The other day, a friend of mine emailed me some very important questions that have also been on my mind during the covid fauxpocalypse. These questions have also, I think, been on the minds of many other Christians, so I decided to answer them here to the best of my ability. Hopefully, you will find my answers helpful, if only in giving you more to think about in these trying times.

The email reads as follows:

“I have often been reminded when reading Scripture, just during the 'reading for the day,' that the Lord visited Israel with various judgments for various sins. It seems to me that whenever God is judging Israel in the OT they were to repent and submit to the punishment rather than rise up to fight the oppression.

I really don't know if I've got this twisted and would appreciate anything you have written on this. Whilst the Apostles could have rejected Nero, it would seem they did not. But on the other hand, we have passages in the Psalms which do teach about praying for curses on enemies.
[…]

I know that as a nation, Australia has been murdering babies by the hundreds of thousands every year for over 40 years with almost non-existent opposition to the wickedness. Shall not God destroy a nation for such sin? And if I sense judgment in the current Government oppression, am I to resist that, or see it as the hand of God in righteous condemnation and submit as per Jeremiah below?

‘How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses. They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbour's wife. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?’ [Jer 5:7-9]”

My friend's email has several questions that we can draw out, so I first want to make them explicit, and then answer them accordingly.

Questions

1. Will God judge a nation for its pattern of grievous sin?

2. If God is judging the nation in which a Christian lives, specifically by giving that nation wicked and oppressive rulers, should Christians submit to the judgment (which in this case entails submitting to wicked rulers)?

3. If God is judging the nation, would it be right for Christians to oppose the government (seeing as it is being used by God to judge the nation)?

4. Given the pattern of Israel having to submit to God's judgment, shouldn't Christians also submit to God's judgment?

5. How do we reconcile the passages of Scripture which, on the one hand, call for us to submit to God's judgment on a nation and, yet on the other hand, show us examples of godly men praying that God would destroy his and, consequently, their enemies?

6. What about the apostles and the Roman government?

Answers

1. Scripture is very clear that the Lord will, and does, judge nations for their sins. There is a distinction to be drawn between historical (pre-eschatological) and eschatological judgment, of course, and so I think we would do well to consider what we ought to do if the judgment is not eschatological, as I’m using the term, but historical.

If the judgment is eschatological, then we know the outcome is fixed. Our actions will not lead to some other consequence than which God has declared (viz. Christ will return in power and glory and judge the nations once and for all1). However if the necessary eschatological conditions laid out by Scripture have not been met, then what we see happening is not the eschatological judgment but an historical judgment. Since we don't know the day or the hour of our Lord's return,2 then is it our duty to continue following him faithfully until he returns.

Consider the situation we find in Paul’s second epistle to the Thessalonians. After reminding the Thessalonians of how Christ will return to judge humanity,3 Paul goes on to say:

Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.4

It is God's will that his people continue to walk by faith in obedience to him until Christ returns. To that end, the apostle goes on to explain what must come first before Christ returns, and warns the Thessalonians about those who, in contradiction to Paul's delineation of events, claim that Christ has already returned.5

He follows this by telling them –

But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.6

Note the command for the Thessalonians to “stand fast.” Now, note Paul’s benediction – “…may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father…comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.” The Thessalonians, and all Christians, are to stand fast in the faith and continue in good works, in the assurance that God will comfort us and establish us as we do so, until Christ returns for his bride.

After this, the apostle Paul closes his epistle with several exhortations to the same effect, stating explicitly in 2nd Thess 3:6-13 –

But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.

For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.

But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good.

After explaining the day of the Lord and what must precede the Lord's return, Paul says that the Thessalonians must continue to walk by faith in obedience to Christ. He further reveals what this looks like – withdrawing from brethren walking in open disobedience, working with one’s own hands, not being lazy, and living a quiet life/not being a busybody.

This is important because it shows us that as we await Christ’s return we ought to be loving our neighbors as ourselves. Loving our neighbor as ourselves necessarily implies promoting the well being, and preserving the life, of our neighbor. This ties in to the second answer to the second and third questions raised by my friend’s email.

2 & 3. Seeing as we know we are to love our neighbor while our nation is under historical judgment, and seeing as we are to love him by promoting his well being and preserving his life, it follows that we cannot simply submit to the evil actions of our rulers. So how are we to understand our duty in this situation?

Firstly, note that if the governing authorities are acting contrary to their intended purpose given by God then it follows that they are disobeying God and, thereby, nullifying any claim they have to authority over us in the matter under consideration (e.g. mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, stay at home orders for the healthy, and so on).

Secondly, what is more, if those actions lead to the destruction of my neighbors, for whom I am accountable, then it is my right and my duty to protect my neighbor from those actions in any way that I possibly can. Allowing my government to kill my neighbor because we are both guilty of sin before God, but not for some publicly and evidentially demonstrable crime which God’s law defines, is akin to allowing a stranger to kill my neighbor because we are both guilty of sin before God. Simply put – It is not justifiable.

I can promote the well being of my neighbor, as well as preserve his life, by informing him of what is actually taking place in the world via the government’s oppressive policies, laws, mandates, etc. I can do the same by modeling obedience to God, in contradiction to obedience to men, via acts of civil disobedience. This does not require one to rise up and overthrow the oppressor. It requires something much more difficult to obtain – persistent, resilient, and indefatigable faith in the face of persistent, resilient, and seemingly indefatigable evil. But if we ask him, God will grant us faith to persevere.7

If historical judgment is occurring, given what the apostle Paul says in 2nd Thessalonians it is right and good for me to oppose the rogue government’s actions against myself and my neighbor. The reason for this is that it is my duty to promote my neighbor’s well being and preserve his life against all who would seek to illegitimately destroy him. If the government is subjecting myself and my neighbor to harm and possible death for doing what is lawful before God and men (e.g. refusing to wear a mask while sitting in a public place, refusing to be vaccinated in order to continue working, breaking lockdown restrictions, and so on), then my government has abdicated its proper role, gone rogue, and is now functioning as a body of murderers.

If I don’t oppose what they are doing, then I am complicit in their evil.

4. Yes, there are OT passages in which God tells Israel to submit to their punishment and not rise up in opposition to their oppressors. However, Israel’s situation was unique. As we read in Deuteronomy 4:1-8 –

“Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I teach you to observe, that you may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you. You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor; for the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all the men who followed Baal of Peor. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you.

Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’

For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?”

Israel’s life and prosperity as a nation was, like the life and prosperity of Adam and Eve, contingent upon her obedience to the stipulations of the covenant God made with her. This is not true of any other nation in the world, as the passage from Deuteronomy teaches us clearly. Yes, God would destroy nations whose sins would eventually be “complete”8, but that does not imply that these nations were in a covenant relationship with God. It was Israel alone who stood in this relationship to Jehovah.

Additionally, under the Mosaic covenant Israel's disbelief was manifested not merely in their rebellion against the explicitly stated laws of God, but also in their inability to accept the fact that they were breakers of the covenant who were being stripped of their covenantal blessings. Rather than accept that their existence and prosperity was dependent on their obedience to the covenant, they continued in obstinate and unrepentant sin. Rather than admit they were idolaters engaging in all kinds of wickedness that resulted in God removing their covenantal blessings, they hid their idolatry (as we see in Ezekiel), engaged in witchcraft and soothsaying (as we see in Isaiah), persecuted and refused to listen to the prophets (as we see in Jeremiah), and still thought of themselves as being in good standing with God. Being urged to submit to their judgment was a final call, it seems, for them to correct course by repenting and believing God's Words in Deuteronomy 28.

But they did not.

Hence Christ, alluding to Isaiah 5 where God talks about his vineyard that bore bad fruit, confronts the hypocritical leaders of his day who had still refused to accept that they had broken God's covenant, lost their covenant blessings, and incurred God's promised wrath. He tells them the parable of the wicked vine dressers in Matt 21:33-44, a short story which details the history of Israel's rebellion which would culminate in her crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, leading to her undergoing the wrath of God and being stripped of the kingdom. Christ then ends his speech by declaring –

“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.”9

The kind of judgment that Israel underwent seems to now be applied to churches. Unlike the Old Covenant, the granting of the blessings of the New Covenant are not contingent upon our obedience to the Law. However, churches that fail to deal with sin in their camp, and who yet believe themselves to be in good standing with the Lord, can be judged by God, cut off, and stripped of all blessings given to them. In Revelation 2 & 3, Christ makes this clear, declaring –

Ephesus – “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent…”10

Pergamos – “Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth.”11

Thyatira – “…you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent.
Indeed I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds.”

Sardis – “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.”

Laodicea – “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked— I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.”14

5. My last answer contains some information on how we are to reconcile the seemingly contradictory situation we encounter in the OT where the saints understood they were under judgment and that, given Israel’s breaking of the covenant, they were to accept this punishment, and yet they prayed imprecatory prayers against their enemies. In a word, God’s judgment being executed through wicked rulers and nations on Israel did not exempt those nations from being under God’s Law as well. This means that while those instruments of judgment were materializing divine justice, as it were, they were still responsible for the way in which they so doing.

Consider the following from the book of Isaiah –

The Lord sent a word against Jacob,
And it has fallen on Israel.
All the people will know—
Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria—
Who say in pride and arrogance of heart:

“The bricks have fallen down,
But we will rebuild with hewn stones;
The sycamores are cut down,
But we will replace them with cedars.”

Therefore the Lord shall set up
The adversaries of Rezin against him,

And spur his enemies on,
The Syrians before and the Philistines behind;
And they shall devour Israel with an open mouth.15

Israel is under judgment, but instead of repenting chooses to continue in rebellion, refusing to recognize that their situation was directly due to their breaking of the covenant. So God tells them he is raising up foreign nations, ruthless foreign wicked rulers, to punish his people. Yet look at what he says in the very next chapter –

“Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger
And the staff in whose hand is My indignation.
I will send him against an ungodly nation,
And against the people of My wrath
I will give him charge,
To seize the spoil, to take the prey,
And to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
Yet he does not mean so,
Nor does his heart think so;
But it is in his heart to destroy,
And cut off not a few nations.

For he says,
‘Are not my princes altogether kings?
Is not Calno like Carchemish?
Is not Hamath like Arpad?
Is not Samaria like Damascus?
As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols,
Whose carved images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
As I have done to Samaria and her idols,
Shall I not do also to Jerusalem and her idols?’ ”

Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Lord has performed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, that He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his haughty looks.”16

God chose to use the wicked nations and rulers to execute justice against Israel, but he held them accountable for the wicked ways in which they performed this task. God judged their intentions. Not only this, but given that these men were not believers it seems reasonable to assume that they also inflicted more violence on Israel than was necessary for executing God’s judgment. In either case, they were to be held accountable by God.

So Israel could simultaneously understand that they were under God’s judgment, and yet pray that the very actions taken against them by God’s instruments of justice be visited upon those nations. Psalm 137 perfectly captures this dual reality. Another reality to consider is the fact that parents are given the responsibility of executing justice in the household, and yet we are warned against doing so in a manner that is sinful. If our children sin, it is right for us to punish them, and it is right for them to submit to the punishment they deserve. However, this doesn’t mean that all that we do in our punishment of our children is righteous. We can have anger and pride in our hearts, attitudes that are not only inherently evil but can also, and I would argue usually do, lead to punishments that don’t fit the transgression/s committed.

6. Regarding the apostles, we need to contextualize their actions as well given that their situation differed from ours in some ways. Firstly, however, we need to remember that God created all of us to be upholders of his Law. Now seeing as God had already given Adam and Eve dominion over all of the creatures,17 and the serpent was included among those creatures,18 they inherently possessed authority over the serpent. Additionally, Adam was given the Law of God constitutive of the covenant of works,19 which shows us that he not only had authority over the animals as respects where they were to be placed and what function they would play in the subdued creation. Adam possessed physical authority over the serpent as well as moral authority over the serpent. Adam was, in other words, the lesser magistrate. Adam could have, and should have, exercised his authority over the serpent’s lying tongue, but he did not do this and so sinned. Not only this, but Adam, as the recipient of the commandment, had a responsibility to uphold justice when his wife had broken it, but he failed to do this as well.

With regard to the non-human creatures, Adam and Eve were the lesser magistrate given the role of upholding God’s justice in the world according to his law. With regard to one another, it is implied, Adam and Eve were also lesser magistrates. Adam was the head, but had he sinned it would be incumbent upon Eve to identify his sin and seek God’s justice for the transgression Adam committed. Though Adam had authority over Eve as the head, in other words, had he told her to sin she would not be in sin for refusing to follow his orders, for her primary duty was to glorify God by doing what he commands and refraining from what he forbids. Similarly, the same applies to Adam and Eve’s children. Had Adam told Cain and/or Abel to sin, it would have been right and necessary for them to refuse to comply with Adam’s sinful commands, seeing as their primary duty was to glorify God by doing what he commands and refraining from what he forbids.

Every man is, in other words, the lesser magistrate. It is incumbent upon every one of us to recognize that God is the supreme authority who has established lesser authorities – Civic authority, Church authority, Family authority. It is also incumbent upon every one of us to recognize that we can never fail to do what is right before God because we “lack the authority” to do what is right. That is simply not the case. If there existed a society in which no one in the chain of authorities established by God was doing what was right, it would still be incumbent upon the individual to do what is right, even if that entails refusing to comply with the authorities above, or even openly and physically opposing them. For if the magistrates above oneself are all acting outside of their jurisdictional boundaries in all that they do, then they are no longer acting as magistrates but as rebels, autonomous transgressors of God’s law, and no one is above God’s law.

This position as lesser magistrate over humans is made more clear in Genesis 9 where God tells Noah –

Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.

“Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed;
For in the image of God
He made man.

And as for you, be fruitful and multiply;
Bring forth abundantly in the earth
And multiply in it.”20

What was implicitly laid out in Gen 1 & 2 regarding man’s inherent physical and moral authority over the animals, as well as man’s moral authority over transgressors of God’s law (in this case murderers), is here made exceedingly clear. Every individual is the lesser magistrate.

Thankfully, God has been merciful to us in every age and has not ever left us with a chain of authorities where every individual up and down the hierarchical order is failing to do his duty as one who rewards what is good and punishes what is evil. Even in the worst societies (e.g. Ancient Rome) there were men who understood when their superior magistrates were acting out of line and chose to oppose those magistrates, choosing instead to interpose on behalf of those who ranked beneath them (e.g. non-political citizenry). What we see in the New Testament, as well as in the early church, is a recognition from believers that there is God given order in society, and that there are means available to non-governmental/non-political citizenry to aid us in seeking justice against the higher magistrate (e.g. an emperor in Ancient Rome). Hence, Paul addresses the Jews as a member of the Jewish community, and addresses Romans on the basis of his own citizenship as a Roman.21 He recognizes the order in society and works within it to seek justice for wrongs done against him (e.g. false claims made about his intentions, his ministry, etc) and, in a word, freedom to do what God has called him to do – preach the Gospel and establish churches.

The post-New Testament church theologians worked in a very similar way. If you read the treatises of men like Justin Martyr,22 Athenagoras,23 Augustine,24 and Tertullian,25 you learn that they recognized an order in society, their position in society as a theologian/minister, and used the means available to them to address the greater magistrate (e.g. writing letters challenging the reasonableness, morality, and legality of the state’s persecution of Christians). The apostles and church fathers didn’t simply submit to persecution, but did so during and after attempts to reason with higher magistrates, appealing to them as authorities who had a role to fulfill as ministers of justice according to their own national laws and philosophy of jurisprudence, and more importantly under the universal Law of God recognized by pagans and Christians alike.

While Christians underwent persecution, therefore, they also recognized that what was happening to them was morally wrong. They suffered gladly for the name of Christ, but they didn’t fail to acknowledge that their persecutors were sinning greatly. In fact, they boldly acknowledged it. Why Christians did not engage in physical opposition to the powers that be is a question that needs to be answered by looking at their individual cases. The caricature of the early church as a pacifistic religion completely opposed to all forms of political involvement, however, is one that is in need of correction. The early post-NT church opposed the state’s wicked use of violence against innocent individuals, e.g. Christians who were not breaking the law, but did not oppose the state’s use of violence as a means of punishing the wicked, and also seemingly were not opposed to Christians being involved in the military.26 What this means is that there was a recognition of order God had given to society, a hierarchical order which could be, and ought to be, opposed when it ceases to perform its divinely ordained task (e.g. the punishment of evil and the rewarding of good).

Concluding Remarks

Our time is rife with political problems, problems that are directly affecting Christians throughout the world. In places like Canada and Australia, Christians are openly under direct attack from the government, being told they cannot engage in corporate worship, or that they can only engage in corporate worship in severely diminished numbers which amount to a fracturing of churches and spiritual harm done to those who don’t attend out of fear of the state’s retributive actions. In America, Christians are being told that religious exemptions from vaccine mandates are going to be closely scrutinized and likely rejected in some places,27 and have been told for going on two years now that engaging in corporate worship is a self health risk that amounts to a form of hating, and not loving, our neighbor.

While engaging in civil disobedience will not stop God’s decreed timeline from coming to fruition, it will demonstrate our commitment to the God who has ordained whatsoever comes to pass, including sin and the judgment of our nations. Submission to God first and foremost means that we acknowledge his law as supreme, and our commitment to his righteous ordinances as our highest and most socially beneficial duty. We ought to avoid violence, and plead with our accusers and enemies in every way that we can – appealing to the highest magistrates in our land, as well as every other magistrate beneath them, utilizing our civil and national privileges in order to peacefully maintain our right to worship God in the manner he has prescribed (inside and outside of the church). However, if the entire hierarchy of magistrates fall corrupt and fail to do their job of rewarding the good and punishing the evil, this merely means that we are to continue to uphold the righteousness of God by functioning as the lesser magistrate, which are all by nature.

As for the COVID related rules and regulations that are being used to destroy our economies, kill our weak, and destroy our lives, one question we might want to ask is:

Are these rules actually coming from our higher magistrates?

I have written on the illegality of these mandates, given the teaching of Scripture regarding the duties of the civil magistrate. However, assuming for the sake of argument that these mandates are not opposed to divine law, is it the case that they are actually coming from our duly elected officials? And if they are not, does this not clearly justify our non-compliance and rejection of those mandates?

I hope to answer these questions in my next post.

Until next time, remember that Christ is the King of all kings. We are duty bound to serve him, even if it costs us our lives.

Soli Deo Gloria.

1 cf. Matt 24:15-27 & 25:31-46; Rev 11:15-19.

