9:16). Solomon had actually married Pharaoh’s daughter in his youth, perhaps with God’s blessing. At least the Lord overlooked the matter (1 Kings 3:1ff.). Now, in his Adamic “fall,” his rebellion against the promise God had given him, Solomon’s relationships with Egypt are not overlooked.

Moses had forbidden the kings to engage in horse trading with Egypt (Deuteronomy 17:16). Solomon not only got horses from Egypt, but became a middle-man for horses between Egypt and other nations (1 Kings 10:26-29).

The folly of Solomon’s involvement with Egypt is apparent from what we read in 1 Kings 11. It is evident that Pharaoh’s policy as regards Palestine was to play all sides against each other. (How different from loyal Hiram!) Back in David’s day, the Israelites had defeated the Edomites, and the prince of Edom, Hadad, had fled to Egypt. There he was nurtured in Pharaoh’s court, and Pharaoh made him his brother-in-law. When the time was ripe, Hadad took leave of Pharaoh and went to make trouble for Solomon (1 Kings 11:14-22). (It should be noted that Pharaoh tried to dissuade Hadad from this; v. 22. He didn’t try very hard, though.)

Solomon’s equine enterprise actively supplied the king of Syria with horses (1 Kings 10:29). Shortly thereafter, Syria was taken over by a man who hated the house of David, and who used those horses to plague Israel (1 Kings 11:23-25).

Moses said that the kings of Israel must never reduce the people to slavery, and he linked this idea to involvement with Egypt (Deuteronomy 17:16). Solomon had conscripted labour to help build the Temple and the palace, and the people had willingly volunteered (1 Kings 5:13-18). The actual citizens of Israel did not have to come and put in time working on the Temple, but they had to supply manpower from their serfs (1 Kings 9:20-22).

Now, as long as the Temple and palace were being built, the people did not mind supplying this labour. Afterwards, however, Solomon kept building and building. The citizens of Israel had to supply the manpower for this. The citizens themselves had to serve as conscripts in the army (1 Kings 9:22), and Moses had prohibited having a standing army. All of this amounted to a great financial burden, and the citizenry did not like it.

Solomon put Jeroboam the son of Nebat in charge of conscripting workers from Ephraim. Ephraim was the other great and powerful tribe, next to Judah, and they did not like this Judahite king taxing them so heavily. Jeroboam probably did a good job of bullying work out of the Ephraimites, until one day the prophet Ahijah informed him that God was going to let him have the rule over the ten northern tribes, as a way of punishing Solomon. Solomon caught wind of this, and Jeroboam fled to Egypt, where he was protected by Pharaoh (1 Kings 11:26-40).

After Solomon died in A.M. 3029, Rehoboam his son came to the throne. The people appealed for tax relief, but Rehoboam told them that he was going to increase their taxes. As a result, the ten northern tribes seceded from the confederation of Israel and made Jeroboam their king, in the year A.M. 3030 (1 Kings 12).

Rehoboam was initially chastised by this turn of events, but he soon forsook the Lord and promoted all kinds of idolatry. The Lord prompted Pharaoh to invade Judah. Remember, Pharaoh had been a friend of Jeroboam’s. Pharaoh doubtless regarded Solomon’s exceedingly wealthy kingdom as too powerful. Accordingly, he must have rejoiced to hear that the kingdom had split in half. In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Pharaoh captured Jerusalem and helped himself to all the gold Solomon had stored up, including the 200 ceremonial gold shields. Rehoboam had to replace them with bronze ones (1 Kings 14:25-28).

Solomon ignored his friends (the Lord and Hiram) while he courted and curried favour with his enemies (Syria and Egypt). The result was disastrous to the nation.

BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY, No. 3, Vol. 10 © 1991 Biblical Horizons

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ART: Solomon and the Plan for the Temple (illustration from a Bible card published 1896 by the Providence Lithograph Company).

“Things ain’t cookin’ in my kitchen
Strange affliction wash over me
Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire
Couldn’t conquer the blue sky…” [1]

Today, the Australian government’s carbon tax repeal bills cleared Parliament’s lower house. They will be voted upon in the Senate next year. To see this reported as an act of climate vandalism by the media isn’t a surprise. What is surprising is the consternation of many Christians.

One facebook acquaintance summarized some data from the national broadcaster’s “vote compass,” a site which was set up prior to the recent federal election. The voter enters their leanings on certain issues and the site tells them which party best represents their views. He writes:

Compared to other religious affiliations, Protestants are the least welcoming of asylum seekers, least concerned about climate, least supportive of foreign aid, most supportive of increasing military spending, least supportive of mining tax increases, least supportive of constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians, least supportive of a faster NBN, least supportive of public services, most supportive of CSG and least supportive of workplace protections.

NB Before anyone complains, the results have been weighted by census data, so with a huge sample size (1.4m), it is basically irrelevant that it was a self-selected sample.

This gentleman is concerned about the future of the planet, mostly for the sake of his young son. He has spent years reading the science concerning climate and is understandably worried. But for the Christian, there ought to be some biblical “pillars” undergirding one’s worldview. The first one is Bible history and the second one is Bible prophecy. That probably sounds boring, but if you’ve been around this blog long you should know by now that I rarely take the reader where he expects. Because that’s boring.