2 cf. Matt 24:36.

3 2nd Thess 1:3-10.

4 2nd Thess 1:11-12.

5 2nd Thess 2:1-12.

6 2nd Thess 2:13-17.

7 If my neighbor gives himself over to the rogue governing authorities to be murdered (metaphorically or literally), despite having been reasoned with and warned, then I believe he is guilty of taking his own life.

8 cf. Gen 15:12-16.

9 Matt 21:43.

10 Rev 2:5.

11 Rev 2:16.

12 Rev 2:20-22.

13 Rev 3:1b-3.

14 Rev 3:15-19.

15 Isa 9:8-12a.

16 Isa 10:5-13.

17 cf. Gen 1:26.

18 cf. Gen 3:1a.

19 cf. Gen 2:15-17.

20 Gen 9:5-7.

21 Read Acts 21-22 for a clear demonstration of Paul’s action.

22 See The First Apology of Justin Martyr, https://biblehub.com/library/justin/the_first_apology_of_justin/index.html; also, The Second Apology of Justin Martyr, https://biblehub.com/library/justin/the_second_apology_of_justin_for_the_christians/index.html.

23 See A Plea for the Christians, https://biblehub.com/library/richardson/early_christian_fathers/a_plea_regarding_christians_by.htm.

24 See City of God, https://biblehub.com/library/augustine/city_of_god/index.html.

25 See Apology, https://biblehub.com/library/tertullian/apology/index.html.

26 For instance, see Otto, Jennifer, “Were the Early Christians Pacifists? Does it Matter?” in The Conrad Grebel Review 35, no. 3 (Fall: 2017), https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/publications/conrad-grebel-review/issues/fall-2017/were-early-christians-pacifists-does-it-matter.

27 For instance, California and New York.

In the Beginning, Work.

The Scriptures begin with God working, creating, forming, organizing, delegating tasks – and his created image bearer being given the blessing and responsibility of reflecting those actions in a creaturely manner. Man was created to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, exercise dominion over the creatures, and do so in accordance with the Law of God written on his heart, as well as in accordance with the Law of God given to him in the garden of Eden (cf. Gen 2:15-17). Man was created, in other words, to work. This means that any prohibition against working that is not coming from God is evil. You do not merely have the freedom to work, you are required to do so under divine Law.

So why have so many today forgotten this? Facing the tyrannical mandates of many local governing authorities and the White House’s current Resident, many have chosen to simply cave in to the pressure and cease from working when they are told to, or only continue working once they have met the terms and conditions the powers that be are arbitrarily and wickedly setting up. Why?

In my opinion, it is partly because men are tired – tired of learning, tired of dealing with the shame of having been conned by authorities they once trusted, tired of having to think through novel obstacles to them simply being alive and providing for their families, tired of having to think up novel approaches to get things done in spite of the useless and wicked mandates of tyrannical magistrates. Tired.

I think it is also simply easier to abdicate our responsibility to think individually, and to collate and evaluate and weigh our options as local bodies of responsible and critically thinking individuals. Thinking is difficult. Rather than use technology to assist us in our research as we think for ourselves, we have been conditioned to let Google search results do our thinking for us. Sadly, the internet has become an infallible Magic 8-Ball for many of us, rather than a tool to augment our finite research abilities. And so, many of us just rely on whatever information we receive from the mainstream media online, in print, on the radio, or on television.

The Broader Cultural Problem

However, there is a broader reason for this, I think. It seems to me that in the mid to late 1800s, the academic distinction between the sciences and the liberal arts became more pronounced than it had previously been. With the promotion of Darwinism and the advent of the industrial revolution, practical developments in the hard sciences were desired and viewed as real, i.e. tangible, developments in man’s intellectual, social, and, consequently, material evolution. The liberal arts were viewed as academic disciplines that were not capable of obtaining objective knowledge, but were mere repositories of subjective notions.

Studying philosophy or literature or the arts in general was akin to studying the history of what other people in those fields thought and practiced before they understood that the hard sciences alone were capable of giving us objective truth. This is not to say that there weren’t developments in philosophy and literature, but that they were, and still are, viewed as mere theories whose value primarily consists in raising questions for science to either dissolve (i.e. identify as meaningless and, thereby, disregard) or resolve by means of empirical exploration and experimentation.

With this, it seems, came the general movement toward hyper specialization, a phenomenon further resulting in what one philosopher has called “the tyranny of the experts.”1 Individuals have been encouraged not to gain a broad education enabling them to take in and analyze/critique data gathered, arguments formulated, and conclusions drawn by a wide variety of academic disciplines and social bodies, but to stay in their place. Despite the fact that discovery in any field can come from any human being who just so happens to pose the right questions or answers, men have been discouraged from thinking that they could learn enough to make them competent judges of, at the very least, the arguments being formulated by the so-called “experts.”2

So rather than viewing the question of governmentally mandated prohibitions on working as one which any man with a grasp of the law of non-contradiction and the basic theology of the Bible can meditate on and thoughtfully and, perhaps, correctly answer by making an appeal to logic and the Scriptures, we have seen many men abdicate their responsibility to think about this matter. Men have sought the easier route of giving other men free rein over their own deliberations. And after all, why not? Your position in life, in academia, in the great intellectual chain of being, as it were, is completely distinct from the position of a Fauci or a Gates. On this view, you not only are not on the same level as these men, you are essentially a foreigner who must be led around by the hand through their pretentious academic constructions, and accept their self-disclosure as infallible, inerrant, and the basis for the formation of whatever thoughts in those disciplines you may have.

Back to Work

But this is clearly not the case, given that the Lord God has given us a very simple break down of how things in his creation are to work. In particular, the book of Genesis tells us very early on that work is activity that is required by the Lord. God did not suggest that Adam and Eve ought to work six days and rest on the seventh. He did not insinuate that it might be good for them to follow that pattern. He declared that this was the very purpose of man –

• Be fruitful

• Multiply

• Take dominion over the earth

• Subdue the earth

Man is, in other words, morally obligated to work six days a week. This is divine law, not the fanciful decree of some petty tyrant. Those who make your employment dependent on your submission to their arbitrary commands, mandates, edicts, etc are in flagrant violation of the law of God. To whom then do you submit? Are you arguing that it is in your interest to simply comply in order to not “stir the pot”? Then you are not reading the Scriptures closely enough.

Back to Genesis & the Fall

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He made man in his image – as a rational, volitional, and moral personal being. Being made in God’s image not only means that man is a rational, volitional, and moral personal being, but that he is such in a way that distinctly mirrors God. Man occupies the highest seat of authority over all of the vegetal and animal creatures in the universe (under God, of course) and, thereby, is capable of, and culpable for, exercising dominion over them. Working, in other words, is an inseparable consequence of man being the image of God. If man is not working, then he is not acting in accordance with his created nature which is the imago dei. Man, by his created nature as well as by divine decree, is obligated, and blessed with the opportunities and responsibility, to work.

If our understanding of the world is to be in accordance with the Scriptures, therefore, we must view man not merely as one who may work and thereby physically and externally reflect God’s image, but one whose being must do so. Not only this, but we must also view any prohibition on man’s ability and responsibility to work, if not explicitly or implicitly revealed by God, to be illegitimate, an illegal order that we ought not obey, lest we find ourselves placing the orders of wicked magistrates and rulers above and against the orders of the King of kings.

Please note that I am not here talking about those who are ill, disabled, etc who cannot work, as such conditions are, I believe, legitimately excusable grounds for one not working, as well as for not requiring another to work. Rather, I am talking about those who are forbidding others to work because they have not met some governmentally decreed arbitrary set of terms and conditions, as well as those who are fully capable of working and yet refuse to work because they have not met those arbitrary terms and conditions set up by the government. These individuals are forbidding what God commands (viz., work), and commanding what God forbids (viz., idleness).

While we exist outside of the Paradise Adam and Eve occupied, our occupation has not changed. Adam was placed in the garden to till and keep it, according to Gen 2:15. And once he had sinned, the Holy Spirit tells us the following –

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:

“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread

Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”

[…]

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.3

Prior to the Fall, man’s job was to till and keep the earth. After the Fall, man’s job was the same. And this implies that it is likewise our job to this day. Note the words used by the Lord in the passage above –

“…all the days of your life…”
“…till you return to the ground…”

How long is man to work? As long as he arbitrarily determines? Or all the days of his life? Till he gets bored or is too afraid to work? Or until he returns to the ground? The text is clear about this – man is to work, in one way or another, as long as he can, until he returns to the dust from which the Lord created him.

While we await the Lord’s return for his church, we are to work. If we are capable of working, we must. If the governing authorities attempt to tell us we cannot work unless we meet their terms and conditions, we must decide who it is we are going to obey – the Lord of the universe whose jurisdiction is over all of creation? Or those who are acting outside of their jurisdictional boundaries – namely those of rewarding good and punishing evil (as per Rom 13:1-7) – and placing themselves as authorities over and above and against the Creator himself?

1 See my article “The Tyranny of Bureaucracy vs. The Sovereignty of God,” Invospec, Oct 29, 2020, https://www.invospec.org/2020/10/the-tyranny-of-bureaucracy-vs.html.

2 See my article “Debunking the ‘Expertise Rule,’” ThornCrown Ministries, July 10, 2020, https://thorncrownministries.com/blog/2020/7/10/debunking-the-expertise-rule.

3 Gen 3:17-23. (emphasis added)

“We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion.  We are loyal to our flag.”

-          Dr. Samuel D. Burchard, Presbyterian Minister and Union Civil War Veteran

“Our patience is wearing thin.” Thus did the imposter-in-chief and son of Antichrist Joe Biden bellow from the lectern on Thursday. 

More fully, his comments were:

My message to unvaccinated Americas is this: what more is there to wait for, what more do you need to see?  We’ve made vaccinations free, safe, and convenient.  The Vaccine is FDA approved [it isn’t, but that’s another matter]. Over 200 million Americans have gotten at least one shot.  We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.  And your refusal has cost all of us.  So please, do the right thing.  But don’t just take it from me.  Listen to the voices of unvaccinated Americans who are lying in hospital beds taking their final breath saying, “if only I’d gotten vaccinated! If only!” It’s a tragedy.  Please don’t let it become yours.

With his words, this treasonous liar managed, in very short order, to declare war, not just on unvaccinated Americans, but on all the constitutionally guaranteed liberties of all Americans.

Quite apart from the fact that the Covid vaccines are unsafe and ineffective, Biden’s arrogant and threatening words are among the most disturbing, unconstitutional, and unchristian utterances made by any American politician ever.  It’s that serious. 

There is no provision in our Constitution that allows a president to dictate what medical treatments a person must have.  There is no support for such a thing in Scripture. 

Far from it. 

In 1988, Joe Biden’s bid for the White House was short circuited when it turned out he had, “lifted portions of a speech by United Kingdom Labour MP and Margaret Thatcher challenger Neil Kinnock.”   

It only he had stuck with plagiarizing Neil Kinnock.

Now, when speaking as President in 2021, it seems that Biden has raised his game, lifting his ideas from a higher source.  In this case, Revelation 13 seems to be where Biden is stealing his ideas these days.  There we read, “And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”

It is not my point here to argue that the Covid vaccine answers to the prophecy in John’s Revelation. With that said, Biden’s threat to the unvaccinated is certainly of that same spirit we find in Revelation.  “Do what I tell you, or else!” 

It’s also of the same spirit one finds in the Roman Catholic Church, the Great Babylonian Harlot of Revelation.  In the middle ages, Rome was all about “do what we say, or else!”  If you didn’t believe that Christ really, truly was present in the sacrifice of the mass, well, you were in a whole lot of trouble and would likely find yourself on the receiving end of some nasty business.  This is what dogma is.  “Believe, or else!”  No matter how stupid, absurd, and unbiblical Rome’s pronouncements were. You had to accept what the pope and his henchmen said or suffer the consequences.

Back in 2006 in his essay “The Religious Wars of the 21st Century,”  John Robbins wrote, “The Protestant Reformation is indeed over; the respite of peace, freedom, and prosperity it afforded the West from the long history of human brutality is drawing to a close; and the world is about to enter a new Dark Age of slavery, brutality, and war.  Only the second coming of Christ or an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit can prevent religious totalitarians from imposing their will on billions of people.”

Some may have thought Robbins a pessimist when he wrote that.  But fifteen years later, his words seem downright prescient.

America is suffering under the government of its second Roman Catholic president.  And unlike the first one, John F. Kennedy, Biden not only sees no need to hide his political and economic Romanism, but actually goes out of his way to embrace them.    

By political and economic Romanism, I mean the application of the Roman Catholic Church-State’s (RCCS) theology and philosophy to those two disciplines.

Joe Biden’s Political and Economic Romanism

We’ve already seen one example of Joe Biden’s political Romanism in his arrogant announcement of vaccine mandates.  But one can find many other examples of Biden openly embracing the economics and politics of the Woman Who Rides the Beast. 

On his 2020 campaign website, we read:

In his encyclical, Laudato Si, Pope Francis directed the global community to raise awareness about the growing climate change crisis. Climate change threatens communities across the country, from beachfront coastal towns to rural farms in the heartland. Joe’s plan will tackle climate change and pollution to protect our communities.

By favorably citing Jesuit Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, Biden is advancing not only Rome’s environmentalist agenda but the ultimate aim of that agenda: global government.   In Laudato Si, Pope Francis, the current occupant of the office of Antichrist, approvingly quoted his immediate predecessor Antichrist, writing:

Given this situation, it is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organized international institutions, with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments, and empowered to impose sanctions. As Benedict XVI has affirmed in continuity with the social teaching of the Church: “To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago”(emphasis mine).

With the above in mind, is it any surprise that one of Biden’s first acts in office was to put America back into the treasonous Paris Climate Accord?  By doing this, Biden promoted the climate change of globalist lies of the RCCS.

Biden’s praising of Pope Francis’ socialist economics predates the 2020 presidential campaign.  In 2014, when many liberty minded Roman Catholics were aghast of Pope Francis’s open attack on capitalism in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Joe Biden said of one of the Pope’s critics, “As a practicing Catholic, bless me, Father, for he has sinned.”

We have already seen Biden’s thuggish attitude to those who disagree with the Covid vaccine campaign.  But Biden is not the first Covid authoritarian.  And while Pope Francis is certainly not the only Covid authoritarian, he is certainly one of the most prominent. 

Back in February of this year, there was this headline in the Huffington Post, “Vatican Threatens To Fire Employees Who Refuse COVID-19 Vaccine.” Antichrist loves the vax so much that, aping him, his Mini Me in the White House wants to bring the same blessing to Americans coast to coast.  Except, of course, to members of Congress and their staff.  They’re exempted. Rules are for little people!  Shades of the middle ages indeed, where there was one law for the nobility, and another for everyone else. 

Critical Race Theory is another point of agreement between the Biden regime and Antichrist.  They both think it’s wonderful.  In an article titled “Critical race theory and Catholicism go hand in hand,” Jesuit Patrick Saint-Jean wrote that, “CRT [Critical Race Theory] intersects easily with Catholic social teaching.”  Doubtless, it does. But then, that’s a condemnation of Rome’s evil and ungodly Social Teaching, not a confirmation of its righteousness as the Jesuit author of the article thinks.

Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden – it’s worth mentioning here that Biden attends a Jesuit-run parish in Washington D.C. – also thinks CRT is just awesome and something we Americans all need more of. 

How about immigration, migration, and refugee resettlement?  Once again, there is no distinction at all between the policies of the Biden regime and pronouncements of the Antichrists current and past on this topic.  In short, both the Pope and Joe Biden think it’s a great idea to flood the nation with immigrants, migrants, and refugees and stick the American people with the bill, all the while denouncing them as a bunch of depolorables for even so much as questioning whether these policies are good for the American people or make any economic sense.  In his blasting critique of Strangers No Longer, Pastor Ralph Ovadal called this “romanizing America through illegal immigration.” 

But it’s not just illegal immigration that the Popes of Rome, including the current Pope, use to destroy nations. It’s also welfare refugee resettlement.  Both Pope Francis and Joe Biden want to flood America with Afghan refugees.  Antichrist Pope Francis even prayed, “that displaced persons inside Afghanistan receive assistance and protection.”  That is to say, Francis wants them on the public dole.  This is one of Rome’s most flagrant refugee scams, conflating Christian charity, which is always the voluntary giving of one’s own things, with state-run welfare, which is theft. 

Naturally, the Biden regime thinks the same thing.  According to the Wall Street Journal, “Biden Administration Seeks New Law to East Afghan Refugees’ Path to Green Cards.”  So we can import literally plan loads of people, many of whom the State Department has no idea who they are and of whom, “only a small share of those entering the U.S. qualified through the Special Immigrant Visa program intended for Afghan interpreters, drivers, embassy workers and other who directly worked for the American military and U.S. contractors.”  Let the refugee handouts begin! 

I could go on, but the reader by now should be able to see that political and economic Romanism is, far from being accidental, is the very warp and wood of the Biden regime. 

If Americans are to have any chance of retaining any of their remaining liberties, it is imperative for Christians to denounce and refute the political and economic Romanism of the Biden regime.  

In this last part of my series on how to love God and your neighbor, I will present a broad outline of why it is we are exempt from mandatory vaccinations as Christians. The basic argument is simple –

Given that mandatory vaccination overrides the magisterial authority of Scripture, as well as the ministerial authority of Logic and the academic and practical disciplines subservient to it, mandatory vaccination violates our religious liberty to worship God with all of our mind and body.

Mandated/forced vaccination hinders us from worshiping God as he has prescribed in his Word. Indeed, it forces us to sin against God. This not only violates our freedom of conscience, and our freedom to exercise religion, but attacks the very substance of Christian living and, therefore, Christianity itself.

This will be a little lengthy, but I feel the need to get into more details on this matter. I pray that you will find this profitable, and be able to utilize it in any way that will edify the body of Christ.

I. The Scope of Sola Scriptura

As the Westminster Confession correctly explains,

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture…1

The scope of the Scriptures’ sufficiency, let us note, is broader than many would like to concede. This is evident from the authors’ use of the universal terms whole and all, as well as by their reference to (a)that which is expressly/explicitly set down in Scripture and (b)that which is necessarily implied by (a). Scripture covers all that is necessary as respects the glorification of God, man’s salvation, the doctrines man must believe, and the day to day actions that man must perform in order to glorify God.

There is nothing hidden from the Word of God, from his verbal/written judgment.2All actions are revealed to be either glorifying to God or not when they are examined in light of the Scriptures’ explicit and implicit teaching. Paul says the same in his second epistle to Timothy, writing –

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.3

All of Scripture is of divine origin and authority. All of Scripture is profitable for making one equipped every good work. No work of the regenerate man is, therefore, excluded from the explicit and implicit teaching of Scripture. All of our works are subordinate to the Word of God, receiving either approval or condemnation from God. Hence, the Westminster theologians go on to explain that –

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.4

Again, note the universals here – all controversies of religion, all decrees of councils, all opinions of ancient writers, all doctrines of men, and all private spirits – indicating that the Word of God is the supreme judge of all thinking and action.

II. The Definition of “Good Works”

Whatever has been deemed to be a good work, then, must be examined in light of not merely the explicit declarations of God’s Word, but also the implicit teaching necessarily inferred therefrom. When this is done, we see that good works are

…only such as God hath commanded in his holy Word, and not such as, without the warrant thereof, are devised by men, out of blind zeal, or upon any pretense of good intention.5

That which God requires of men, as revealed in his Word, constitutes what we can legitimately call “good works.” If there are actions that are not commanded by God, or which contradict the explicit and implicit teaching of Scripture as to the nature of godly living, i.e. obedient living that brings glory to God, then those actions do not constitute what we can legitimately call good works.6

III. The Scope of “Good Works”

We have defined what constitutes a good work, and now we must turn to Scripture to understand the scope of that which is covered by the term “good works.” Is it a narrowly defined sphere of activity? Or is it the whole of a man’s life? Well, given that the Westminster Larger Catechism, following the Scriptures, states that “man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever,”7 it is the case that man’s very existence – the entirety of his life – ought to be lived in a manner that brings glory to God. This implies that every act of man is intended by God to be a good work.

Every action of man ought to be performed in good conscience before God, in faith that what is being performed is that which is in accordance with God’s Law, for “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”8 Every action, consequently, must be performed in order to bring God glory. As the apostle Paul tells the Corinthians –

…whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.9

Good works, then, are firstly those which are explicitly stated in the Law of God, the Ten Commandments. Good works, however, also include all the actions of men, covering every aspect of human existence, taken by faith in accordance with the Law of God explicitly stated in Scripture.

The apostle Paul also makes this clear when he tells the Romans the following –

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.10

We are called to firstly have our thinking conformed to God’s Word, and then our bodies (performing those actions which we have, by faith, determined to be in accordance with God’s Law). This conformation, via testing (i.e. reasoning about our thoughts and actions in the world), enables us to discern what thoughts and actions are good before God (i.e. what actions may be performed in accordance with God’s explicitly stated Law).

IV. Daily Individual Worship and Lord’s Day Corporate Worship

It is noteworthy that Paul defines the whole of our bodily existence as “spiritual worship.” While we are called to not forsake the assembling of the local body which meets together for corporate worship on the Lord’s Day,11 we are also called to individually worship God by having our minds and, therefore, thoughts and bodily actions conformed to the Word of God. Our daily activity is, in other words, worship to God, as is our weekly meeting on the Lord’s Day. These two forms of worship are distinct and complementary to one another, not contradictory. We worship God daily, and meet together as a body to worship him on the Lord’s Day.

V. The Individual Temple

The individual body, like the corporate body,12 is identified as the house of God, the physical place where God dwells and governs over man’s thoughts and actions by his Spirit and his Word. Writing to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul explains –

…we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.13

In this passage, Paul repeatedly identifies the believer’s body as the dwelling place of God’s Spirit. The Holy Spirit governs over the activities of this house, just as he governs over the activities of the corporate house of God.

The apostle Peter, likewise, identifies his body as a “tent,” or “tabernacle,” in his second epistle. He writes –

…I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.14

Peter H. Davids’ commentary here is very useful:

Rooted in their previous nomadic life (many of the peoples in the Mediterranean had once been nomadic) and the present use of tents as temporary shelters, the image of a tent for this mortal life is found in the OT (Isa 38:12…), but is more common in Hellenistic Judaism. For instance, in Wisd 9:15 we read, “For a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind,” a clear indication of both the tent = body imagery and body-soul dualism…15

The apostle Paul elsewhere identifies the believer’s body as “a temple of the Holy Spirit.”16 And these all, of course, are following the Lord Jesus Christ’s identification of his own body as The Temple of God.17 While Christ’s body as the Temple of God has a much greater and richer significance than our individual bodies being temples of God, the point of derivation and overlap cannot be ignored. The Son of God tabernacled among men,18 the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in him bodily,19 and was given the Spirit without measure.20 We are tent-dwelling sojourners in this world, redeemed sinners in whom the fullness of the God does not dwell bodily, and who do not possess the Holy Spirit without measure, whose flesh lusts against the Spirit as he works to conform us to Christ’s image.21

VII. What This Means for Us

The significance of our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit lies in the fact that they are to be governed by the Holy Spirit as he teaches us from his Word, thereby making us wise and capable of discerning what is the good and perfect will of God. The good and perfect will of God is comprised of those good works which God has ordained for his people,22 and fall under two categories – 1. Good works explicitly commanded by God in his Law, and 2. Works that are judged to be in accordance with God’s Word after prayerful study and reflection on the explicit and implicit teaching of Scripture. And these two categories of good works constitute the whole of our Christian life, rendering all of our daily activities either fulfilled or failed attempts at worship.

Thinking for oneself in light of the Scriptures’ explicit and implicit teaching, in other words, is a daily act of worship in which all Christians must engage. Forcing Christians to act against our consciences, insofar as they are informed by the Word of God, not only violates our freedom of conscience and our God-given right to worship God freely, but also forces us to sin against God. This is an attack on our ability to live in accordance with Scripture and, therefore, an attack on the Christian faith (which addresses all areas of our life) in its entirety.

Consequently, forced vaccination – whether by physical coercion, intellectual and/or emotional manipulation, or government mandates – is something with which we cannot comply, lest we sin against our Lord and Savior by subordinating his Word and Spirit to the words, wishes, and powers of men and their institutions. The Christian system of doctrine teaches us that man’s body is his own possession, a creation meant to be ruled and governed by the Spirit and Word of God. Christians, in particular, are revealed to be temples, places of worship, which must be governed by the Spirit and the Word. The subordination of the Word of God and his Spirit to any authority constitutes a flagrant act of idolatry in which no Christian can, or would want to, participate.

Ultimately, the Christian is free, and must be free, to reflect on all of his actions in light of the revealed Word of God (explicit and implicit). He is free, and must be free, to judge whether or not taking an experimental medication is in accordance with the revealed Word of God (explicit and implicit).

1 Ch. 1, Art. 6.

2 cf. Heb 4:12-14.

3 2nd Tim 3:16-17.

4 WCF, Ch. 1, Art. 10.

5 ibid., Ch. 16, Art. 1.

6 See, Isa 5:20-21; Mark 7:9-13; 1st Tim 1:8-11.

7 WLC, A.1.

8 Rom 14:23b. (emphasis added)

9 1st Cor 10:31. (emphasis added)

10 Rom 12:1-2. (emphasis added)

11 cf. Heb 10:19-25.

12 See 1st Cor 11:17-22 (this is implicit to Paul’s rhetorical question in v.22a), Eph 2:18-20, 1st Tim 3:1-5 & 14-15, 2nd Tim 2:15-21, 1st Pet 2:4-6 & 4:17, Heb 3:1-6 & 10:19-25.

13 2nd Cor 5:1-10.

14 2nd Pet 1:13-14. (emphasis added) [N.B. I’ve used the NKJV rendering here because the ESV does not provide a translation of the original Greek here, but interprets the Greek word as an analogy/metaphor for the body. This interpretation is correct, but it subtly undermines the significance of the original wording. If the body is the Lord’s tabernacle, this ties directly into Peter’s identification of believers as “sojourners” in the present age (cf. 1st Pet 2:11).]

15 The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman’s, 2006), 194. (emphasis added)

16 1st Cor 6:19-20.

17 See John 2:13-21.

18 cf. John 1:14.

19 cf. Col 1:19-20 & 2:9.

20 cf. John 3:34-35.

21 cf. Gal 5:16-25.

22 cf. Eph 2:10.

In my last article,1 I didn’t urge readers to not get vaccinated because I didn’t have the time to gather all the relevant articles demonstrating that the mRNA vaccines are not safe and effective. My goal, moreover, was to get Christians to think about the propaganda that they are up against, and to love God with all of their mind by making a wise, God-glorifying decision. Given that the vaccines are being promoted by means of propaganda, however, that is enough for us to refuse them. Manipulation, coercion, threats, emotionalism, and the redefinition of love render any decision made upon such appeals sinful. If we want to love our neighbor, then, we must not act in defiance of the first table of the Law of God by abdicating our responsibility to rationally assess the present situation.

In this article, I am not going to delve into the data that demonstrates how the mRNA vaccines are not safe and effective. Instead, I want to give a single reason, and an important one, for my refusal to get the vaccine. My goal is to make an argument that can be used in everyday (i.e. not overly technical/scientific) discussions with other believers, or with unbelievers, that clearly states why a Christian should not get “the jab.”

You Shall Not Bear False Witness

As of the moment, the mRNA vaccines are being aggressively promoted by the media, government officials, and media personalities. While there are therapeutics that have been shown to be safe and effective in the treatment of COVID-19, these promoters of the mRNA vaccines do not promote them. They not only fail to promote them, they actively discourage the use of these therapeutic treatments. They argue fallaciously in order to manipulate their audiences into getting the mRNA vaccine, rather than getting cheap and safe and effective drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

For instance, rather than reporting on the successful treatment of COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, the media reported on a man who had taken chloroquine tablets intended for fish and, subsequently died from it.2 The media’s intention was to make Trump responsible for health misinformation and, consequently, the man’s death. It was also intended to mock anyone who dare to seek treatment that was not approved of by the FDA. One news outlet made the false claim that hydroxychloroquine was not approved of by the FDA for the treatment of COVID-19, despite the fact that it had been given Emergency Use Authorization very early on and would only have that authorization revoked several days afterward.3

Another media outlet called those who were promoting hydroxychloroquine conspiracy theorists,4 falsely claimed that the drug was “condemned by the US Food and Drug Association,”5 deceptively reported that “hydroxychloroquine is well documented for increasing serious heart problems, and in some cases, resulting in death,”6 and mocked President Trump and anyone else who would dare to think differently than the so-called experts. This was more than a simple attempt to dissuade people from using the drug; it was propaganda meant to belittle, ostracize, and vilify seekers of the drug. Many other outlets did the same,7 and are now reusing the same tactics with respect to another drug that is being used successfully as a COVID-19 therapeutic, namely ivermectin.

In a recent article by Oliver Darcy, the CNN reporter, as well as the FDA, misrepresent ivermectin as “an anti-parasitic drug used for livestock,”8 while simultaneously affirming that “there are human uses for ivermectin.”9 Another CNN writer, Chris Cillizza, does the same in his article “What the ivermectin debacle reveals about the hypocrisy of the anti-vaxxer crowd,”10 identifying those promoting the drug as conspiracy theorists. He goes on to identify the drug as “a drug used to de-worm large animals, in stock,”11 and as “medicine meant for horses and cows,”12 only to then state that “there are formulations of ivermectin approved for human use in the United States, but it's intended for intestinal parasites and conditions such as head lice and rosacea,” thereby revealing his equivocal use of the word “ivermectin.”13 The goal? To identify the drug as harmful, unapproved by the FDA, and dangerous.

In a dark twist of irony, however, the same media outlet has an article written by a physician explaining why you should not “wait for full FDA approval to get your Covid shot.”14 This highlights the fact that whether or not one should take hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or get “the jab” is being determined not by the sheer preponderance of data but the sheer exercise of authority. If FDA approval should not keep one from getting an experimental gene therapy, then why should it keep one from taking hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, two drugs that have – over their long lifespan – a death rate that is much lower than the 13,000 plus deaths15 attributable to the new mRNA vaccines that have only been in use for about a year or so? This doesn’t add up.

Moreover, given the revelation only a few months ago that Anthony Fauci knew hydroxychloroquine was a safe and effective therapeutic treatment for COVID-19,16 why did he and the media lie about his knowledge of the drug’s efficacy?17 Given that there have been major studies showing the efficacy of ivermectin as a safe and effective therapeutic treatment18 for COVID-19, why are the media, talking heads, politicians, and the FDA arguing deceptively, manipulatively, and fallaciously in a frantic attempt to keep people from getting access to the drug?

We can guess, with reasonable accuracy, the reason behind these attacks on demonstrably successful treatments for COVID-19. It’s simple – If there exist safe and effective alternatives to the vaccines currently being promoted by the government and the media – alternatives whose benefits outweigh their risks, and are more beneficial and less risky than the mRNA vaccines – then the vaccines will lose their EUA status. According to the FDA’s own official document, the organization

...may issue an EUA after FDA has determined that the following statutory requirements are met […]

• The chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) agent referred to in the March 27, 2020 EUA declaration by the Secretary of HHS (SARS-CoV-2) can cause a serious or life threatening disease or condition.

• Based on the totality of scientific evidence available, including data from adequate and well controlled trials, if available, it is reasonable to believe that the product may be effective to prevent, diagnose, or treat such serious or life-threatening disease or condition that can be caused by SARS-CoV-2.

• The known and potential benefits of the product, when used to diagnose, prevent, or treat the identified serious or life-threatening disease or condition, outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.

• There is no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the product for diagnosing,

preventing, or treating the disease or condition.19

And while bullet point 1 has obviously been met, points 2-3 have repeatedly been shown to have not been met. Given the amount of deaths and adverse side effects caused by the mRNA vaccines, it is not reasonable to believe that they can “prevent, diagnose, or treat such serious or life-threatening disease or condition that can be caused by SARS-CoV-2.”20 This is because the vaccines have not been determined to be safe and effective on the basis of “the totality of scientific evidence available” but by studies that have systematically excluded unfavorable data. Nor has it been determined on the basis of “data [obtained] from adequate and well controlled trials” but has been determined on the basis of incomplete and poorly controlled trials.21 Consequently, EUA has not been granted to the vaccines because “the known and potential benefits of the product, when used to diagnose, prevent, or treat the identified serious or life-threatening disease or condition, outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.” Yet by excluding unfavorable data, drawing conclusions from incomplete and poorly controlled mRNA vaccine trials, and lying about drugs like hydroxychroloquine and ivermectin, the FDA has provided itself a plausible basis for claiming that bullet point 4 has been met.

The truth is that the vaccines have not met the requisite conditions justifying the FDA granting them EUA. There are, and have been, many “adequate, … and available alternative[s] to the [mRNA vaccines] for diagnosing, preventing, or treating [COVID-19]” – e.g. hydroxycloroquine,22 ivermectin, budesonide,23 quercetin alongside high doses of vitamins C and D3,24 and Regeneron25 – to name a few. If these alternatives are ignored, sidelined, lied about, etc, however, and are identified as unsafe and ineffective, then the vaccines retain their EUA.

Conclusion: Why I Am Obligated to NOT Get the Vaccine

Given that the government and media have lied about the safety and efficiency of numerous treatments for COVID-19, and that the government and media have lied about the safety and efficiency of the mRNA vaccines, and that the government and media have utilized fallacious and unsound reasoning in an attempt to retain EUA for an experimental treatment that has been shown to be not only very dangerous but ineffective, I am obligated to obey God and not participate in their false witness bearing. I cannot get the vaccine because doing so would imply that I am in agreement with their lies, lies that have not only been used to destroy the lives of many people who could have otherwise been saved by cheap, safe, effective, and easily accessible treatments, but have also destroyed the personal reputations of many doctors who promoted those treatments because they were concerned with saving lives, and not with lining their pockets with blood money.

So in a word – I am obligated to refuse the jab because I am obligated under divine law to not bear false testimony, and the very reason why the vaccines have EUA and, what is more, have been touted as the best means of fighting against COVID-19 is because the media and government have borne false testimony on numerous levels. These lies have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, the defamation of many doctors and front line workers, the destruction of innumerable businesses, the psychological ruination of many children, the dissolution of families due to suicide or substance relapse or domestic violence, and the psychological abuse of many elderly people who were denied, and are still being denied, access to their loved ones.

Because love does one’s neighbor no harm, I am obligated to not get the vaccine.

1 See Hiram R. Diaz III, “How to Love God and Your Neighbor – Think Before You Get “The Jab,” ThornCrown Ministries, Sept 2, 2021, https://thorncrownministries.com/blog/how-to-love-god-and-your-neighbor-think-before-you-get-the-jab.

2 See Erika Edwards and Vaughn Hillyard, “Man dies after taking chloroquine in an attempt to prevent coronavirus,” NBC News, March 23, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/man-dies-after-ingesting-chloroquine-attempt-prevent-coronavirus-n1167166.

3 ibid. [N.B. While the NBC News article mentions that hydroxychloroquine was being looked at as a potentially useful therapeutic, that is only partially correct. It was granted Emergency Use Authorization on March 28, 2020. The EUA was revoked on June 15, 2020. See “Authorizations and Revocation of Emergency Use of Drugs During the COVID-19 Pandemic; Availability,” Federal Register: The Daily Journal of the United States Government, Sept 11, 2020, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/11/2020-20041/authorizations-and-revocation-of-emergency-use-of-drugs-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-availability.]

4 Jenae Madden, “Hydroxychloroquine: the conspiracy theorists’ answer to coronavirus, explained,” Happy, April 4, 2020, https://happymag.tv/hydroxychloroquine-the-conspiracy-theorists-answer-to-coronavirus-explained/.

5 ibid.

6 ibid.

7 See Daniel Funke, “Conspiracy Theory Proven False: Hydroxychloroquine Is [Still] Not a COVID-19 Cure,” Physicians News, July 31, 2020, https://physiciansnews.com/2020/07/31/conspiracy-theory-proven-false-hydroxychloroquine-is-still-not-a-covid-19-cure/; Ann McLaughlin, “Investigating the most convincing COVID-19 conspiracy theories,” June 23, 2020, King’s College London, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/investigating-the-most-convincing-covid-19-conspiracy-theories;

8 “Right-wing media pushed a deworming drug to treat Covid-19 that the FDA says is unsafe for humans,” CNN, Aug 23, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/23/media/right-wing-media-ivermectin/index.html.

9 ibid.

10 CNN, Aug 25, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/25/politics/ivermectin-covid-19-fox-news/index.html.

11 ibid.

12 ibid.