Bad Science

When it comes to climate science, we have more data than we know what to do with. As someone who loves to look for patterns in things, I can understand the desire of scientists not only to figure out what is going on, but also to predict future weather.

Looking for patterns begins with past records, and it is here that modern climate science is revealed as the victim of modern philosophy, that is, Darwinism.

We are told that 97% of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change. But 98% of palaeontologists believe in evolution, and they are wrong. What is more relevant is that these two consensuses are related.

I don’t deny the data used to support climate alarm, just as I don’t deny the stuff palaeontologists dig out of the ground, or pretend that the devil put it here. What I deny is the story of how it came about. The stories told by modern science are all based upon their deluded revision of the history of the planet. If we deny the historicity and reliability of the book of Genesis, all our science will be wrong. We will be basing our models upon a past that never really happened. How so?

The Creation event itself is fundamental, but the catastrophic global flood seems to have a direct bearing on climate data. Tas Walker writes:

I just listened to a podcast by climate scientist Murry Salby to the Sydney Institute entitled “Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources.”

During question time toward the end of the recording (55min 15sec) he says:

Just a historical note, the guy who started this was a Swedish chemist whose lab I used to work at Stockholm by the name of Arrhenius. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry and for his understanding of the temperature dependence of chemical reactions he got the Nobel Prize. He got into this and he started the whole global warming thing because he was actually trying to explain ice ages and he saw CO2 varied and temperature varied and he figured maybe CO2 caused the Ice Age. Now I don’t think anyone believes that anymore …

In other words, the whole idea that global warming is caused by CO2 came out of the need to explain what caused the Ice Age—a mystery that still eludes modern scientists.

In the Wikipedia entry on Arrhenius it says:

He was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming. Arrhenius clearly believed that a warmer world would be a positive change. From that, the hot-house theory gained more attention. Nevertheless, until about 1960, most scientists dismissed the hot-house / greenhouse effect as implausible for the cause of ice ages as Milutin Milankovitch had presented a mechanism using orbital changes of the earth (Milankovitch cycles). Nowadays, the accepted explanation is that orbital forcing sets the timing for ice ages with CO2 acting as an essential amplifying feedback.

Note the term “amplifying feedback”. This means that Milankovitch cycles are not enough to explain the Ice Ages, which is understandable considering the relatively small variations in orbital parameters for the earth. So, they added a positive feedback mechanism from CO2. A positive feedback means the system is unstable, which explains why many scientists today are concerned about global warming and the earth reaching an unstable tipping point.

The problem is that these scientists have ignored the huge climate catastrophe of Noah’s Flood. By ignoring the Flood they cannot explain the post-Flood (Pleistocene) Ice Age. The Ice Age was the earth’s thermal response to the massive climate shock caused by the biblical Flood. It was largely the volcanic activity during that year-long event that produced the necessary conditions—warm oceans and volcanic dust high in the atmosphere. But the earth returned to equilibrium in about 700 years, demonstrating that it is a stable system. The biblical Flood provides the only explanation for the Ice Age.

See how a wrong understanding of the true history of the earth leads to a misunderstanding of what is happening in the present. And a wrong understanding will lead to wrong decisions about what we need to do.

So, the stupidity of evolution and the stupidity of modern climate science are directly related. They both misinterpret the data because they both base their interpretations on uniformitarian assumptions.

Bad science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a result of something. Evolutionists constantly tell us that their science is constantly under review “because that’s how science works,” while they desperately protect their failing dogmas from real scientific criticisms. Bad science is the product of bad philosophy, which is in reality a bad religion, a religion which goes way back.

Bad Religion

98% of palaeontologists might be evolutionists, but 98% of westerners are now statists, and they, too, are wrong. Statism is believing the government is god, and in control of prosperity, and now it seems even the weather. A climate action rally in Sydney last weekend was rained on, creating a sea of colourful umbrellas. This action was most likely the peak of effectiveness for this endeavour, the weather equivalent of putting a paper bag over one’s head in a nuclear attack.

It is bad enough seeing Christians sucked into a “science” which cannot tell the future because it rejects the past. It is worse when these intelligent Christians believe the government can do anything about it. If Protestants are the least concerned about the left wing issues mentioned above, the reason might not be that Protestants don’t care about them, but because Protestants are far less likely to fall for statism and its pretenses. They know that government is rarely the solution, and usually the problem. There’s a reason that good government and prosperity flowed from Christianity, and then Protestantism. God blesses obedience. The entire world was blessed through the principles of the British Empire, which brought good government when it arrived and left it as a blessing when it departed. But Protestants understand that good government is an extension of Christianity, and not itself the spring of life. Without Christ, Western Culture cannot be “progressive.” It amazes me how incapable these progressives are of perceiving their progress as a reversion to paganism.

On a panel TV show on the national broadcaster recently, entitled “Dangerous Ideas,” one panelist jokingly said that abortion “until the age of 30″ might be a good idea. Without realizing it, these fools have become basically pagan, albeit in a new guise. Sacrifice your children and give your wealth to the weather gods. Whatever their “scientific” pretense, the only real option to true Christianity is baalism. Science without God promised to make Man into god, the manipulator of nature. Modern man got more than he bargained for apparently—anthropogenic climate change. Frustratingly, the weather is not a vehicle we know how to drive properly. It possesses a seemingly infinite number of variables. Like your average shopping cart on swivelling wheels, it seems to have a mind of its own. It does have a mind of its own but it is not mechanistic. The weather is the chariot of God, and He never takes His hand off the wheel. [2]

Covenant Science

As Gary North observed, “power religion” assumes control over nature through “stimulation,” whether that be oblations to the gods, infant sacrifice, or religious prostitution. Nature is Man’s to manipulate. Man makes the miracles.

“Dominion religion,” however, is a different process. The blessings of abundance, of “increase,” are to be gained miraculously, but at the hand of God, not through manipulation but through obedience. This is what we see in the life of Joseph. Wherever he served, his faithfulness resulted in abundance. His masters recognized that the Spirit of God was with him.

Modern science was the direct result of men who submitted to God. The amazing discoveries and advances we enjoy were all gifts to the minds of men by the Spirit of God. Because we were made in the image of God, we can use these gifts as blessings or as curses. Nuclear fission and genetic modification of food are prime examples. This is because every gift is intended to bring greater judicial maturity.

Our leaders do esteem “ethics,” but not God’s ethics. They intend to do what is right, but what is right in their own eyes, not the eyes of God, who can see much further and whose sight is far keener.

Watching commentators from the Right and the Left argue about how much taxation is right, and where those dollars should be spent to solve our problems, is frustrating. An example might be the current desire to spend untold millions on mental health. Nobody ever mentions sin. Why does no one ever mention that infidelity costs Australia between 3 and 6 billion dollars every year, not to mention the resulting delinquency of children and burgeoning mental health problems? If anybody, even jokingly, suggested that it would be good if we all tried to keep the Ten Commandments, they would be ridiculed and shouted down. Religion is a private matter, they would say. And what goes on in the bedroom is nobody else’s business.

Turns out it is everybody’s business. These educated people are extremely stupid.

Based on the blessings and curses of the One who rides a chariot of fire in a cloud of glory, anthropogenic climate change is indeed possible. In Deuteronomy 28, Moses gave Israel a great list of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. These cover the natural realm (the Land and the womb) as well as Israel’s economic status in relation to other nations. Land, womb and nations sounds very Abrahamic. That’s because it is, and it is also the reason Israel suffered so many famines in her history. It was always the result of the shedding of innocent blood.

And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God… Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord xwill cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven way. The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. (Deuteronomy 28:1, 6, 7, 12)

But if the Covenant, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, now includes all nations, is it beyond possibility that God would bless a faithful, obedient nation or culture with good weather, with rain in due season, with a decrease in mutating diseases or problems like food allergies, diabetes, autism and cancer? Is it beyond possibility that the reason for our food allergies may be deeper than we think, and related to the fact that we no longer say grace before our meals?

I am a postmillennialist, and thus an optimist. This is not only because of the way in which I interpret Scripture but also my faith in the character of God. Peak oil and a climate tipping point don’t seem to fit with Jesus’ plan for the world. He kept fingers off red buttons during the Cold War and He will continue to restrain evil until His work is done and His words are vindicated before all nations.

Things this side of the final judgment will never be perfect, but things are getting better, thanks to the many blessings brought about by the incarnation and resurrection, the Scriptures, and two millennia of Christianity. All improvement comes from the Spirit of Christ, whether it be in medicine, technology or even widespread literacy (another problem which the idiot statists believe can be solved with money). If we do not wish to lose these blessings, we need to humble ourselves and repent before God as a culture. Stopping the murder of the unborn, the shedding of innocent blood, is the first place to start. The goddess of “sexual freedom” behind these murders would be next. This cultural repentance can only occur if it begins in the Church, the source of all new spiritual life, and the guardian of the sacred heart of any nation.

Certainly, climate science is not a simple issue, and we must keep our wits about us, but we must not surrender to the baalism of the secular state, which calls us to sacrifice our children for prosperity and give our wealth to the weather gods. These people have unimaginable amounts of data at their fingertips, yet they interpret it all in the dim light of their naturalist fantasy. CO2 is a “Day 3″ blessing from God, oil (and other fossil fuels) is a “Day 4″ blessing from God. As history moves from Garden to City, who knows what our good God has in store for us next. The 20th Century brought blessings and curses which would have been unimaginable in the 19th. Like Joseph, we just need to trust and obey, let the Pharaohs be humbled by their bad dreams, and let God bring the increase. Our Joseph is always one step ahead of the weather.

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[1] The title refers to the song “Weather With You” by Crowded House.
[2] For some more thoughts on the weather, concerning “the sons of thunder,” see Jesus’ New Broom.

“A Christian culture is a culture of opportunity because it is a culture that flows from the Covenant.”

The Bible Matrix is found throughout the Bible. It is the shape of Creation but it is also the shape of Covenant. It is the process of promise and fulfilment. We see it in Eden. We see it in Canaan. Every Covenant is a mission, a tour of duty, resulting in a safe place to live, a home of abundance, peace and glory. It should be no surprise to Christians that it is also the process that underpins economic growth.

Capitalism is based on the biblical Covenant structure. Good businessmen understand how it works. It invariably necessitates the risk and sacrifice of what we now possess for a greater reward. Steve Jobs told us that, and demonstrated it again and again. It takes money to make money. This requires faith in the one who made the promise, even though business people do not recognize the source of the abundance is the hand of God.