13 Ivermectin for animals differs in concentration levels from ivermectin for humans. Logically, this makes the two uses of the word distinct. The genus here is ivermectin, and the species are (a.)animal and (b.)human. By identifying the use of (a.) as proof that (b.) should not be used, the author is committing the fallacy of equivocation.

14 Jonthan Sackner-Bernstein, CNN, July 28, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/opinions/dont-wait-for-fda-approval-to-get-vaccine-sackner-bernstein/index.html.

15 See Tucker Carlson, “How Many Americans Have Died After Taking COVID Vaccinations?,” FOX News, Brighteon, https://www.brighteon.com/2a2fd903-220a-4b4f-86bf-0f78aaa8fd2a.

16 See Jim Hoft, “SMOKING GUN: FAUCI LIED, MILLIONS DIED — Fauci Was Informed of Hydroxychloroquine Success in Early 2020 But Lied to Public Instead Despite the Science #FauciEmails,” Gateway Pundit, Jun 3, 2021, https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/06/smoking-gun-fauci-lied-millions-died-fauci-informed-hydroxychloroquine-worked-lied-public-instead-despite-science-fauciemails/.

17 See Daniel Funke, “Don’t fall for conspiracy about Dr. Anthony Fauci, hydroxychloroquine,” Politifact, May 6, 2020, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/may/06/blog-posting/dont-fall-conspiracy-about-dr-anthony-fauci-hydrox/.

18 For example, see Morimasa Yagisawa, Patrick J. Foster, Hideaki Hanaki, and Satoshi Ōmura, “Global trends in clinical studies of ivermectin in COVID-19,” in The Japanese Journal of Antibiotics 74 – 1 (Mar.\ 2021), 45-95. [N.B. The PDF, for now, is accessible online here – http://jja-contents.wdc-jp.com/pdf/JJA74/74-1-open/74-1_44-95.pdf].

19 Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines to Prevent COVID-19, 3. FDA website, May 25, 2021, https://www.fda.gov/media/142749/download.

20 ibid.

21 See Ronald B. Brown, “Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials,” in Medicina

57, 199 (2021), https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina57030199; Richard Harris, “Long-Term Studies Of COVID-19 Vaccines Hurt By Placebo Recipients Getting Immunized,” NPR, Feb 19, 2021, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/969143015/long-term-studies-of-covid-19-vaccines-hurt-by-placebo-recipients-getting-immuni; Lance D. Johnson, “Moderna and Pfizer vaccine trials RIGGED by vaccinating the control group… blatant science FRAUD exposed,” Natural News, Aug 10, 2021, https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-08-10-moderna-and-pfizer-vaccine-trials-rigged-vaccinating-control-group.html; Tyler Durden, “Ex-Pfizer Exec Demands EU Halt COVID-19 Vaccine Studies Over 'Indefinite Infertility' And Other Health Concerns,” ZeroHedge, Dec 6, 2020, https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/ex-pfizer-exec-demands-eu-halt-covid-19-vaccine-studies-over-indefinite-infertility-and.

22 See C. Prodromos and T. Rumschlag, “Hydroxychloroquine is effective, and consistently so when provided early, for COVID-19: a systematic review,” in New Microbes and New Infections 38, Nov (2020), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2052297520301281?via%3Dihub.

23 See “Common asthma treatment reduces need for hospitalisation in COVID-19 patients, study suggests,” University of Oxford – News and Events, Feb 9, 2021, https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-02-09-common-asthma-treatment-reduces-need-hospitalisation-covid-19-patients-study; Sanjay Ramakrishnan, et al., “Inhaled budesonide in the treatment of early COVID-19 (STOIC): a phase 2, open-label, randomised controlled trial,” in The Lancet – Respiratory Medicine Vol. 9, Issue 7, (April 9, 2021), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00160-0/fulltext.

24 See Giuseppe Derosa, et al., “A role for quercetin in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19),” in Phytotherapy Research, Wiley Online Library, October 9, 2020, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.6887; Ruben Manuel Luciano Colunga Biancatelli, et al., “Quercetin and Vitamin C: An Experimental, Synergistic Therapy for the Prevention and Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Related Disease (COVID-19),” in Frontiers in Immunology 19, June (2020), https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01451/full; Joseph Mercola, “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity,” in Nutrients 12, October (2020), https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/11/3361.

25 See Kezia Parkins, “Regeneron’s antibody cocktail helps prevent and treat Covid-19 in Phase III studies,” Clinical Trials Arena, April 13, 2020, https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/regenerons-antibody-cocktail-regen-cov-helps-prevent-and-treat-covid-19-in-phase-3-studies/; Alistair Smout, “Regeneron’s antibody therapy cuts deaths among some hospitalised COVID-19 patients -study,” Reuters, June 16, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/regeneron-covid-19-therapy-cuts-deaths-among-hospitalised-patients-who-lack-2021-06-16/; Lenny Bernstein and Laurie McGinley, “Monoclonal antibodies are free and effective against covid-19, but few people are getting them,” Washington Post, August 20, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-monoclonal-abbott/2021/08/19/a39a0b5e-0029-11ec-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html.

Seeing as many Christians are aware of the ethically suspect, if not entirely corrupt, process of vaccine development, and are aware of the serious side-effects of the gene-therapies that are now being rebranded as vaccines, there is a growing tide of individuals who feel the need to tell us that we are “not loving our neighbors” if we don’t get vaccinated. Visit social media and you can see them saying “I thought you were a Christian. Aren’t you supposed to love your neighbor?” Listen to the talking heads on television and online media outlets and you can hear them confidently asserting that “Jesus would have gotten the jab,” and so all Christians should get the jab in order to “love your neighbor like Jesus did.”

But what we are not seeing so much of is a biblical answer to the question posed by the singer Haddaway in 1993 –

What is love?

Instead, those who are “encouraging” us to get vaccinated assume that we share their definition of love and, therefore, should feel guilty for not acting in accordance with their definition of love. And, sadly, for many that is actually the case. Upon hearing that Christians who will not get vaccinated don’t love their neighbors, many professing Christians will feel guilty and get vaccinated against their convictions. This kind of manipulation is occurring on a daily basis and warrants a better response that is biblical and to the point. I hope to present that in this short article.

Defining Love

The American Heritage Dictionary online defines love as follows –

A strong feeling of affection and concern toward another person, as that arising from kinship or close friendship.

[…]

A strong feeling of affection and concern for another person accompanied by sexual attraction.

Similarly, Webster defines love in the following manner –

…strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties

…attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers

…affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests

What we see in these definitions, which I think are representative of how most people think about love, is that love is an affection – i.e. a favorable and tender disposition toward some person or thing – that arises from kinship or some other kind of intimate relationship we have with others. This understanding of love is problematic for a host of reasons. Let’s look at why it is problematic, and then look at what the Scriptures have to say.

In the first place, defining love as an affection (i.e. a favorable and tender disposition toward some person or thing) means that actions taken toward another person that are not favorable or tender are not loving. Yet our own proclamations of love for people show us that this is not the case. Leaving aside the question of who gets to define what is or is not “favorable” to the object of one’s love, we simply point out that those whom we love are often those with whom we tend to lack tenderness in certain situations. For instance, the father who loves his daughter will reprimand her harshly for using drugs, hanging out with the wrong crowd, disrespecting her mother, etc. He will also “tell her like it is,” knowing that it will drive a wedge between the two of them. Is his love suspended for his daughter when he keeps her from destroying her life with drugs, for instance, because he speaks harshly to her? We recognize that the father’s love is what fuels his response. His response is an instance of love, and it lacks the aforementioned tenderness and favorableness, from his daughter’s perspective that is, that is supposedly definitive of love.

The examples here can be multiplied –

• A sister who does not approve of her brother’s decision to divorce his wife and, therefore, refuses to give him emotional and financial support in his endeavors to split up his marriage.

• A church that disciplines a member who continues in flagrant and unrepentant sin.

• A parent who cuts off financial support for his children so that they can learn how to fend for themselves in the world.

• God taking the life of David’s child born of adultery.

• Christ calling Peter Satan.

The harshness in these examples is not evidence of the absence of love but, in fact, the proof of its central presence in the relationships described. What this means is that affection, as described above, is not essential to love. One can love another person by doing what is, according to that person, unfavorable and harsh. Our popular understanding of love, then, is wrong given our own understanding of our behaviors toward those whom we claim to love.

Secondly, because love is not an affection it cannot “arise from” some relationship we have with another person. Our relationship with another person may lead to us having positive/warm feelings for that person, but that isn’t the same thing as love. Our relationship with another person may lead to us acting tenderly toward that person, but that isn’t the same thing as love. We can interact tenderly with strangers we’ve never before met. We can also interact tenderly with people whom we hate. We can act favorably toward another person as a means of retribution, allowing that person to entertain delusions and engage in all kinds of self-destructive behavior, simply because we want him to suffer. Tenderness and favorableness cannot, therefore, be definitive of love.

So why do most people think love is a favorable and tender disposition toward another person? Simply put – they confuse the feelings they have while expressing love for another person with love itself. Unlike God, we experience emotional changes, as we are temporal and mutable creatures. We relate to others in time, moreover, experiencing emotional changes as time progresses in those relationships, and those relationships either grow to maturity or disintegrate. Is the building up of some shared life goal something that evokes positive emotions? Do those positive emotions grow as two people grow closer and see one another as reliable, trustworthy, considerate, and so on? Conversely, is the breaking of a covenant between two persons something that evokes negative emotions? Do those negative emotions grow as two people grow father apart and see one another as unreliable, untrustworthy, inconsiderate, and so on?

As creatures with passions – i.e. emotional states correlative to our proximity to perceived goods or evils – every relationship we have with others is marked by emotional changes. But as we saw above, we can be favorable and tender toward those we hate (as an expression of our hatred), just as we can be unfavorable and harsh toward those we love (as an expression of our love). Love, therefore, is not an affection, although it is accompanied by affection in many cases.

Another problem we must recognize is that of the love of God. Given that God does not have “passions” (as defined above), because he is perfect and unchanging, how are we to understand love?

Scripture Defines Love

In Romans 13:8-10, the apostle Paul writes –

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Within this pericope, we are given the definition of love, as well as examples of love in action. Love, he says, is the fulfilling of the law. The Law in question here is the law of God, i.e. the Ten Commandments, which include the first table (i.e. those commandments immediately pertaining to our relationship with God) as well as the second table (i.e. those commandments immediately pertaining to our relationship with other people). Actions which are loving are those which do no harm to our neighbor, including refraining from adultery, murder, stealing, and coveting.

But that isn’t everything. Paul adds this small clause “and any other commandment,” thereby implying that it is not merely our adherence to the second table of the law that constitutes love for our neighbor, but our adherence to the first table as well. To love one’s neighbor is to walk in accordance with God’s Law as it pertains to our relationship with him and with our fellow human. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Consequently, any act of love toward one’s neighbor that results in our disobedience to the first table of the law is not an act of love at all. Likewise, any act of love toward God that results in our disobedience to the second table of the law is not an act of love at all.

Consider Christ’s words in Mark 7:9-13 –

And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)— then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

Note here what Jesus is criticizing – it is the Pharisees’ attempt to pit obedience to God (in giving sacrificially to him) against obedience to God (in honoring one’s father and mother). What motivated these hypocrites was not love for God but sin, specifically greed, and that is evidenced by the result their supposed love for God produced – the Word of God was nullified, rendered incoherent, self-contradictory. By pitting obedience to the first table against obedience to the second table, the Pharisees had not done what is commanded by either table of the law.

Our Current Context

Given that love is not an emotion/affect but the fulfillment of God’s Law, are appeals to our duty to love our neighbor and “just get the shot” sound? In short, no. When we are told by others “if you really loved your neighbors you would get the jab!” we are being guilt tripped. This kind of manipulation is particularly nasty, seeing as it explicitly states that you don’t love your neighbor and, therefore, necessarily implies that you also don’t love God. It is important to know how this twofold accusation is false, therefore, in order to not be deceived into supposedly loving God or our neighbor at the expense of either and, consequently, failing to love either.

Let’s look at the argument being made:

If you love your neighbor, you will get the vaccine.
You will not get the vaccine.
Therefore, you do not love your neighbor.

In order for this argument to be sound, at least three things need to be true. Firstly, it must be the case that the vaccine will not harm me. Secondly, it must be the case that the vaccine will do my neighbor no harm. Thirdly, it must be the case that my decision to get vaccinated is not due to me having been manipulated, deceived, guilt-tripped, or coerced.

These three situations must be true in order for this syllogism to be sound. For in the first case, if I knowingly get vaccinated with a drug that will render me unable to fulfill the vocations which God has given me, then I am willingly abdicating my divinely ordained responsibilities (e.g. being a husband, father, worker, teacher, etc). Willingly getting vaccinated, in this instance, would not be an act of love toward God or my neighbor because it would render me incapable of worshiping God as he has commanded by making my body incapable of doing what is necessary to ensure no harm comes to my neighbor. In a word, if getting vaccinated renders me incapable of doing what is necessary to ensure no harm comes to my neighbor, then it is not an act of love toward God or my neighbor.

In the second case, if getting vaccinated does harm to my neighbor then it is an act that is loving toward neither God nor my neighbor. Physical harm is not the only harm that one can do to his neighbor, so even if we assume that the vaccine will not physically harm me or anyone else, there is still the danger of harming my neighbor socially. If getting vaccinated entails being publicly praised and retaining my God-given rights, and not getting vaccinated entails being publicly shamed and having my God-given rights suppressed, then getting vaccinated entails socially, and eventually physically, harming my neighbor who will not get vaccinated. For if my neighbor’s God-given rights are suppressed, then he is hindered from loving God by performing the vocations God has given him in order to love God and love his neighbor.

In the third case, if I get vaccinated because I have been manipulated, deceived, guilt-tripped, or coerced, then I have not acted in accordance with the truth. I have placed obedience to men on a par with, or above, obedience to God and, thereby, have engaged in idolatry. The duty to love God with all of my mind requires me to rationally assess my circumstances, and determine what actions I can or cannot take in order to achieve a goal that will directly or indirectly assist me in not doing my neighbor any harm. If I don’t do this, but instead succumb to the pressure to get vaccinated, I am not acting in accordance with the truth, and consequently not loving God or my neighbor.

Conclusion

Even if the vaccine is safe and effective, loving my neighbor requires me to love God, and loving God requires me to act not in submission to governmental mandates, media manipulators, or frantic family members, but in submission to the Lord God of Truth. If I am being told to succumb to bribes, manipulative emotional outbursts, coercive mandates, and so on, then I am being told to commit idolatry by not subjecting myself to the truth. I don’t have to demonstrate that the vaccines are not safe and effective, in other words, in order to justify not getting vaccinated. If I love God and my neighbor, then I will not obey another authority placing himself above God by forcing me to forgo the reasoning process requisite to making a good and God-honoring decision. If I love God and my neighbor, then I will not get vaccinated if that entails the ostracization of my neighbor because he is convinced that the vaccine is not safe and effective.

Those who are arguing that it is unloving – i.e. sinful – to not “get the jab” are engaging in behavior that is unloving toward their neighbors and God. This is not because they are promoting vaccination per se, but because they are twisting Scripture, disregarding truth, placing the desires of men above the revealed will of God, and placing love for God and love for one’s neighbor in contradiction to one another in their attempt to get their neighbors vaccinated. This is evil and must be rejected and refuted. Christians are to obey God rather than men, and God commands us to rationally assess our life situations in order to make decisions that are good for our neighbor’s well-being, and which bring God glory.

And this thing was the sin of the house of Jeroboam, so as to exterminate and destroy it from the face of the earth.

-          1 Kings 13:34

So just how is the Federal Reserve like the sin of the house of Jeroboam?  For that matter, what is the Federal Reserve and who on earth is Jeroboam and the sin of his house of which I write? 

Well, you won’t have to wait long.  Those questions, Lord willing, I aim to answer in this post.

Jeroboam and the Sin of His House

Jeroboam was the first king of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, which split from the House of David after the accession of King Rehoboam, the son of King Solomon.   The proximate cause of the split was a tax revolt of the norther tribes due to their unhappiness at Solomon’s policy of heavy taxation and the arrogant response of Rehoboam, Solomon’s successor, when Jeroboam and other representatives from the north asked him for relief.  The split of the United Kingdom into warring Northern and Southern Kingdoms is recorded for us in 1 Kings 12.

The ultimate cause of the split was the will of God.  Solomon had rebelled against God, having his heart drawn aside into idolatry by his many foreign wives, and the splitting of the kingdom was God’s punishment for Solomon’s unfaithfulness.

In 1 Kings 11, the prophet Ahijah had prophesied to Jeroboam that God he would tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and give him ten tribes, leaving one for David’s successor.  The Lord even promised Jeroboam that he would build him an enduring house provided he did what was right in the Lord’s eyes.

But disbelieving God, Jeroboam quickly fell into the sin of idolatry, as had Solomon. 

In Jeroboam’s case, he was concerned that if residents of the Northern Kingdom kept going to Jerusalem to worship, their hearts would be turned from following him and return to the house of David.  To prevent this, Jeroboam invented a whole new religion.  He made two golden calves, putting one in Bethel and the other in Dan, “made priests from every class of people, who were not of the sons of Levi,” and made sacrifices at a time, “which he devised in his own heart.” 

Jeroboam was confronted by a prophet of the Lord, who in dramatic fashion denounced the king while he was in the act of sacrificing.  When Jeroboam stretched forth his hand and called for the prophet’s arrest – this was the Old Testament version of cancel culture – his hand withered, “so that he could not pull it back to himself” and the altar split in two and the ashes poured out of it. Jeroboam then asked the prophet to restore hi hand, which the prophet did. 

Now one would think that such a powerful demonstration of God’s power and anger would have moved Jeroboam to repentance.  But this did not happen.  In 1 Kings 13:33, 34 we  read, “After these event [the withering of Jeroboam’s hand and the altar splitting in two] Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way, but again he made priest from every class of people for the high places; whoever wished, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places.  And this thin was the sin of the house of Jeroboam, so as to exterminate and destroy it from the face of the earth.”  

The Sin Didn’t Stop with Jeroboam

Jeroboam reigned as king of Israel for twenty-two years.  Scholars differ on the dates of his reign, one putting it at 922-901 BC, while another gives the dates 931-910 BC.  Samaria , later the capital of the Northern Kingdom, fell to Assyria om 722 BC, so in either case the Northern Kingdom would continue for another 179 – 188 years after Jeroboam.  But although Jeroboam was succeeded by many other kings of Israel, none of them departed from his sin of establishing a false religion in the kingdom right at the outset.  One could even say that the sin of Jeroboam was endemic to the Northern Kingdom.