God calls Man to work, which involves risk (faith), a sacrifice and some obedience to laws (which include natural and business laws), which will bring fulfillment of the promise — a greater abundance than what you sacrificed. That is where capitalism ends, but it is not where Covenant ends, and here is the problem for which socialism is tendered as a solution.

The final step of Covenant is that you, the risk taker, become a shelter, a house, for the helpless. The final step is generosity. Capitalism only works in a moral society. This is why we can correspond the shape of good economics to the shape of the Gospel. Jesus gave His life to give abundant life to us all. He believed in the promise made to Him by the Father, the promise of resurrection—a new body. Poverty was not something to be embraced eternally. Christian socialists forget that Jesus now owns everything. All the great saints were rich people who risked their wealth for even greater wealth, a wealth that included a legacy of other people—a household. The “glory that was set before Him” was also the glory of the Church, a new body that includes every believer. Jesus Himself is our covering. We are only saved because of His atonement, His “covering.” He, the king of kings, the great Land Lord, is our shelter.

But His kingdom is also growing to become a great tree, a shelter for the nations. As Western culture has cut itself free from the contraints of God, it has also cut itself off from the working of His Spirit. [1] The spiritual decline has led to moral decline which in turn has led to demographic and economic decline. And what is our response? Do we turn back to God? No. We attempt to minimize the risk. We don’t want the safety of the “shelter” promised by God and available through risk and sacrifice. We want to keep what we have now and spread it as thinly and as fairly as possible. That is what socialism is, and it is exactly the temptation offered to Adam in Eden and Jesus in the wilderness. It is a counterfeit kingdom at the hand of Satan. It involves no risk, no faith. And no growth. It is a bubble. [2] Worse, it is idolatry. [3]

That is what Americans just voted for. The nanny state is a satanic security. [4] It is a corporate Judas, where the voters, in their President, crucify Jesus with a kiss. Their loyalty exists only in lip service.

But those on the Right also have a misplaced faith. They believe that capitalism per se, the free market, is the saviour. But capitalism itself has no moral constraints. It is the godly Covenant process cut off from God. It is those whom God has put in authority (and whom He deliberately made wealthy) using their position for their own gain, which is why Jesus saved His sharpest words for the Jewish leaders. [5] The rich get richer and the poor get poorer (leaving out for a moment the hardworking middle class who actually produce stuff and support everyone). The opportunity that comes with biblical economics is removed from the reach of those at the bottom. We will always have the poor with us, for numerous reasons, but a society with a growing rank of “helpless” reveals a fundamental problem. A Christian culture is a culture of opportunity because it is a culture that flows from the Covenant.

To sum up, capitalism without God knows little about generosity. The socialists do see the problem, but they don’t replace the greed with generosity. They fill the God-gap by breaking other commandments. They fill it with envy and theft, and then sit enthroned like Orwell’s pigs at the farmer’s table. And once the risk is gone, the abundance is gone too.

Based on Church history, I have no doubt that there is even greater prosperity awaiting the world. [6] But like Israel, like Adam, to enter into God’s rest, we must turn back to Him in obedient faith. The prosperity gospel is a satanic lie, yet true prosperity will only even come through an application of the Gospel. We embrace risk and sacrifice for greater blessing at every step.

If you would like to understand more about the Covenants in the Bible, you can read my Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key, or Ray Sutton’s That You May Prosper. R. C. Sproul’s Biblical Economics is also a good introductory read.

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[1] See The Exorcism of Christ.
[2] See A Bad Investment.
[3] See Out of the Eater and Worship as Commerce.
[4] See Baal’s Stimulus Package.
[5] See When Judaism Jumped the Shark.
[6] See posts under the Postmillennialism tag.

The dreamtime is over.

The Bible teaches us that flesh is temporary. This is bad news for those who distrust God. Flesh is all they have.

Throughout the millennia, families and tribes have recited the genealogies of their past, and struggled to produce enough children to secure a cultural future. The bloodline of unseen ancestors and bright-eyed offspring, past and future, was reinforced, thread by thread, in stories around the fires of “now.” This was not the romantic picture so often painted for us. The struggle for cultural survival also involved blood and fire outside the camp.

David P. Goldman observes that in the ancient world a continual state of conflict would account for a loss of two per cent of the population every year, and that this would also explain the proliferation of languages and dialects. He writes that even in Christianity’s darkest hours (which were simply tribalism on a grander scale), it failed to kill a small fraction of the proportion which routinely and normally fell in primitive warfare. He quotes Nicholas Wade’s Before the Dawn, “a survey of genetic, linguistic, and archeological research on early man”:

Even in the harshest possible environments, where it was a struggle enough just to keep alive, primitive societies still pursued the more overriding goal of killing one another… casualty rates were enormous, not the least because they did not take prisoners. That policy was compatible with their usual strategic goal: to exterminate the opponent’s society.¹David P. Goldman, “The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity” in It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations, 90-91.

Of course, we see a similar emphasis on succession in the Old Testament. The fulfillment of the promises to Abraham was directly related to Israel’s continuity.

Goldman’s point is that the “primitive authenticity” taught in modern Western institutions is a fraud. In an attempt to avoid further damage to the environment, our children are being indoctrinated with the idea that aboriginal cultures worldwide, left to themselves, would have been self-sustaining, perhaps indefinitely, in an eternal cycle of life and death:

You have noticed that everything an Indian does is a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything and everything tries to be round.

In the old days all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.

Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were.

The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.

Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, 1863-1950

Without exception, European migration around the world devastated tribal peoples. Colonists committed many atrocities, but our children are taught that the cultures in the conquered lands were somehow pristine, natural, balanced, sustainable—eternal.

With a worldview informed by biblical history, and indeed secular history, these “eternal cycles” are exposed as a downward spiral. The gradual degradation of ancient cultures and the loss of even primitive skills within these cultures has been well-documented. Paganism moves in circles, but if the fact of sin and the necessity of redemption are rejected, there is no eternity, not even a carnal “cultural” one. A civilization is a corporate Man. All men die. All civilizations die.

No culture is all good or all bad. For instance, despite its spiritual darkness, there is much traditional wisdom in native American culture. Huguenot adventurer Jean de Lery had great admiration for the natives, who seemed to be more virtuous than Europeans. In many ways the “primitive” worldviews of native Americans in the both north and south are more biblical than that of modern Christians, containing many elements which can be easily traced to their origin in the book of Genesis. However, spiritual history has moved on, and these cultures are merely ancient minds “preserved in amber.” The continuing work of God often leaves our “timeless truths” in the dust.

History moves in cycles, but there is always either regress or progress. Culture moves forwards or it moves backwards. All the indigenous cultures of the world, at the point they had reached when white men arrived, were “backward,” but backwardness is not a solid state. Life was a constant battle to avoid extinction. We can learn from the wisdom of any culture, including the tribal ones, but left to themselves, indigenous cultures would have continued to degenerate to the point of oblivion.

The idea of growth, progress and dominion is a Christian one. The Biblical history moves from family, to tribe, to people, to nation, to kingdom, to empire. When the enormous granite wheels of empire came into contact with the slowing spinning tops of tribal life, there could be no “cog wheel” correspondence. The results were tragic.

Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn’t have any kind of prison.  Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.

We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn’t afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.

We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn’t know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.

We had no written laws laid down,  no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape  before the white men arrived and I don’t know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.

John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota, 1903-1976

When colonists arrived, with their greed and diseases, things changed forever. These were deep cuts, but perhaps the most fatal was the change in philosophy. Cycles were out, and progress was in, a mindset which was born, arguably, of the “marriage-made-in-heaven” of Roman imperialism and the Great Commission. “Modernity” had arrived, and there was no way back. Despite the desperate efforts of tribal elders worldwide, attempts to revive and maintain the ancient animisms and languages have resulted in little more than nostalgic historical records, ornamental subcultural identities, and tourist exhibits.²Goldman also argues that Islamic fundamentalism is not offensive but defensive, a futile attempt by religious leaders to stem the inevitable secularization of modern Muslim nations. The old spirits are gone.

After a backlash by indigenous Australian cultures in the 1970s against the Christian missions, and a return to animism, the more objective Aboriginal leaders are facing the fact that this was a backward step for their people. Whatever the crimes of the colonists, and whatever the excesses of the missions, the leaven of Christianity which they brought with them forces any culture, any people, to rise, to grow up. It calls us from animistic childhood to adulthood, from a world ruled by animals to a world subdued by men. Our eyes are opened in a greater way to both good and evil and a judicial maturity is forced upon us. In many cases, indigenous people were not ready, but a return to the “childish things” of animism is impossible. The Gospel destroys tribal divisions and animistic thinking. Once the Gospel wakes you up, the Dreamtime is over.

John Lame Deer certainly has a case against civilization, but he is judging civilization through eyes opened by civilization. Worse, he is looking through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. John Wesley made a survey of human societies to see if any had overcome the effects of sin. Thomas C. Oden writes:

Among native American cultures with whom he had some immediate experience, [Wesley] observed as evidence of sin their constant intertribal warfare. He was especially disturbed by their practice of torturing defenseless victims. As one of the few English writers of his day who had actually spent time in the immediate environment of native American Indians, Wesley did not share the distantly conceived inflated picture of the noble savage that prevailed among enlightened French literati of the 18th century. Wesley punctured this picture mercilessly, providing a graphic depiction of how these natives were as deeply embedded in sin as the avaricious colonial British.³Thomas C. Oden, John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity, 163.

The preciousness of tribal life, in truth, rendered all life cheap. Tribes were cultures bent on self-preservation through bloody rivalries. A similar insanity might be observed in modern cultures, where the deaths of endangered species make the news but the culling of human lives through various means is considered a matter of survival. Goldman believes the fraud of primitive authenticity, the modern nature worship of environmental “animism,” is the environmentalist projecting his own presentiment of death onto the natural world.

Fear for the irreversible destruction of the natural world … substitutes for the death anxiety of the individual. Post-Christian Westerners confound their own sense of mortality with the vulnerability of the natural world. Sadly, it is not the end of the world. It is just the end of you.⁴Goldman, 183.

There is a perverse logic to this projection. In God’s wisdom, the flesh of the world and the flesh of Man are bound together by Covenant. Environmentalists believe their own flesh is a cancer upon the flesh of the otherwise “eternal” world, but the Bible tells us that Man and World are bound together for a purpose. The voyage of discovery is also a process of self-discovery. Subduing the world, however destructive it might be, is a positive feature of Man. Man and World are bound together not only for death, but also for resurrection.