You can see this from reading through the remainder of the books of 1 and 2 Kings.  A search using the term “sin of Jeroboam” on BibleGateway yielded 24 occurrences in these two books. 

-          And He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who sinned and made Israel to sin (1 Kings 14:16)

-          He did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin by which he had made Israel sin (1 Kings 15:34)

-          For he walked in all the ways of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sin by which he had made Israel sin (1 Kings 16:26)

-          But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the LORD God of Israel with all his heart; for he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin (2 Kings 10:31)

“Walked in the way (or ways) of Jeroboam” also returned several results.  For example, King Ahaziah, Ahab’s son, “did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked…in the way of  Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin.” 

At no time did any of the kings who reigned in the Northern Kingdom break the pattern of the sin of the house of Jeroboam.  They all walked in his “original sin,” and the whole nation went into captivity because of it.

The Sin of the Federal Reserve

The sin of the Federal Reserve (and all other central banks) has at least one thing in common with the sin of the house of Jeroboam.  Once established by Jeroboam, his idolatrous religious system proved impossible to get rid of.  Even zealous King Jehu, the only king of the Northern Kingdom about whom God had anything good to say, could not bring himself to end the Jeroboam’s false religion.  In like fashion, the Federal Reserve, although manifestly a corrupt, unchristian, and unconstitutional system from its founding in 1913 right up to the present, has so far proven impossible so much as even to audit, let alone get rid of. 

The Federal Reserve was corrupt from the beginning.  Just as with Jeroboam’s false religion, there was no point at which the Federal Reserve (henceforth, the Fed) was not corrupt and dishonest and sinful.  According to Fed critic G. Edward Griffin in his book The Creature from Jekyll Island – I highly recommend this very readable critique of the Fed – the founding of the Fed was quite literally a conspiracy, with some of the most powerful bankers and politicians in America along with Paul M. Warburg of the Rothchild banking dynasty meeting under secretive circumstances on Jekyll Island in Georgia in November 1910 to hammer out the details of what would become the Fed.  Griffin describes this meeting as the, “birth of a banking cartel to protect its members from competition.”

Of course, that’s not how it was sold to the public. Taking pains not to use the term “central bank,” the conspirators sold the Fed – even the name Federal Reserve is a con, for the Fed is not owned by the federal government, it is a private bank owned by the Fed’s large member banks and it has no reserves apart from money it creates out of thin air in a sort of twisted version of creation ex nihilo – to the American people as a way of stabilizing the banking system which had been rocked by a major crisis in 1907.  In truth, the Fed was conceived as a  way of transferring the risk of a banking crisis from the bankers themselves to the American people, but of course the Jekyll Island crowd wasn’t about to let that cat out of the bag. 

Once established by the Federal Reserve Act, passed by Congress in 1913, the Fed set up shop and his been operating ever since.  During that time, the dollar has lost 98-99% of its purchasing power.  It’s important to note that this loss of purchasing power of the nation’s currency is not some unforeseen bug, but a feature, of the system.  The depreciating currency – and in a debt based fiat currency system such as we have in America the currency must be debased otherwise the system would collapse - is essentially a giant transmission belt that serves to strip mine purchasing power from the wages and saving of ordinary Americans and deposit that stolen wealth into the pockets of the wealthiest of the wealthy.

It should be said here that as Christians we do not criticize the wealthy because they are wealthy.  If a man become rich by honestly serving his fellow man, very well.  There is no sin in earning a lot of money.  But it’s quite another matter to steal a lot of money.  And this is what the Fed was set up to do from the very beginning. 

Just as Jeroboam’s false religion was corrupt and idolatrous from the very beginning and at no time had God’s sanction, so too is central banking - whether conducted by the Fed, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia, or the People’s Bank of China, it matters not which one we speak of; they are all corrupt – a fraud and a curse upon the nations in which it is practiced, and this includes nearly all nations on earth. 

But there is at last another way in which the Fed is like the sin of the house of Jeroboam.  Not only was the Fed, like Jeroboam’s false religion, corrupt from the beginning, but it has persisted from presidential administration to presidential administration. 

It matters not whether the president is Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, a man who promises to cut the size of government or vastly expand its powers, the Fed keeps running in the background, churning out dollars with a click of the mouse.  At the present time, the Fed is committed to buying at least $120 billion (that’s right, $120 billion) per month in federal government debt and mortgage backed securities.  To put that in some perspective, Jeff Bezos, whom Forbes Magazine named the richest man in the world for the fourth consecutive year in 2021, has a fortune listed at $177 billion.  In less than two months’ time, the Fed prints another Jeff Bezos sized fortune. 

And to say the Fed prints the money really isn’t accurate.  It would be better to say that it clicks the money into existence, because all the newly created money is brought into existence on a computer.  They don’t even bother running a printing press.

But back to the notion that the Fed is much like Jeroboam’s sin.  No presidential candidate in my lifetime – with Ron Paul being the one exception – has ever seriously talked about ending the Fed. 

When Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were running for president in 2016, Clinton criticized Trump’s comments on the Fed saying, “You should not be commenting on the Fed actions when you are either running for president or you are president.”  Clinton couched her remarks as protecting markets, but one suspects there was more to it than that.  Presidents aren’t supposed to talk about the Fed, because the Fed is supposed to be independent.  But while Fed supporters like to speak of the Fed’s independence from the political process, a more honest word to use would be “secretive.” Those who run the Fed act more as if they belonged to a secret society than public servants.  And that’s not surprising given that their labors are directly damaging to the legitimate interests of the American people.  Because of this, they must keep the hoi polloi in the dark about all their money printing schemes, the real reason for rising prices [rising prices are not inflation; inflation is Fed money printing which results in rising prices, but you’re not supposed to know that], corporate bailouts and the rise in wealth disparity. 

But even populist Donald Trump did not lay the axe to the root and call for an end to the Fed.  When Trump complained about the actions of then Fed Chairman Jent Yellen, he was upset only because he believe that the Fed was acting to help Hillary Clinton, not because Trump himself had any objection to the Fed. 

The Fed engaged in massive money printing under George W. Bush, Barak Obama, Donald Trump and is engaging in massive money printing under Joe Biden.  And not only does the Fed print massive amounts of new currency under all administrations, Democrat or Republican it doesn’t matter, but it does so at a faster and faster pace.  Indeed, because of the debt-based nature of our monetary system, cash must be borrowed into existence at a faster and faster pace to pay the growing interest on the existing debt.  It’s a bit like having tiger by the tail.  Once you grab that tail, you can’t let go.  Once you begin a debt-based financial system, which America did with the creation of the Fed, you can’t stop adding debt.  Such systems are a sort of cul-de-sac, a dead-end road to financial perdition.       

To sustain the unsustainable system of debt increasing at a faster and faster pace just to service the interest on the existing debt, central banks the world over have suppressed interest rates to near zero and even below zero.  That’s right, in today’s world of central banking, you get paid to borrow and punished to save.  This is a financial version of what Isaiah warned about, calling good evil and evil good.  This cannot continue indefinitely.

End the Fed

In his recent column “The Woke Fed,” Ron Paul wrote once again about the coming economic crisis and that the crisis would, “either be precipitated by or result in the rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status.”

But more disturbing than this is that Paul noted that the inevitable collapse of our current monetary system result in it being replaced, “with a government even more authoritarian than the current one.”  Paul doesn’t say so explicitly, but he’s likely referring to the creation of a new system of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC’s) by which the monetary elites will hope to remain in power once the current system implodes. 

Just as Israel desperately needed to repent of its idolatry by removing the false religions system of Jeroboam, so too does the United States need to repent of our monetary sins, end the Fed and allow the free market to determine what monetary system we should have going forward.  Note well, I do not say the government should institute a system of sound money, but rather the government should get out of the way wan allow the free market to determine what money is best. 

The idea that the government should not be involved in the manufacture of money may stride some readers as odd.  After all, don’t all governments manufacture money.  Most all of the them do, or use money manufactured by other governments, but this does not mean they are right in so doing.  To say that all governments print money simply is a descriptor of what they do.  But this is not to say they ought to do it.  Only that they do it.  

According to the Bible, there are only two function os government, punish evildoers and reward the good. There’s nothing there thay says anything about printing money, or in the case of the United States, chartering a private bank, the Fed, to regulate the money. 

Just as idolatry is always wrong, so too is it always wrong for politicians and central bankers empowered by them to regulate a nation’s money supply.  The bankers and politicians will always abuse their position.  Just as idolatry is evil and cannot be reformed, so too is central banking both evil and irreformable.  For the health of the nation, both must be done away with entirely  

Let us, therefore, end the Fed.    

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

-          Genesis 1:1

April 15 of this month marked the 109th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.  In commemoration of the event, one of the YouTube channels I followed put out a multi-part series covering the events of the April 14 and 15 1912, the night of the sinking. 

One of the videos featured and interesting fact that I had heard about previously but had not appreciated its importance.  As part of the evacuation, Charles Lightoller, the Titanic’s second officer and senior surviving officer, opened the gangway door on D-Deck to help with the lowering of one of the lifeboats. As it turned out, the door was never used during the ship’s evacuation, and in the chaos, was forgotten and left open. This, as it turned out, was a significant oversight.

The D-Deck gangway door was about halfway up on the port (left) side of the ship and normally well above the waterline.  According to one article, it was the ‘front door’ for first class passengers boarding the ship.  But as Titanic settled, eventually the water made its way up to the door and started pouring in.  The way it was explained in the video, the area the gangway afforded to the advancing water was actually larger than the sum of area of the original punctures made by the iceberg on the starboard (right) side at the time of the collision.  With this additional route for water to enter the ship, the sinking of the Titanic rapidly accelerated.    

So just what does this bit of Titanic trivia have to do with today’s subject at hand, marriage?  I admit, the connection may not be immediately obvious, but hear me out.

The stated purpose of this series, going back to Part 1, is, “to apply the revealed history found in Genesis to the current moral, political, scientific and economic problems of our day, refuting the contemporary confusion and setting forth the mind of God on these issues.” 

This brings us to the subject of marriage. 

Back in the day, and we don’t have to go very far back for this, most Americans accepted the Biblical definition of marriage, whether they themselves were Christians. 

But all that has changed in recent years.  If recent polling is to be believed, a full seventy percent of Americans now support same-sex marriage.  As one measure of how things have changed, I recall that the State of Ohio amended its constitution in 2004 to specifically define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.  There was widespread public support for the amendment and the measure was adopted with little public outcry.  This was a mere seventeen years ago. 

The Ohio amendment and all other state-level prohibitions of same-sex marriage were overturned in 2015 by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, which originated right here in river city, my hometown of Cincinnati. 

To return to my earlier point about how the mistake of leaving the D-Deck gangway door open sped up the sinking of the Titanic, in like fashion, I believe, the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision sped up the sinking of the America’s ship of state, which already was well under way in 2015.  It’s not as if leaving the gangway door open is what sealed Titanic’s fate.  The ship was going to sink anyway based on the damage already done by the iceberg.  But leaving the door open sped things up.  The same with America.  American’s have been losing their liberties since the Progressive Era – I always thought it should be named the Regressive Era – so the process has been going on for well over a century at this point.  The loss of liberty was well underway even in 1912 when the Titanic sunk.  But the rate of our loss of liberty, almost imperceptible at first, has sped up greatly in recent years.  In my opinion, the Obergefell v. Hodges decision can be likened to the leaving open of the D-Deck gangway door.  We were well on our way to sinking before that, but same-sex marriage sped things up. 

I say this because it allowed evil to access new parts of our society that had remained untouched until that time.  Over the years, there was greater and greater acceptance of same-sex marriage, but the legal recognition of it has seemed to speed up, not only the rate of acceptance of same-sex marriage, but also other parts of the homosexual agenda such as the recognition of transgenders as the new Brahmins of  the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion movement. 

But despite what the wokesters would have you believe, there is a valid definition of marriage that is binding on all men and women for the very reason that it is God’s definition of marriage.  And God’s definition does not agree with the Supreme Court’s. 

What is Marriage?         

Genesis 2:24 gives us a definition of marriage with the words, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

Based on this and other verses, the Westminster Confession of Faith gives this definition of marriage, “Marriage is to be between one man and one woman.” 

As we can see, there’s no confusion at all as to the Bible’s definition of marriage, nor is it a thing hard to understand.  You don’t have to be at the level of a Martin Luther, John Calvin or Gordon Clark to get it.  And the Bible’s definition of marriage was so widely accepted even as recently as twenty years ago that, as noted above, Ohio was able to amend its Constitution to define marriage using the same words as the Westminster Confession.

Ohio’s decision and the decision of other states – Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee in this part of the country - to define marriage in a way that is consistent with the Scriptures is the very essence of good government.  But all this was preempted by the evil 2015 decision of the Supreme Court. 

Is Government Free to Define Marriage as It Sees Fit?

Now some may say that to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman is all well and good, but in the end, it’s only your opinion and you don’t have a right to impose your opinions on others.  Put a bit differently, some people like to argue that “you can’t legislate morality!” 

To which I would answer, the Christian definition of marriage is not an opinion, it is the Law of God.  And Christians have, not only the right to impose the Law of God upon the nation, but the duty to do so.  As to the objection that “you can’t legislate morality,” this is nonsense.  All criminal justice codes are, by definition, attempts to legislate, at least in the outward sense, morality.

Government is not free to define marriage as it sees fit for the simple reason that civil government is a creature of God.  The Apostle Paul asked the rhetorical question, “Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have your made me like this?” To which the obvious answer is, no, it does not.  And if civil government is a creature of God, and it is, then magistrates are not free to define terms as they see fit.  The Apostle Paul describes the civil magistrate as “God’s minister.” And if he’s God’s minister, his job is to carry out God’s will, which as a civil magistrate means punishing those who practice evil and rewarding the good.  And it is God who defines what is good and what is evil. 

When civil magistrates, and this includes Supreme Court justices, pass laws or give rulings that are contrary to the Law of God, they come under God’s judgment for calling good evil and evil good.

One way in which civil magistrates punish evil and reward the good is by enforcing just contracts.  Jesus gave an example of this in his Sermon on the Mount, where he told his hearers to agree quickly with those who are taking them to court, lest they be turned over to the magistrate for punishment. 

But what if the terms of a contract are unjust?  For example, we’ve probably all heard of cases where someone hired a “hit man” to murder someone for them.  In this case, the two parties agree to the terms of the contract, what is to be done the amount to be paid, but would the government be right to enforce such a contract if the hit man was not paid the agreed upon amount.  Of course not, for the simple reason that the terms of the contract themselves are immoral. 

For this same reason, the civil magistrate cannot recognize same-sex marriage or enforce the terms of such unions for at least two reasons.  First, there is no such thing as same-sex marriage, and civil magistrates are not free to redefine marriage to include such unions.  Second, because the terms of the same-sex marriage contract themselves are immoral. Not only do the Scriptures define what marriage is, they also explicitly condemn Sodomy.  It was expressly outlawed in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament we read that persons who practice it, as Paul makes clear to the Corinthians, “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” 

Calling Evil Good and Good Evil          

In Chapter 5 of Isaiah, the prophet pronounces woe on those who call “evil good and good evil.”  Even a cursory glance at the news should tell you that this is a common occurrence in our own day.  As the men of Judah in Isaiah’s day, Americans in the 21st century have “gone away backward.”  That is to say, not only have we as a nation gone wrong, we’ve gone 180 degrees wrong to the point where we think darkness is light and light is darkness and seek to punish anyone who says otherwise.    

We have, in short, lost our ability to discern good from evil. 

What accounts for this lack of discernment, the ability to make distinctions?  In his Trinity Review “The Church Irrational,” John Robbins tells us the fundamental answer is the will of God.  Men lack discernment because God causes them to lack it.  There’s an old saying Robbins quotes in “The Church Irrational” which reads, “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”  Translated into Christian terms, one can find this idea expressed several times in Scripture.  One such example is in Romans Chapter 1, where the Apostle, after calling the readers’ attention to the reasons for God’s revealing his wrath against all ungodliness, writes, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient (or “fitting” as the NKJV reads).”

In looking at the moral, economic and political landscape in which we live in America in the early 21st century, it is clear that God has given many of my fellow countrymen over to a reprobate or debased mind for their refusal to honor him to “retain God in their knowledge.”  The widespread acceptance of homosexuality, the successful demands to change the law to allow for same-sex marriage, and explosion of interest in transgenderism in our time are clear demonstration of the curse of God Paul wrote about in Romans.

As Christians we mut pray, in the first place, that God would grant us discernment that we also are not deceived.  “Don’t be deceived,” was a consistent injunction of both Jesus and Paul.  As modern day Americans, we are subject to perhaps the most sophisticated and powerful propaganda machine the world has ever seen in the form of the media, entertainment and educational complexes, all which have repeatedly shown themselves hostile to Christ and all that is called God.  We must pray for discernment.

We must also pray for courage.  Near the end of 1 Corinthians, Paul tells his readers, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”  I always liked the King James translation of this verse, because it really does capture the sense of the Greek with the turn of phrase “quit you like men.”  The Greek verb translated by these words literally means “act like a man.”  It reminds me of Hugh Latimer’s heroic last words.  While the executioners were lighting the fires to burn him, he said to his fellow martyr Nicholas Ridley, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man.  We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England that as I trust shall never be put out.”   Who knows, maybe Latimer had Paul’s words in mind when he said this. 

Latimer’s courage, as great an example as it is of steadfast Christian faith, was not of him.  It was a gift of God.  And it is to the Lord we must look for the courage to fight the good fight of faith in these difficult days as well.    

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

-          Genesis 1:1

In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis wrote, “The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods.” 

Listed under the heading “Re-Envisaging The Social Role of Property,” Francis’ comments are not, as some of his more free market critics suppose, out of the mainstream of Roman Catholic economic thought.  Rather, the Pope’s attack on private property is simply a restatement of Rome’s long-held unchristian, erroneous, and socialist understanding of private property. 

To underscore Francis hostility to private property, we need look no further than the paragraph quoted at the top of this post, “The principle of the common use of created goods is the ‘first principle of the whole ethical and social order; it is a natural and inherent right that takes priority over others.’”  In Pope Francis view, collectivism is “ethical” while holding to the Bible’s view of private property, that it is lawful for a man to do what he wishes with his own things, is not. 