By showing us that true eternity transcends cultural longevity, the Gospel of Christ removes the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). This means that, since the resurrection, the fear of mortality for both the individual and the culture (and indeed, the planet) is now a “drawing back” from God’s desire for us. This is a lesson which Christendom failed to learn, and the factor which subsequently tore it apart.

Goldman observes that many minor cultures facing extinction found cultural transcendence in Christianity. However, their failure to leave pagan superstitions entirely behind perpetuated the old fractures, and led to a desire for nationalistic transcendence in a Christian veneer. Every European culture considered itself to be “the eternal people” to some degree. The American experiment succeeded because the old paganisms and nationalisms were deliberately left behind.

For all its flaws and fecklessness, America remains in the eyes of its people an attempt to order a nation according to divine law rather than human custom, such that all who wish to live under divine law may abandon their ethnicity and make themselves Americans.⁵Goldman, 372.

America is unique. It is not a redeemed culture but a melting pot of cultures. For Americans to backslide, they had to invent somewhere to slide, hence the liberal agenda and its historical revisionism (including naturalism). It is a manufactured pagan past disguised as a future.

America is not eternal. To keep His promises, God cannot allow it to be. For the sake of greater glory, the American vision is fading. However, the unmistakable success of the American experiment reveals it to be a microcosm for the future of the world—all nations submitting willingly to the Divine Law.

Goldman sees the continued historical perseverance of the Jewish identity as evidence of God’s promise to the rest of mankind, and here is where we part ways.

There cannot be an eternal people, not according to the flesh, because the flesh is obsolescent. Goldman’s God is Yahweh, yet He is a Yahweh of the past, a “Yahweh trapped in amber.” The Yahweh of today is not only the God who was born as the child promised in Eden, but the Man who never married or had children. The blessing promised to all nations through Abraham was not the merely the removal of the curse upon the Land and the womb (territory and offspring) but the removal of the fear of death in the promise of resurrection. These blessings were all poured out in Christ.

How then do we interpret Israel’s stubborn refusal to disappear? Goldman notes that while the Arab Spring will become a Winter (demographically-speaking) within one generation, Israel currently has the only increasing birthrate in the entire Middle East.

America is no longer the future, but the preservation of Israel is most definitely a testimony to something historical, not a glimpse of the way forward. Judaism serves as an antidote to gnosticism for Christianity, a miraculous testimony like the body of Lot’s wife a white, leprous memorial to a judgment in the past. Israel exists only because she is protected by the once dominant Christian nations who drew her under their wings. She too must eventually succumb to the Gospel of Christ or return to the dust.

Flesh is not transcendent. Flesh was designed to be transcended by fire. Israel, and indeed America, will be transcended. All God’s darlings end up on the altar. The promised child—whether it be European Christendom, the American vision, or the hope of Israel—is ever offered on Mount Moriah for the sake of greater promises.

There is no eternal people. All nations are destined for a larger melting pot, a hotter fire. Every tribe, every circumcision, every culture, every nation, every tongue, every familial baptism, every distinction founded on the old birth, is doomed. Hidden in every cultural and lingual extinction, every brutal war, every abundance, every natural disaster, every economic collapse, every trade agreement, every technological advancement, is the leaven of the Gospel. The yeast that continues to consume and assimilate every other culture, every blood, ancient or modern, is the fire from the unseen mountain, the Spirit of Christ. Here, at last, is the eternal people.

This is an essay from Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes by Michael Bull.

or The False Bride Will Never Get A Management Position

“…the only unity that will be allowed by the Father is the unity that Jesus requested from the Father in John 17.”

One of the interesting “universal themes” that James Jordan has uncovered in the Bible is that of Satan’s various attempts to “gather the nations” against the Church. You can read about that in a series of blog posts called Amalek Debunks Hyperpreterism (click here and scroll down).

The history of Israel was the qualification of a Covenant Head, fulfilled in Jesus, who now rules the nations from heaven, with the Old Covenant saints in a crystal city. The evil one has been bound so that he cannot gather the nations against the Church until he is released just before the end. He will immediately attempt to gather the nations but be destroyed. The Church will once again be the bait in a trap, as it was for Pharaoh, and for the Herod/Emperor alliance.

The evil one is currently bound from gathering the nations so that Jesus can gather them plundering the “strong man’s house.”

The Glass Ceiling

The Church on earth is one with the crystal city, and is currently ruling the world through prayer and faithful service. Whenever the nations attempt to build Babel, whether by military conquest or economic unions, they hit the glass ceiling put in place in AD70. Their mortar gives way and the various unions fragment once again.

The nations will not be allowed to unite because they would eventually be united against the Church, and the Church isn’t yet complete. Whatever happens over the next few years in the economy, or environmentally, or internationally, is all about the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He, and His Church, are central to everything that happens.

Final Fantasy

The final feast in Israel’s calendar was Tabernacles (or Booths). This was also known as ingathering, the time when Jews and Gentiles were temporarily one. The first century was the “ingathering” of the Old Covenant. The Herods were making ungodly pacts to unite Jew and Gentile, all the while Paul was gathering the faithful into the New Covenant by the power of the Spirit.

This is what we see now, but on a global scale. We can sing “It’s A Small World” all we like, but the only unity that will be allowed by the Father is the unity that Jesus requested from the Father in John 17.