Contrary to Pope Francis, the common use of created goods, far from being the “first principle of the whole ethical and social order,” is a guarantor of poverty and tyranny.  One would think the many failed socialist states over the past 100 years, and the economic and political disasters suffered by those unfortunate enough to live in them, would make this clear.  But far from slowing them down, it’s almost as if the economic disasters suffered by the Soviet Union, Venezuela and a host of other nations embolden the socialists, including Pope Francis, to double down on calling evil good and good evil by pushing for more economic collectivism.     

In one of his lectures, John Robbins made the important point that systems of thought tend to go wrong from the g

very beginning. That is to say, systems of thought, in this case economic thought, tend to begin with faulty premises which then lead their adherents to faulty conclusions. 

This can be seen in the economic thinking of Pope Francis, who begins with the unbiblical notion of the “the principle of the universal destination of created goods” which in turn leads him to attack private property and capitalism – God’s economics – and to promote the form of coveting we know as socialism or collectivism. 

But while at least some Christians understand that capitalism is the economic system of the Bible, it may come as a surprise even to them that one must begin in Genesis to have a sound understanding of economics, specifically, the origin of private property. 

The Universal Destination of Goods   

In the first paragraph above, I quoted Pope Francis writing about the “universal destination of created goods.”  Unless you’ve previously studied Roman Catholic economic thought, this may be a new term for you.  As is often the case with new terms, it’s easy to read past them and instead focus on more familiar ideas.  But “the universal destination of created goods” – sometimes this same idea is expressed as “the universal destination of all goods” or simply “the universal destination of goods” – is the most important concept in Roman Catholic economic thought.  As such, it’s worth pausing here to discuss it.

In Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins wrote the following about the universal destination of goods,

The Thomistic notion of original communism – the denial that private property is part of the natural law, but that common property is both natural and divine – is foundational to all the Roman Catholic arguments for various forms of collectivism, from medieval feudalism and guild socialism to twentieth century fascism and liberation theology.  The popes refer to this original communism as the “universal destination of all goods” (38).

Robbins went on to note that the principle of the universal destination of goods is so important in Roman Catholic social thought that “all rights are to be subordinated to it.”  Robbins quotes Pope Paul VI writing, “All other rights whatsoever, including those of property and of free commerce, are to be subordinated to this principle [the universal destination of goods].”

This quote from Pope Paul VI, found in his 1967 encyclical Populorum Progressio, exposes as false the contention that Pope Francis is somehow, of all the popes, uniquely anti-capitalist.  Responding to charges of Marxism stemming from his anti-capitalist 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis denied the charge and added that, “there is nothing in the exhortation that cannot be found in the social doctrine of the church.”  In this case, Francis is telling the truth.  One can go a step further and say that there is nothing in Francis’ subsequent writing which cannot be found in the social teaching of the church.  This includes Francis’ statement about the fundamental importance of the principle of the universal destination of created goods from his encyclical Fratelli Tutti.  Far from being uniquely anti-capitalist, Pope Francis’ hatred of free markets and his love of collectivism puts him solidly within the tradition of Rome’s social teaching. 

Original Communism or Original Capitalism

Rome’s doctrine of the universal destination of goods, as important as it is in the Church-State’s system of social teaching, itself rests on a prior erroneous idea, that communism, not private property, was the original pre-fall economic order.

According to Rome, God gave the world to man collectively, not severally, to each man individually.  In his Trinity Review “Ronald Sider – Contra Deum,” John Robbins refutes this idea as expressed in the work of Ronald Sider, an ersatz Evangelical whose economic thought has more in common with the Popes of Rome than with the Bible.  Writes Robbins,

Sider would have us believe that when God put man on Earth, he gave the Earth to men corporately, not severally. Nowhere does he present any evidence for this idea. God, holding ultimate ownership of the Earth, gave it to men severally, not collectively. The argument for this may be found in the works of the seventeenth-century Christian thinker, Robert Filmer, of whom, presumably, Sider has heard. 

What Robbins is saying here is that contrary to the false teaching of Rome, the original economic order was one of private property, capitalism, not communism, that is to say, collective ownership. 

Since Robbins cites Robert Filmer, it is worth noting that Robbins’ 1973 doctoral dissertation from Johns Hopkins University is titled The Political Thought of Sir Robert Filmer.  With that in mind, let’s take a look at what Filmer had to say about the original, pre-fall property order. 

Wrote Filmer,

[F]or it is not possible for the wit of man to search out the first grounds or principles of government (which necessarily depend upon the original [origin] of property) except he know that at the creation one man alone was made, to whom the dominion of all things was given, and from whom all men derive their title (203-204, Patriarchy and Other Political Works, emphasis mine).

The idea here is that God, being the ultimate owner of all things, gave ownership of all the world to Adam, who parceled out his dominion to his sons, who did likewise for their descendants and so on and so forth.  Writes Robbins,

Filmer argues for private property in the state of innocence in the same way that he argues that paternal and regal power are one:  first, both power and property, which in effect are but different names for the same thing, were granted by God in Genesis.  Second, respect for both power and property is commanded in the moral law.  Just as obedience to governors is subsumed under the Fifth Commandment, so private property is established by the Eight Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” In a sense, Filmer is much more loyal to the Scriptural account than the Fathers, who posit a “natural” community of goods before the Fall, despite the fact that, as Filmer points out, this would make the law changeable.  All other commandments are acknowledged to be valid both before and after the Fall; indeed, the Patristic doctrine was that the Ten Commandments were given because of the perverting effect sin had had on the law written in the hearts of men, and were not an addition to the effaced innate law.  It is the divine law as revealed in the Ten Commandments which Filmer substitutes for the natural law regarding community of goods [the universal destination of goods] which the Fathers had evidently adopted from the Stoics (Robbins, The Political Thought of Sir Robert Filmer, 277).

As did Adam, so too did Noah who, as Robbins notes, “was more or less a second Adam,” dividing the world among his three sons after the flood.  

In summary, both Robert Filmer and John Robbins taught, and taught correctly, that the original economic system at the founding of the world was capitalism, not communism. 

The Pivotal Role of Genesis

As noted in Part 1, the goal of this series is to apply the lessons of Genesis to the many, serious, and seemingly insoluble problems America, and more broadly, the nations of the West, face in the early 21st century.  And one of the most important lessons we can learn from Genesis is that the original economic system of the world, before the Fall, was, contrary to general consensus of the church Fathers and the teaching of the Popes of Rome, one of original private property, not original communism. 

It is said that the worse fate than can befall and idea is not to be brilliantly attacked, but to be incompetently defended.  By tracing the private property order back to the foundation of the world, one can establish that capitalism is the economic expression of Christianity and thus and idea that can and must be defended against those who would push communism, fascism or any other economic system that attacks the institution of private property. 

But private property has suffered at the hands of incompetent defense.  John Locke, for example, believed in private property but struggled to account for it.  For example, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government Locke explicitly denied Filmer’s contention that all titles to private property originated in Adam and agreed with the church Fathers that God gave the world to mankind collectively.  As such, he had to find some way to get from collective ownership to individual ownership. Locke solved this problem by arguing that collective property became private property when men mixed their labor with it.  “Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property” (Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 288, Laslett, ed.). 

So for Locke, it is the mixing of one’s labor with property held in common that makes it one’s own.  But where, we may ask, does one get the permission to mix his labor with property held in common?  Would this not be stealing from the commons?  Locke cites no Scripture for his argument. 

This is not a competent defense of private property, but it is a very common notion among those who would seek to defend capitalism against the predations of the Popes and other socialists. 

Reprove, Correct, Instruct

In his second letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul wrote that all Scripture is God breathed and, “Profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”  This includes the good work of defending private property and limited government, what John Robbins called constitutional capitalism, “the economic and political consequent and counterpart of Christian theology.”

Whether it is the Antichrist Popes of Rome, a president, prime minister, or member of Congress, anyone who teaches a form of economics that undermines private property and seeks to use government to steal from one man in order to give to another, Christians have a moral obligation to rebuke, correct and instruct them in the truth of the Word of God. 

Economics is not an independent science.  It is a branch of theology. But, unfortunately, many Christians today are nearly as in the dark concerning what the Bible says about private property as unbelievers.  This needs to change.    

Critical Race Theory is anti-Christian, an ideological knot of interconnected falsehoods opposed to the entirety of the Christian faith. However, there is something that it gets right – namely, the importance of systematicity. You see, one of the main operative presuppositions in CRT is that foundational beliefs are, for lack of a better word, foundational. Consequently, a seemingly innocuous belief or behavior (e.g. preferring American food to Chinese food) is viewed as racist because the CRT proponent can, one way or another, connect it to a set of foundational beliefs and/or behaviors deemed to be racist. Consider the example I gave above, that of preferring American food to Chinese food. Here is how one can “prove” that such a preference is racist –

1. One prefers that with which one is most familiar.

2. Regarding cuisine, that with which a non-immigrant American citizen is most familiar with is American food.

3. “American food” is an abstract category under which ethnically-other foods have been subsumed via a process of cultural assimilation.

4. Given that cultures are historically constructed by unique people groups, however, it follows that true “cultural assimilation” cannot take place; rather, what takes place is the theft and modification of cultural elements privileged by the majority culture, and the elimination of those cultural elements the majority culture marginalizes.

5. To prefer “American food,” therefore, is to prefer those foods which have been forcibly removed from their original cultural context, modified so as to lose their culturally distinct otherness, and imperially renamed “American.”

6. Preferring “American food” to Chinese food, in other words, is racist because it is, in fact, an implicit agreement with the racist acts of genocide, conquest, de-personing, whitewashing, and so on.

The argument does not have to be sound. Rather, it has to sound as if it has established a link between the foundational beliefs and/or practices and the innocuous belief and/or practice in question. An attentive person will not give this kind of shoddy thinking a pass; however, those who are emotionally invested in the subject matter might very well be blinded, by their emotional state, to such atrocious reasoning. Yet the truth is that preferring one food to another is not an inherent form of ethnic partiality (i.e. “racism”), although one could possibly be motivated to not eat a certain ethnic food out of his conscious hatred of a particular ethnic group.

CRT Invites Us to See That It’s Self-Defeating

Ironically, what the CRT proponent gets right about systematicity he fails to appreciate when considering his own use of logic. By using any argument to affirm or deny y of x, one is implicitly affirming that the means whereby truths and falsehoods are knowable and known is absolute and universal, not culturally relative. Even when an argument is atrociously bad, the fact remains that an affirmation or denial that x is y rests upon the absolute distinction between x and ¬x. x has properties by which it is knowable and known; either y is one of those properties or it is not. In CRT, then, there is a glaring contradiction in play that obliterates it before it can get off the ground. Simply put:

If racism is inextricably woven into the very fabric of all social institutions and their attendant beliefs and practices, then the very act of affirming or denying that x is racist is in itself a racist action.

One can only “uncover implicit racism,” then, by engaging in an overtly racist action that only can produce racist conclusions. Every intellectual punch and kick against “systemic racism,” in other words, is itself a product of systemic racism and only succeeds in perpetuating it.

Christians Need Systematics

CRT is a self-destructive ideology, but it gets one thing right – it’s emphasis on systematicity. As the church faces infiltrators who claim to be using CRT as an analytical tool, let us take that point to heart. Let us relentlessly pluck and pull at the corrupt foundational beliefs and practices of CRT that set it at odds with itself and all of God’s revealed truth. Let us not lose sight of what the CRT proponents do not lose sight of – the need to attack systems of thought not merely from without, but, more importantly, from within. We must stand our ground, hold firm to the truth, and expose the self-contradictory foundations of CRT. This will require us to move past arguments that are intentionally geared toward raising emotions by focusing in on a particular current event, in an attempt to draw our attention away from the logically and morally corrupt foundational beliefs implied by CRT proponents’ arguments and criticisms, and away from the truth of Scripture.

We must put the effort in to teaching not merely the “practical” truths of Scripture, but the doctrinal system of Scripture from which those “practical” truths emerge. It is one thing to say that we ought to be gainfully employed; it is quite another to teach that we ought to be gainfully employed because we are the imago dei and, therefore, are rational beings who exercise dominion over creation through the numerous vocations we have had, now have, and will have. Similarly, it is one thing to teach that we ought not obey illegal governmental decrees; it is quite another to teach that all men have been given the right and duty of bearing the sword of judgment, thereby retaining the right and duty to resist and depose tyrannical rulers who have, by their tyranny, ceased to function as governing authorities.

CRT proponents are right to think that it is necessary to attack the foundations of a system if one desires to dismantle/destroy that system. However, they are wrong to think that they will ever succeed in doing so, given their ability to reason in any capacity destroys their core beliefs, as well as the beliefs which emerge from those core beliefs. Let us not preoccupy ourselves with cutting CRT’s branches, and thereby allowing it to further spread its roots. Rather, let us openly uproot CRT, in the sight of all, and encourage others to watch as that corrupt tree shrivels and dies.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

-          Genesis 1:1

“Words cannot express how I feel.”  Many of us have probably said this or something like it.  I know I have. 

But as common as it is to hear people say that words cannot express this or that, this is a mistake.  Words are entirely adequate to express all thoughts. 

One lesson in the adequacy of language is found right in Genesis 1, where we see God speak the heavens the earth and all that is in them into existence.  If words are adequate to bring about the creation of the universe, by implication words are certainly capable of expressing whatever occurs within the universe.  This seems like an obvious point, yet for those of us who live in the irrational and emotional 21st century, it’s a point that must be emphasized. 

And God said, Let there be light….

It was mentioned earlier in this series that the Westminster Shorter Catechism provides a brilliant definition of the work of creation.  Question 9 asks, “What is the work of creation?,” the answer being, “The work of creation is, God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.” 

It was by the “word of his power” that God spoke the world into existence in Genesis.  That same expression “the word of his power” occurs in the New Testament, where the Author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is, at this very moment, “upholding all things by the word of his power.”  The term “the word of his power” sounds a bit unusual in English.  In his commentary on Hebrews, John Owen makes the point that one can change the order of the words from “the word of his power” to “the power of his word” with no difference in meaning.  Owen notes that one can even express the same idea by saying “his powerful word.”  Regardless of how one states the idea, in her Trinity Review “Linguistics and the Bible,” Marla Perkins Bevin noted that one implication of Genesis 1:1-3 is, “that what God says happens.”

Language, Neither Evolved nor Created

Most of us are familiar with the Darwinian explanation of the origin of the various forms of life we see.  Sometimes called “molecules to man” evolution, Darwinism posits that all life has evolved over billions of years through a process called natural selection.

But while Darwinism’s influence in biology is well known, less well known is its influence in other fields of study.  Modern linguistics – linguistics is the analysis of language – use Darwinist assumptions when discussing the origin of language.       

In Wikipedia’s entry “Origin of Language,” we read that famed linguist Noam Chomsky holds that language arose from a single chance mutation in one individual about 100,000 years ago, and that the language faculty was installed in perfect or near-perfect form.  It’s almost as if Chomsky is saying that the ability to use language was installed into a specific individual as one would install a program onto a computer.  In this respect, Chomsky is closer to the truth than some of his linguist colleagues who hold that language developed slowly over time from animal grunts and squeals. 

According to Bevin,

Language was not created and did not evolve from animal grunts or mews. God eternally has language as part of His rationality. Human beings have language because it is part of the image of God. Thus, God's use of language is an exemplar for human use of language, and it can be used to provide information about human language (“Linguistics and the Bible”).

Language is eternally part of God’s rationality, and men use language because by virtue of their rationality they are the image of God. Language is neither the result of evolution nor creation but precedes creation itself.  “When God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, the word (and therefore the idea) chronologically and logically preceded the visible light. God's idea of light and God's language about light preceded visible light.”

The Origin of Different Languages

Just as the origin of language itself is an impenetrable mystery to those who deny the Word of God, so too is the origin of the multitude of languages that now, and for some time past, exist in the world.  That some languages are related to one another more closely than others is evident.  For example, there are many cognate words between English and German.  On the other hand, some languages have nothing in common, compare Chinese and English for one such example.

Where do all these languages come from?  As the Newsweek article “Why Are There So Many Different Languages in the World?” conceded, secular linguists struggle to answer this question.  “Why is it that humans speak so many languages?  And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet?,” asks the article.  As Newsweek puts it, “we have few clear answers to these fundamental questions about how humanity communicates.”

Now if the author of the Newsweek article had said, “I have few clear answers to these fundamental questions,” then this would have been a true statement.  But such is not the case for everyone.  For some of us know very well the origin of the multitude of languages that are spoken in the world.  But the establishment intellectuals of our day will not hear it. 

As with all other knowledge, Christians know the origin of the multitude of languages because it is, as all other knowledge, revealed to them in the Word of God.  In Genesis 11 we read God’s account of the origin of the multitude of language, that it was punishment for the disobedience of the men who built the Tower of Babel.     

Of course, if one were to present this argument in an academic setting, he would be immediately denounced as a quack and a fool and given the bum’s rush out of the ivory tower.  I remember one of my Latin professors in college dismissing the Tower of Babel preemptively before anyone even brought it up in class.  He was a brilliant man and gifted teacher, holding a Ph.D. from Cambridge.  But on this fundamental question about language, not only did he not know the truth, but he was actively hostile to it.

As Christians, we need not be embarrassed of the truth revealed to us in the Scriptures.  As Paul wrote, “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.”  There was a time in the West when arguing from the Scriptures was respected among academics.  Not anymore.  There’s probably no way to be dismissed faster by academe than by accepting the Bible as inerrant and true.  But then, that’s the world’s problem, not the Christian’s. 

Our Words Matter   

Somewhere in one of his lectures, I don’t have the reference handy, John Robbins made the point that people today tend to dismiss words as unimportant.  Indeed, they do.  One can see this in the way many politicians breath lies as easily as most of us breathe air, or in the crude insults some people wield so casually on social media platforms. 

But the Bible says our words, the words you and I use, matter in eternity.  This may seem shocking to some, focused as we are in our time on actions and material things rather than words.  But given that it was words that created the material things around us, and not material things that created words, it should come as no surprise that words matter to God. 

Said Jesus, “But I say to you that for every idle word that men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.  For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36-37).  Why is this?  Because our words show what we are in our hearts.  In another place Jesus said, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.  For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks (Luke 6:45). Our words are revealers of who we are.  They show whether we are wise men or fools. Whether we are saved or lost. 

God prohibits lying and went so far as to list bearing false witness as one of the Ten Commandments.  Wrote Bevin,

God's abhorrence of lying makes sense because when God speaks, He describes or creates reality, and when people speak, God commands that human language should express the truth. God did not capriciously decide that human beings should not lie; He objects to lying because He is Truth itself, and His own use of language is truthful. If anyone fails to understand the pragmatics of first-words-then-things in Genesis 1, the significance of "Thus says the Lord" and God's abhorrence of lying might also be missed (“Linguistics”).

Jesus told his hearers that liars have the devil as their father.  “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.  He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44). 

Words matter.  It was words that God used to create the heavens and the earth.  It is our words, spoken and unspoken, by which we will be judged.  Let us take care to respect the power of words, both those of others and our own. 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

-          Genesis 1:1

On March 24, 2021, ABC News ran the headline “Rachel Levine confirmed by Senate, become highest ranking openly transgender official.“ 

It wasn’t many years ago that such a thing – the Senate confirmation of a transgendered person for high government office - would have been impossible.  But in 2021 America, Levine’s confirmation was inevitable. 

A month earlier, the conservative website Revolver ran an article correctly predicting Levine’s confirmation.  The piece stated that, “Rachel Levine’s imminent confirmation proves Transgenderism is America’s new state religion.   The article went on to note,

Fifty years ago, the cult of transgenderism didn’t even exist. Merely ten years ago, it was still so obscure most Americans knew nothing about it. But over the past decade, transgenderism has been accepted en masse by the centers of power in America, which are now imposing them on the whole country. The core parts of its doctrine are easy to list:

·         Physical sex and “gender identity” are completely unrelated to one another.

·         Being “cisgender” and “transgender” are equally ordinary.

·         Gender is “fluid” and there are far more genders than merely “male” and “female.” In fact, there may be infinite genders.

·         Gender roles are socially constructed, and there is no biological basis for behavioral differences between males and females.

·         Despite the above, a person can also innately know that they were assigned the “wrong” gender, even if this is based on their failure to conform to gender norms that are, supposedly, only social constructs.

·         A person can know he is transgender at any age. It is completely normal for teenagers, preteens, and even toddlers to become “transgender,” with potentially invasive treatments like puberty-blocking pills and even surgery.

·         A person has the right to choose their own pronouns, to demand that others “state their pronouns,” and to demand punishment when their pronouns are not respected.

·         Not only may a person change his name at any time, but it is “deadnaming” to use or even mention a prior name.

By this time, you may be wondering why, in a post about the Biblical account of the creation of man, I’m writing about transgenderism.  My reason for doing so stems from the stated purpose of this series.  As I wrote in Part 1, “It is my intention in this series to apply the revealed history found in Genesis to the current moral, political, scientific, and economic problems of our day, refuting the contemporary confusion and setting forth the mind of God on these issues.” 

Nowhere is the confusion of our age more evident than in the matter of transgenderism, and nowhere is the mind of God in more desperate need of application. 

Male and Female He Created Them

In Genesis 1:27 we read, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

This one verse goes a long way to clearing up our present-day transgender confusion.  In combination with other passages, it decisively refutes the transgender agenda which, as the Revolver article quoted above notes, has been accepted en masse by the centers of power in America, which are now imposing them on the whole country.”

For example, there is no hint that, “Physical sex and ‘gender identity’ are completely unrelated to one another.”  There are men and there are women.  In Genesis 2:7 we read, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”  Later in Genesis 2, we read, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him an help meet for him…And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

Someone may object at this point that the first core premise of transgenderism listed above – physical sex and “gender identity” are completely unrelated to one another – has not been refuted.  “After all,” they may argue, “the text speaks only of Adam and Eve’s physical sex, not their gender identity.”

Yes, that’s true.  But we’re not done yet.

Genesis 2:23-24 help to build the case against transgenderism.  There we read, “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

There is no hint whatsoever in this passage that the terms “man and woman” mean anything other than the standard definition of the terms.  Adam was physically a man and understood himself to be so.  Likewise, Eve was physically a woman and understood herself to be so. 

Further, in Deuteronomy 22:5 we read, “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.”

This knocks out the idea that “physical sex and ‘gender identity’ are completely unrelated to one another.”  Very clearly, they are related to one another, otherwise the prohibition of men dressing as women and women dressing as men would make no sense.  Trans women – trans woman is a biological male who identifies as a woman – are not women.  They are men who are deceiving themselves and others. 

In the New Testament, there are several passages that clearly condemn homosexuality and, by implication, also condemn transgenderism.  Of these passages, the one offering the clearest condemnation of transgenderism is 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.  Writes Paul, “Be not deceived:  neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…shall inherit the kingdom of God.”  In place of the terms “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind,” the New King James Version uses “homosexuals” and “sodomites.” 

The Greek word translated as “effeminate” by the KJV and “homosexuals” by the NKJV is malakos, the basic meaning of which is soft or effeminate. This word can also be used to refer to passive male homosexuals, that is, those who submit to acts of homosexuality.  The NKJV provides “catamite” as an alternate translation of malakos.  Put another way, a malakos is someone who plays the female part in a male, same-sex relationship.  That is to say, the malakos is a man pretending to be a woman.  This is exactly what transgenderism is.  Such people, says Paul, “shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

These passages also eliminate the third point of transgenderism – gender is “fluid” and there are far more genders than merely “male” and “female.” In fact, there may be many genders.  For that matter, they eliminate all the basic tenants of transgenderism, including the bizarre pronouns that have been invented by transgender advocates to avoid the use of standard male and female ones.   

The Scriptures teach that there are two sexes, male and female.  The notion that there is a thing called “gender” which is divorced from one’s physical sex is unknown in the word of God.  Because of sin, many confused people behave in ways that are sexually deviant and the Bible lists these out in some detail.  Among the deviant sexual behaviors listed in the Bible are: adultery, fornication, homosexuality, crossdressing, bestiality and incest. But simply because some confused people make claims about their gender, this in no way obligates Christians to believe them. 

Hated by the World, Rewarded by God

As Christians, we are told to test all things and hold fast what is good.  The standard for Christian testing is, and always has been, the 66 books of the Bible, the revealed, infallible, and inerrant Word of God.  And these 66 books deny every one of the claims of the transgender advocates. 

In our own time, the world appears to be spiraling into madness of the sort that we seen occur from time to time in history.  This is a dangerous time for Christians, as the man who holds to a Biblical understanding of men, women and marriage is bound to run headlong into the evil agenda that is being imposed upon society from above.  As the Revolver article noted, the tenants of transgenderism have, “been accepted en masse by the centers of power in America which are now imposing them on the whole country.”  And what is happening in America is happening throughout the formerly Christian West. 

But as Christians, we are called to be salt and light in this dark and dying world.  We do not have the option to ignore sin.  We do not have the right to call good evil and evil good.  We do not have the choice of remaining silent.  But condemning sin is only part of the job of being salt and light.  We also have the Gospel, the good news, of Jesus Christ to declare.  Through faith in him, sinful men and women can have their sins forgiven.  They can have their debased mind removed and a sound mind restored to them, much as the Gadarene demoniac.  Luke 8:26-39 records how Jesus cleansed this madman – Luke records for us that he wore no clothes and lived among the tombs - of demons.  When the men of the city heard what had happened and came to see for themselves, Luke tell us that they, “found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind” (emphasis added).  You and I live in a civilization that is losing its mind.  But we have the cure.  By God’s grace, some will listen.  As Paul noted in his epistle to the Corinthians cited above, “such were some of you.”    

But as the Scriptures also make clear, Christians will not always receive a warm reception when preaching the Law and the Gospel.  The world is going to hate us.  Jesus promised this would happen.  We can count on it.  “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.  If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.  Remember the word that I said to you, The servant is not greater than his lord.  If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you (John 15:18-20).  

But Jesus said this as well, “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.  Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Matthew 5:11-12).

But whether we as Christians are heard or hated, let us be found faithful to our calling.  For as Jesus himself said, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:  Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever  I have commanded you:  and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

-          Genesis 1:1

“The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.”  Thus reads Chapter 1, Section 4 of The Westminster Confession of Faith. 

Last week it was mentioned that it would be both foolish and impious of me to attempt to prove that the 66 books of the Bible are the infallible and inerrant Word of God.  The foolishness of this project, as you may recall, was found in the axiomatic position the Bible plays in the Christian system of thought. 

An axiom is a first principle, an unproven and unprovable first principle.  The reason an axiom is unproven and unprovable lies in the very definition of the term “axiom” itself.  If one were to prove a first principle, then it would no longer be a first principle.  Whatever argument used to prove the axiom would take the original axiom’s place as the new first principle.  

Some Christians may be concerned by the assertion that we do not prove the axiom of Christianity – The Bible Alone is the Word of God – supposing that somehow this puts Christianity on a shaky footing.  But this concern can be assuaged by remembering that all systems of thought – and this includes all secular systems of thought of the sort the world delights to throw at Christians – have their axioms.  In this case, the Christian with his axiom is no worse off than the secular scientist or philosopher with his axioms.  The Christian begins his thinking in one place, the 66 books of the Bible.  On the other hand, the scientist begins his thinking in another place, perhaps on the axiom of the general reliability of the senses.

In addition to it being foolish to attempt to prove that the Bible is the infallible and inerrant Word of God, it was also mentioned that it would be impious to do so.  “Impious” is not a term we use often, so perhaps a definition is in order.  Merriam Webster defies it as irreverent or profane.  The notion that the fallible words of sinful man are better testimony of the truth than God’s Word itself is the very definition of impiety.  

The Westminster Confession citation above refers to several passages from Scripture to supports its claims.   

-          1 Peter 1:19, 21 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

-          2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

-          1 John 5:9 If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.

It was Augustine who famously wrote, “For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand” (Tractate 29 on John 7:14-18).  In this statement, Augustine shows himself a Scripturalist.  He attempts not to prove the Bible is the Word of God, but accepts it as true – that is, he accepts the Bible as his axiom - and his understanding of God and his works follows from this.

With all this said, let us turn to the subject at hand, which is Genesis as history.

Genesis as History  

Accepting that Genesis is history – all of Genesis is, of course, history; but in our study the special emphasis is on Genesis chapters 1-11 – is fundamental to a correct understanding of the whole of Scripture.    

The stance of this author on the doctrine of creation is that Genesis 1 teaches, and teaches clearly, that the Lord created all things of nothing by speaking them into existence in the space of six literal, 24-hour days, and that the creation was all very good.

Among Christians, this was doctrine was not seriously challenged, “until,” as Gary Crampton noted in his Trinity Review “The Days of Creation,” “the late 18th and early 19th centuries with the onslaught of evolutionary thinking.” 

In reading the works of the Reformers of the 16th century and the Puritans, one will find, as far as this author is aware, no hint of a question about the historicity of the events recorded in Genesis 1-11.

In his Annals of the World published in 1650, James Ussher began by writing, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. {Ge 1:1} The beginning of time, according to our chronology, happened at the start of the evening preceding the 23rd day of October (on the Julian calendar), 4004 BC or 710 JP [Julian Period]…On the first day {Ge 1:1-5} of the world (Sunday, October 23), God created the highest heaven and the angels.” 

It may be that Ussher is right about the day on which the world was created.  But whether he is right about this or not, this is not the main reason I quote this passage from his book.  The reason I cite it is to illustrate the point that Ussher, as was typical of those in his day, accepted without question that Genesis teaches not only that God created the world in six, literal 24-hour days, but also the closely connected point that the earth itself is about 6,000 years old.  Note that Ussher gives 4004 BC as the year of creation. 

Above it was mentioned that the doctrine of creation out of nothing, in the space of six, literal 24-hour days, and all very good, was, as far as this author is aware, the universal, or near universal testimony of the church until the about 200 years ago.  With that said, it’s worth noting that there were some in the days of John Calvin who did not accept this teaching.  This may come as a surprise to some, but the challenge to the doctrine of creation in six 24-hour days made the opposite error of today’s scientists or theistic evolutionists.  In the 21st century, we’re used to hearing theologians attempt to square the Bible with modern science by coming up with various schemes to reinterpret the creation account in Genesis to accommodate long periods of time.   For example, the day-age theory posits that the days of Genesis 1 are long periods of time, perhaps millions or billions of years. 

But those who went astray in John Calvin’s time did not do so with the day-age theory.  No.  They made the opposite error.  Instead of making the days of Genesis into millions/billions of years, they erred by claiming that God created the whole world in an instant! Writes Calvin,

Here the error of those is manifestly refuted, who maintain that the world was made in a moment.  For it is too violent a cavil to contend that Moses distributes the work which God perfected at once into six days, for the mere purpose of conveying instruction (Commentaries, Genesis).

In reading Calvin’s remarks, I am reminded of a colorful quote, often attributed to Martin Luther, which reads, “History is like a drunk man on a horse.  No sooner does he fall off on the left side, does he mount again and fall off on the right.”  Modern scholars fall on the horse on one side by positing millions or billions of years in the place of the days of Genesis, while 500 years ago scholars fell off the horse on the other by claiming that God created the world in a moment. 

Both groups are wrong.  For both have failed in their duty of taking God at his word. 

The Westminster divines, on the other hand, got it right.  In their words, “The work of creation is, God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.” 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

-          Genesis 1:1

“The work of creation is, God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.” That’s the answer the Westminster Shorter Catechism gives to the question, “What is the work of creation?’ 

It’s one of my favorite question and answer sets from the Shorter Catechism, for the same reason as the passage in Genesis on which it is based is one of my favorite passages of Scripture: it captures elegantly, and in a few words, the astonishing work of the creation of all things.

In the introduction to his commentary on Genesis, John Gill wrote,  “In the Syriac and Arabic versions, the title of this book is "The Book of the Creation", because it begins with an account of the creation of all things; and is such an account, and so good an one, as is not to be met with anywhere else.”

Genesis is, as Gill implies in the quote above, not the only account of creation from the ancient world. The Greeks had a creation mythology, as did the Babylonians and numerous other cultures. 

But creation mythology is not limited to the ancient world.  In modern times, we have our own mythological creation account known as the Big Bang.  This account, just like the ones from the ancient world, is a garbled version of the true account of the creation of the heavens, the earth, and all that is in them as set forth in Genesis chapter 1.     

At this point, some may ask how it is I can prove that the Biblical account of creation is true and that the others are mythological and false.  The short answer to this question is that the creation account given in Genesis is part of the inerrant, infallible, 66 books that comprise the revealed Word of God.

If you ask me to prove that the 66 books of the Bible are the revealed Word of God, my answer is that not only can I not prove to you that the 66 books of the Bible are the inerrant and revealed Word of God, but also that it would be impious for me to even attempt to do so.    

Now before you think I’ve thrown in the intellectual towel and am simply trying to dodge a serious question about why I believe what I believe, let me explain this a bit further. 

The reason that I cannot and will not attempt to prove that “the Bible alone is the Word of God” is that this is the axiom of Christianity.  It would be both foolish and impious of me to attempt to prove the axiom of Christianity. 

Why would this be foolish?

Because trying to prove an axiom is absurd.  The reason it’s absurd lies in the definition of the term “axiom.” 

In his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster defined “axiom” as, “a principle received without new proof.”  Therefore, if one proves an axiom is true, it is no longer an axiom.

Another way of thinking about the axioms is to understand them as a first principle in a system of thought.  Christianity is a system of thought.  Platonism and Aristotelianism are systems of thought.  Darwinism is a system of thought.  All systems of thought, whether Christian or pagan, have one thing in common.  They all have a beginning point, a first principle.  As John Robbins once put it in an email to this author, all thinking must begin somewhere.  The proposition that stands first in a system of thought is called an axiom.  It is a first principle.     

This may seem like an obvious point, but one of the most important things to remember about first principles is that they are, by definition, first.  If a first principle could be proven, it would no longer be a first principle.  The proof of the original axiom would then become the new first principle.

Gordon Clark well understood the necessity of unproven and unprovable first principles, writing about them in God’s Hammer,

Christianity is often repudiated on the ground that it is circular: The Bible is authoritative because the Bible authoritatively says so.  But this objection applies no more to Christianity than to any philosophic system or even to geometry.  Every system of organized propositions depends of necessity on some indemonstrable premises, and every system must make an attempt to explain how these primary premises come to be accepted.

The axiom of Christianity is, “the Bible alone is the Word of God.”  As Christians, we begin all our thinking with this proposition.    

As Clark indicated in the quote above, this leads us to another important question for Christians, why do we accept the premise that the Bible alone is the Word of God?  There are, after all, other texts that many people believe hold divine authority.  The Koran is one such example.  There are others.  The pronouncements of modern-day scientists hold much the same authority in the minds of many people in our time.  Think about the how the climate change advocates present their case.  “The science is settled,” they frequently tell us.  If you don’t agree, you’re a “science denier,” a 21st century version of a heretic.  

If you were to ask me why I believe the account of creation as set forth in Genesis – and just to be clear, when I say that I believe the account in Genesis, I do not mean this in some qualified way, such as those who advocate theistic evolution or some other scheme that denies what the Word of God plainly teaches; I believe it in the common sense that it was understood by Christians before the age of Darwinism; that is to say, I believe that God spoke the universe into existence out of nothing, in the space of six literal twenty-four hour days, and all very good -  I could provide several subordinate reasons.

One I’ve already given above.  The account of creation found in Genesis is astonishingly well written.  It is at once simple enough for a child to grasp, yet profound in its implications such that Job was reduced to silence when the Lord questioned him, asking, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”    

A second argument I could give for believing what the Bible teaches about creation is that it fits remarkably well with the rest of the Scriptures.  Above it was mentioned that Christianity is a system of thought.  This is an important point in the thought of both Gordon Clark and John Robbins.  Christianity is not, as some seem to think in our own time, a grab bag of ideas all thrown together in a heap.  Christianity is a logical system of thought.

Because Christianity is a system of thought, denying the account of creation as set forth in Genesis necessarily calls into question other Biblical doctrines which depend on a proper understanding of Genesis. For example, if we disbelieve Genesis, we call into question God’s character.  In essence, we’re calling him a liar and saying to him that he really didn’t do the things he said he did.  And if God lied to us about his work of creation, why would we trust him in other matters?     

When we say that the various parts of the Bible fit together into a nicely consistent whole, and that this is proof that it is the Word of God, we’re using what is called the coherence theory of truth.  That is to say, a system of thought is true because its various parts fit together much as a jigsaw puzzle does.  The Westminster Confession calls this the “consent of all the parts” in Chapter 1.VI. 