Tabernacles was the end of the working year, the final harvest, the time of olives and grapes, oil and wine. The Gentiles seek to enter into “God’s rest,” the place reserved for wise judges, a feast of wine. But as long as they reject Jesus, they will continually be turned away — as bread to be broken once again, in the process of the glorification of the world.

Who’s in Control?

The markets might be volatile, the world might be at war, but Jesus is in control and He knows exactly what He is doing. As He scatters His enemies, He is gathering His people. And if we fear Him, we have nothing else to fear.

In Jesus’ economy, the false bride will never get a management position. Yet, as His true bride, we ascend by faith every week to join in the worship, praise and prayer that truly governs the world. Knees bowed to Jesus are royal knees.

The glass ceiling that shatters the nations is the crystal city, the New Covenant firmament, the New Jerusalem.

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See also Totus Diabolus, The Ten Toes, Armageddon’s Big Sista, Jesus’ Long Day. How to be Really Evil, There Can Only Be One, Postmillennial Suffering, Three Babylons, Communion of Saints, Better Angels.

.

“The West became great because biblical monogamy harnessed sexual energy to build strong families, women, children, and men.”

“In his quest to change oppressive regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, President George W. Bush argued, ‘Everyone desires freedom.’ True. Everyone also desires a happy marriage: can everyone therefore have one?

Afghanistan, Iraq, Ivory Coast, and Libya ought to teach secular ideologues that freedom does not flow from the barrel of a gun. Nor does it flourish in every culture.

Why do most American presidents place a hand on the Bible to take the oath of office? Secular education has made that a meaningless tradition, but the tradition exists because the Bible is the secret of America’s freedom. Forget the Bible and America will go the way of the first Protestant nation – Nazi Germany.

Plato saw Greek democracy first hand and condemned it as the worst of all political systems. That’s why the spread of the Greek culture, called ‘Hellenization,’ did not stir a struggle for democracy. In AD 798, the English scholar Alcuin summed up the then European wisdom to Emperor Charlemagne: ‘And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.’ Indeed, the voice of a corrupt people is often the devil’s voice.

The cancer at the heart of America’s political economy is cultural. This great nation was built by an ethic – a spirituality that taught citizens to work, earn, save, invest, and use their wealth to serve their neighbors. This biblical ethic has been replaced by secularism’s entitlement culture that teaches people that they have a right to this, that and the other without corresponding obligations to work, save, and serve. This new culture forces the state to take from productive citizens or borrow from other nations and spend it on man-made rights. This corruption of character is destroying the world’s greatest economy, but can democracy allow leaders to go against the voters’ voice?

The people’s voice began to be honored as God’s voice only because the sixteenth century biblical Reformation began saturating the hearts and minds of the people with the Word of God. Those who prayed, ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done in Scotland (or England, or Holland)’ found the grace to free themselves from the tyranny of men. Not just Islamic, but every culture that rejects the kingdom of God condemns itself to be ruled exclusively by sinful men.

Almost everyone desires a happy marriage, but without the Bible, America cannot even define, let alone sustain marriage as one man–one woman, exclusive, and life-long relationship. The West became great because biblical monogamy harnessed sexual energy to build strong families, women, children, and men.

Human history knows no force other than the Bible that has the capacity to dam sexual energy to build powerful families and nations. Indeed, no non-biblical culture has ever been able to require husbands to ‘love your wives’ and give them the spiritual resources to do so.”

Vishal Mangalwadi is the author of “The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization.” (Thomas Nelson)

Article source: www.foxnews.com

“In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river,
was tree of life, which bore twelve fruits,
each tree yielding its fruit every month.
The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
Revelation 22:2

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

While the governments of the first global economy in history explore areas of policy for which there is no historical precedent, Christians need to understand that even now, there is nothing new under the sun. It may be true, as some believe, that every war (including World War I) can be traced back to disputes over resources. But all the economic advice we need, whether personal, national or global, is contained in the Bible. The Tree of Life is still at the centre of the Garden, but it is the Church, and God is working on a forest.

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[1] R. C. Sproul Jr., Biblical Economics, A Commonsense Guide to Our Daily Bread, pp. 29-37.
[2] See Building Cages Out of Freedom.
[3] This is the heart of Peter Leithart’s timely new book, Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom.
[4] See Church and State.
[5] Check out David Chilton’s Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators. [PDF]

Does the Bible really contain everything the man of God requires? The curve balls of history call the church to greater and greater wisdom, but the principles remain the same. What if one of the oddest books of the Old Testament contained crucial advice for modern western culture and the Christians attempting to deal with its tragi-comic apostasy?

James Jordan has the gift of identifying universal themes and principles in Scripture. Many times these initially sound far-fetched, but I have found he is always vindicated. The observations in the following excerpt from his Judges: God’s War Against Humanism concerning worship can be easily applied to every area of life, but most interestingly to the understanding of evolution as a mere philosophy, and more recently to our secular culture’s ungodly (and therefore failing) approach to economics.

Baalism: Ancient Humanism

We often distance our culture from that of the Canaanites, thinking that since modern man does not literally bow down to idols, he must be somewhat better off. Let the reader, however, consider whether he as a Christian ever literally bows down to his God. How many Protestant churches that have kneelers has the reader ever been in? Do Protestants show their respect for the King of kings by at least standing for prayer, or do they pray sitting down, a posture nowhere encountered in Scripture for prayer? If modern Christians have no more respect for their God than to address Him sitting down, why should we expect the modern Baalists to bow down to Nature? Ancient man bowed before his god, whether it was Nature (Baalism) or the Creator (YHWH). Modern man does not bow before his god, whether Nature (humanism) or the Creator (Christ).

Similarly, for ancient man, the heart of religious exercise was adoration, worship, prostration, sacrament (a fellowship meal with the god). This was true of Israel before the LORD, and of the Canaanites before Baal. And this is the Biblical view of worship: Preaching/proclamation is the Word from God, which leads to a response of adoration, prostration, sacrament. The modern Christian, however, sees the heart of worship as entertainment (from a choir and an entertaining preacher) or as philosophical meditation (from a scholarly preacher). The sermon, instead of leading into worship, has become itself the climax of worship. And, just as the modern Christian view of worship is not much more than studying doctrine, so the modem humanist worships his god in the same way. We don’t see humanists bowing down to their gods, but we do see them studying them, lecturing about them, writing books about them. And we don’t see Christians bowing down to the LORD either, but we do see them studying Him, preaching about Him, and writing books about Him.

Thus, there is indeed a big difference between ancient religions and modern ones. Ancient man primarily worshipped his gods, while modem man primarily studies his. This is true both of pagans and of conservative, orthodox Christians.

Once we understand this, however, we can see that the opposition between the Truth and the Lie is the same now as it was then. Ancient pagans worshipped Nature, while modem pagans philosophize about Nature. The belief is the same, however: the belief that Nature is self-creating. Similarly, ancient believers worshipped the Creator, while modern Christians tend mainly to philosophize about Him, but the belief is the same.

So, what was Baalism? In essence it was the ascription of power to Nature: The universe has within itself the force of life. The world as we know it is the result of the union of the ultimate male and female principles of the universe, which may be called Baal and Ashteroth (or Astartes). (A similar goddess is Asherah, mistranslated as “groves” in the King James Version. The difference between the two goddesses is technical, and both were expressions of the same religious principle.) Canaanite philosophers believed, of course, that these ultimate forces were impersonal, and that their union was not sexual; but the common people preferred to think of the matter mythically. The sun god copulated with the original mud of the world, and the animals and man resulted. How does such a myth differ from a more sophisticated expression of the same principle, such as can be found in any 20th century high school science textbook? Once, we are told, there was a vast primordial sea. Then one day, sparked by sunlight, an organic molecule appeared, which evolved to become our present world. A “male” principle, sunlight, inseminates a “female” principle, the primordial sea, and life is born.

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“Christian faith is a religion primarily of submission, not of stimulation. For the Christian to get himself all worked up (through “speaking in tongues” or some other means) avails absolutely nothing in the sight of God.”

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The Baal-Ashteroth religion understandably was intimately concerned with fertility. The Creator God of the Bible had promised fertility to Israel if they were faithful to Him (Dt. 7:13-14), but what He demanded was moral loyalty, including especially sexual chastity (monogamy). The religion of Baalism, however, advocated exactly the opposite method of getting fertility. Chaotic sexual orgies would stimulate Nature (Baal and Ashteroth), and fertility would be the result (human, animal, and crop fertility). The true religion of Israel said that fertility was obtained by submitting to the Creator, while Baalism said that fertility was obtained by stimulating Nature. Thus, in true religion, man is the servant/slave of God, in submission to Him; while in Baalism, man is the LORD of his god (Nature) who needs to be stimulated by him.

Nature religion is a religion of stimulation. Man has to stimulate Nature in order to get results. Like the Baal priests of the ancient world, he may engage in sexual orgies, or cut himself with knives (1 Kings 18:28), in order to arouse the sleeping god. This is also the philosophy of the modern world. Stimulating nature is not seen (as in Christian faith) simply as a form of technological dominion. It is also seen as a way of salvation, so that modern medical scientists believe they will solve the problem of disease by learning how to control nature, and modern philosophers believe that controlling nature will permit man to control evolution and advance humanity, while modern revolutionaries from Marx to Marcuse believe that simply stimulating society through the imposition of social chaos will automatically lead to a better world.

For the Christian, however, the problems of disease and social inequities are solved by submission to God and His law. Medicine is not wrong, but it can only help a little bit. Disease will not go away until God is pleased with humanity (Dt. 7:15). The same is true for other areas. Thus, Christian faith is a religion primarily of submission, not of stimulation. For the Christian to get himself all worked up (through “speaking in tongues” or some other means) avails absolutely nothing in the sight of God.

Thus, the heart of ancient Baalism was secular humanism. Secular humanism says that the universe is self -creating, so that Nature is ultimate (this being the “secular” aspect). Secular humanism also teaches that man is the LORD of Nature, and that man must rule over (stimulate) Nature (this being the “humanism” aspect). There used to be such a thing as “Christian humanism,” which taught that man was LORD of nature, but only in submission to God. This is the true doctrine, although the term “humanism” has come to be offensive to Christians, so we no longer speak of “Christian humanism.”

So, for the ancient Baalist to bow before his idol was not an act of submission, but an act of stimulation. What he believed was the same thing modern secular humanists believe: that man is the LORD of Nature, and that there is no Creator God to whom man is responsible.