The two reasons I’ve laid out here for why I believe the 66 books of the Bible, including Genesis chapter 1, are true are, I think, good reasons.  But they are not in themselves conclusive. 

Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church-State did not find such arguments conclusive at the time of the Reformation, nor does it now.  According to Gordon Clark,

At the time of the Reformation when Luther and Calvin appealed to the Scriptures, the Roman Church argued that it and it alone accredited the Scriptures, and that therefore the Protestants could not legitimately use the Scriptures without first submitting to Rome.  People were supposed to accept God’s Word only on the authority of the church (God’s Hammer, 16). 

But if the majesty of the style of Scripture – for example the remarkable literary skill already mentioned that one finds in Genesis – or the way the doctrines of the Bible fit together so well despite the many authors, circumstances and even languages in which it was written are not conclusive reason for believing the Bible is the Word of God.  What is? 

Clark answers,

Against this claim [that the Church-State’s authority was needed to authenticate the Scriptures] the reformers developed the doctrine of the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The belief that the Bible is the Word of God, so they taught, is neither the result of a papal pronouncement nor a conclusion inferred from prior premises; it is a belief which the holy Spirit himself produces in our minds (16).

Or as the Westminster Confession puts it,

Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth [of Scripture] and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

That is to say, saving faith, which consists of both understanding and consenting to the doctrines of Scripture, is a gift of God, is produced by of the God the Holy Spirit regenerating our hearts. 

Why do Christians accept what the Bible teaches about creation in Genesis 1 and reject the accounts of the ancient creation myths, the secular philosophers, and the modern Darwinists?  Because God the Holy Spirit has caused them to believe the Bible and to reject other truth claims. 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

-          Genesis 1:1

“Republicans and Evangelicals are stupid.”  So proclaimed a work colleague of mine one day, seemingly out of the blue. 

Since I fell into both groups and was a bit curious as to what prompted his outburst, I asked him, “Why do you say that?” 

My colleague pointed me to an article he was reading in a newspaper he had brought with him – yes this was way back in 2007 before everyone had smartphones and still read physical newspapers.  The article was about the opening of the Creation Museum here in the Cincinnati area.    

Having lived in Cincinnati, I was well aware of the Creation Museum project.  Several years in the making, the museum had garnered extensive press coverage both locally and nationally.  Most of it was negative.  Denunciations galore poured forth from various mainstream news organizations about the mass enstupification of the of the American public that was nigh upon our doorstep because of museum’s opening. 

One example of that hostility is a Los Angeles Times editorial from May 24, 2007 title “Yabba-dabba science,” which, as you may gather from the title, makes great fun of the Creation Museum, likening it to an episode of “The Flintstones.”   

Apparently, my work colleague bought the propaganda.

Science, we are told by the L.A. Times and other voices of “reason,” is all about hard facts and logic.  All which, we are confidently told, militate against any possibility that the earth is a mere 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs and men walked the terra firma at the same time.     

But is science so-called really the arbiter of truth?  Think about just the past year and all the contradictory science we’ve heard.  Some of the most blatantly contradictory statements have come from the same supposed scientific experts.  For example, in a March 2020 interview with 60 Minutes, Dr. Anthony Fauci said,

Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks….there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is, and often there are unintended consequences – people keep fiddling with the masks and they’re touching their face.

Now, this same Dr. Fauci is out there saying that we may have to wear masks until 2022.  And not only that, he’s stated on the record that double-masking makes “common sense”!  And all this despite a great deal of scientific evidence that mask mandates do nothing to slow the spread of Covid. 

Clearly, Dr. Fauci has contradicted himself.  In fact, his statements often seem to be driven by some hidden political agenda rather than the scientific facts at hand.  Yet we are told that he is a coolly rational scientific mind and that anyone who doubts him is, in the words of Joe Biden, a Neanderthal.  

Or take the matter of the uber trendy cause of Transgenderism.  Facebook offers members a palette of 58 gender options.  Fifty-eight!  Supporters of transgenderism are often the same people who loudly announce their love of science and are quick to denigrate those who disagree with them as “science deniers.” Yet it is the progressives themselves who are the science deniers.   

If we consider the most up-to-date scientific opinion, the most reasonable conclusion is that there are only two sexes, and that the notion that there can be 58 genders is an absurdity.  Yet, the transgender folks will argue that one’s gender identity is not tied to one’s biological sex, and that a biological man really can reasonably identify as a woman and a biological woman really can identify as a man.  And yet, even if a man successfully “transitions” to a woman, every cell in his body is still genetically coded as male, with a both an X and a Y chromosome.  This seems like a hard case of science denialism on the part of transgender activists, but it’s rare for anyone to point this out. 

As Christians, we don’t rest our argument that there are only two sexes, male and female, on the findings of geneticists.  We believe this, because it’s revealed in the Word of God.  But it is interesting that today’s ideologically confused progressives will, on the one hand, lecture Christians about their supposed “science denialism,” while on the other hand, denying the science they claim to love so they can indulge their transgender fantasies.  

The Reason for This Series

I think of this series on Genesis as an example of root cause analysis. 

When I was in business school a few years back, they brought in a couple of speakers from Toyota to talk about the Toyota Production System (TPS).  Toyota, of course, is famous the world over for producing consistently high-quality cars are reasonable prices. 

One of the secrets of TPS is what the speakers called root cause analysis.  That is, to really address a quality problem in the manufacturing process, it’s necessary to determine the root cause of the problem.  There’s always a temptation to fix things ad hoc.  But if you really want to permanently solve a recurring quality issue, you have to pursue the problem to find its source.  Once you’ve traced the problem back to its source, you can then fix whatever the issue is.  Doing this will correct the downstream quality problems. 

It is my conviction that moral, political, and economic confusion we face in the 21st century is that we, like the me of Judah in Isaiah’s time, have turned away backwards from the revealed truth of God.  Even many Christians confused about these things.  And the root of much of this confusion is that they are confused about Genesis.  Either they have never been explicitly taught Genesis as history or have been instructed by modern misinterpretations of the book that present it as something other than what it is, history. 

Genesis – and by Genesis, I’m referring to the whole book, including the first eleven chapters - is not myth.  It is not metaphor.  It is history revealed to us by God himself. 

It is my intention in this series to apply the revealed history found in Genesis to the current moral, political, scientific, and economic problems of our day, refuting the contemporary confusion and setting forth the mind of God on these issues. 

The Scope of This Series    

It is my intention to focus on the first eleven chapters of Genesis in this series.  Not because the remaining chapters are not worthwhile studying, but in an effort to limit the length of this study to something manageable. 

A second reason for focusing on the first eleven chapters is that in them are found the origins of, and the answers to, many of the most vexing problems we face here in the early 21st century. 

A third reason for focusing on Genesis 1-11 is that these are the chapters that are the most controversial and the ones most likely to be explained away, even by professing Christians.  Genesis, we are told by many serious Bible scholars, really doesn’t require that we believe the world was created in 6 literal twenty-four-hour periods.  This is foolishness.  Very clearly, that is exactly what Genesis teaches.  And if we deny this.  If we soft peddle this.  We’re falling into the trap that Eve fell into when the serpent tempted her by asking, “Yea, hath God said?” 

God indeed hath said! He has revealed to us the creation of the universe, and of all things in it, including man himself.  As the Shorter Catechism puts it, "God's work or creation is his making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six [literal 24 hour] days, and all very good."

A fourth reason for focusing on the first eleven chapters of Genesis is that they are absolutely fascinating.  If we take God at his word and understand these chapters as history, we become the wisest people on the face of the earth.  As the psalmist wrote, “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.”  The smartest scientists strain and yearn to understand the origin of the universe.  But in the end, the most they can say is this or that may be true, but we can’t know for sure.  But you and I can know for sure.  For while science never can furnish us with knowledge, the Christian understands knowledge is a gift of God, freely given to those who trust in him. 

One last item regarding scope.  It is not my intention that this series exhaust all important implications of Genesis chapters 1-11.  Such is the depth of the Word of God that, I suppose, a lifetime of dedicated study would not exhaust everything from even a small portion of Scripture.  With that said, it is my prayer that in this series I can bring to the surface at least a few of the treasures found in this portion of Scripture and to impart them to my readers.    

Are We Living in Orwellian Times?

Many people today are comparing our time with the one described in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Like Orwell’s Big Brother state, “Big Tech” companies are actively trying to destroy free speech that is critical of mainstream media and government official approved “news.” For instance, Google has attempted to erase history,¹ is carefully removing legitimate sources of information from its search results because they differ ideologically,² falsely labeling those sources as “fake news”³ or falsely identifying their content as “dangerous and misleading.”⁴ Not only this, but “Big Tech”/”Big Brother” has been increasingly overstepping their boundaries with respect to the personal data of their users. We are all being spied on,⁵ and many of us are changing our behavior to avoid being banned/shunned/judged by others and “Big Tech”/”Big Brother.”⁶

Given all of this, the comparison seems fitting. Yet it isn’t complete.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is concerned with more than the metastasization of the government into an intrusive surveillance state powered by advanced technology. It’s concerned with human psychology. This is not only evident in its assessment of how totalitarian governments manipulate their citizens’ thinking via the deletion of history, redirecting the anger of its citizens toward imaginary enemies rather than the state, encouraging “group think,” and punishing individual, critical thinking. Nineteen Eighty-Four more subtly deals with the psychology of a person who is neither a complete rebel – as was Winston Smith’s lover Julia – nor a complete government lackey – as was Syme, the lexicographer of the novel’s fictional land Oceania.

Winston Smith is somewhere between complete rebellion and complete submission to the state. As the novel progresses, one is struck by the fact that Winston must literally die as a rebel, or figuratively die – i.e. lose his individuality, hopes, aspirations, critical thinking, opinions – as a propagandized, brainwashed, and amorphous cog in the sociopolitical machine that is Big Brother. One cannot stay in the center; he must die one death or the other.

This perhaps explains Nineteen Eighty-Four’s confused ending. For on the one hand, Winston succumbs to the government, snitches on his lover, and becomes a brainwashed ward of the state. Yet, on the other hand, this only occurs after the government spends a lot of time and energy and resources trying to capture him, torture the truth out of him, and “re-educate” him into submission. One can view 1984 as either decrying the hopelessness of a life lived under a totalitarian regime, or as pointing to the key to dismantling a totalitarian regime (viz. Unyielding civil disobedience rooted in an appreciation of one’s humanity and all that comes with it – love, hate, beauty, ugliness, art, creation, destruction, physical pleasure, etc).

Orwell did not seem to know the answer to the question of how one should live under a tyrannical government. The acute reader is left with a sense of horror not at the novel ending with Winston becoming a brainwashed ward of the state, but with the novel leaving one on his own. Winston experienced great things – love, sex, good food, laughter, camaraderie – but this didn’t keep him from folding when tortured by the state. Will the reader do the same under similar circumstances? Will the reader follow a different path, and resist even if it costs him his life?

What else can one expect from Orwell’s atheistic, quasi-existentialist⁷worldview? In such a view, it is the individual’s decision that determines all things. There is no God. Consequently, there is no hope.

Orwell’s Opposition to Roman Catholocism

Sadly, and rather ironically, for an anti-Communist novel⁸ Nineteen Eighty-Four seems to identify religion in general, and Romanism in particular, as a means of suppressing critical thinking and political dissidence. Lindsay Dowty explains –

Orwell confronts the idea that fascist governments dispel religion to keep the people from unifying together behind it, yet they humor the Church as a means of giving the lower class a reason to stay in the lower class. In Animal Farm, Orwell makes minor allusions to his take on religion in the bigger scheme of a totalitarian society, much like he does in his following novel, 1984.

Orwell’s 1984 is as much about an oppressive government as it is about losing faith within a theocracy. Winston’s continual questioning of Big Brother’s existence and his need for validation through others points to a plot in which a man struggles to come to terms with his disbelief in God. Winston is perpetually on the search for some inclination from coworkers or friends that they do not truly believe in the Party, as well.⁹

Orwell’s Marx-esque beliefs about religion arose, in part, from his observation of the Roman Church state’s collaboration with fascism.¹⁰ For Orwell, it seems, the individual stood between two oppressive regimes. This essentially means that the individual doesn’t hope in anyone beyond himself, as he alone is responsible for saving himself.

And to some extent, he was right. Secular and religious authoritarianism are anti-Christian and, therefore, anti-human. Thus, in Orwell’s Oceania enjoying the divinely bestowed pleasures of human existence – food, sex, art, love, conversation – is illegal. Engaging in free thinking, free trade, free enterprise – these are all illegal as well. In the place of the Sovereign God, secular and religious authoritarians set up a representative who believes himself to be, in some sense, divine. And such authoritarianism was truly definitive of the Christian faith, then our situation would be as hopeless as that of Winston, Julia, and Orwell himself.

Christians Have Hope

Despite having experienced much of what the state had deemed illegal, and having thereby come to experience the good gifts of God given to all of his creatures, Winston is broken by Ingsoc, the ruling party of Oceania. The threat of death seems to drive him to abandon whatever vestiges of hope he had in his ability to successfully revolt – even if only in his mind – against Ingsoc.

Could Winston have continued to rebel? Could he have brought about the eventual revolution of Oceania’s scattered hidden dissenters?

That is unanswerable.

What we do know is that Winston’s plight is that of every man outside of Christ. Fallen man rightly sees many injustices, but seems to forget about all God has given to him that is good. What is good is taken for granted, while what is not good is amplified and used as an excuse for fallen man to continue on in his life of rebellion against God. And nothing temporal, material, physical, or social brings relief to him as he contemplates his hopeless existence. As Solomon declared –

…I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.¹¹

The answer is not in a reformed government. The answer is not in a new government formed by fallible statesmen. The answer is not found in institutional religion.

The answer is found in Christ alone.

For in Christ, one can come to understand the world properly. Christ is at the center of all things, upholding the universe by the Word of his power,12 seated and sovereignly reigning over the whole of existence and all of its parts,¹³ directing the course of history to this one end: The glorification of the Triune God through the gracious salvation of his people, the just condemnation of his enemies, and the renewing of all of creation.¹⁴ The apostle Paul declares –

…we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

[ . . .]

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.¹⁵

We strive to honor God by being salt and light in every corner of this sin-darkened planet, but we ultimately know that there is only King who will usher in a righteousness that will fill the earth – Christ Jesus the King of kings and Lord of lords. We know that Christ will judge the living and the dead, and that we, Christians, have escaped judgment not because God has turned a blind eye to our sins, but because he has placed our sins on his Son on the tree of Calvary. Before the eyes of our understanding, in real time, we see that God did not spare his own Son from the penalty for sin due to us. Therefore, we are assured that the God of all the earth will not spare the unjust tyrants.We a have a living hope, one of which we have been given a forestaste time and again throughout history.

Unlike Orwell, Winston, and Julia, Christians have hope.

---

¹ See Bokhari, Allum, “Google Is Still Erasing Breitbart Stories About Joe Biden from Search,” Breitbart, https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/11/03/google-is-still-erasing-breitbart-stories-about-joe-biden-from-search, Nov 3, 2020; Widburg, Andrea, “Google/YouTube is erasing all evidence of election fraud,” American Thinker, Dec 10, 2020, [https://www.americanthinker.com/ blog/2020/12/googleyoutube_is_erasing_all_evidence_of_election_fraud.html][1]; Parker, Tom, “Google Play deletes over 150,000 Robinhood app reviews after frustrated users leave one-star ratings,” Reclaim the Net, Jan 28, 2021, https://reclaimthenet.org/google-play-removes-robinhood-reviews/.

[1]: https://www.americanthinker.com/ blog/2020/12/googleyoutube_is_erasing_all_evidence_of_election_fraud.html

²See Huff, Ethan, “Google executive admits search engine suppresses “right-wing” advertising,” CyberWar, Oct 22, 2020, https://cyberwar.news/2020-10-22-google-executive-says-search-engine-suppresses-right-wing-advertising.html#; Epstein, Robert, “The New Censorship,” U.S. News, Jun 22, 2016, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated; See Keach, Sean, “NOT RIGHT Google accused of ‘left-wing bias’ as study finds JUST 11% of ‘Top Stories’ are from right-leaning news sites,” The Sun, May 13, 2019, https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/9062348/google-left-wing-bias-right-leaning-news/.

³See Hirsen, James, “Mainstream Media Uses 'Fake News' to Censor Conservative Views,” Newsmax, Nov 21, 2016, https://www.newsmax.com/JamesHirsen/facebook-fake-news-social-media-zuckerberg/2016/11/21/id/759946/.

⁴See Maas, Christina, “YouTube deletes videos of doctors testifying in Senate Homeland Committee as ‘coronavirus misinformation’”, Jan 29, 2021, https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-deletes-videos-of-doctors-testifying-in-senate-homeland-committee/.

⁵See Rathnam, Lavanya, “PRISM, Snowden and Government Surveillance: 6 Things You Need To Know,” CloudWards, July 6, 2020, https://www.cloudwards.net/prism-snowden-and-government-surveillance/.

⁶See Belanger, Lydia, “10 Ways Technology Hijacks Your Behavior,” Entrepreneur, April 3, 2018, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/311284.

⁷Orwell opposed Sartrean existentialism, but expressed a form of individualism reminiscent of Albert Camus’ iteration of existentialism. As Douglas Burnham explains –

…in The Rebel, reminiscent of Orwell’s Animal Farm, one of the first points he makes is the following: “The slave starts by begging for justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He too wants to dominate” (Camus 2000b:31). The problem is that while man genuinely rebels against both unfair social conditions and, as Camus says, against the whole of creation, nevertheless in the practical administration of such revolution, man comes to deny the humanity of the other in an attempt to impose his own individuality.

(“Existenialism,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/existent, Accessed Feb 1, 2021.)

The two, however, were not without their notable differences. For more on this, see Brunskill, Ian, “The Gallic Orwell,” The American Interest, Vol. 6 No. 1, Sept 1, 2010, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2010/09/01/the-gallic-orwell/.

⁸See Morris, Shawnna, “Orwell’s “1984”: How to Misread a Classic,” Foundation for Economic Education, June 8, 2019, https://fee.org/articles/orwell-s-1984-how-to-misread-a-classic/.

⁹“1984 as a Religious Critique,” Trinity College: The First Year Papers (2010-Present), (Hartford: Trinity Publications, 2017), 2-3.

¹⁰ Dowty explains –

At the time, the Catholic Church was collaborating with the fascist governments of Italy and Spain due to its vehement opposition to socialism and democratic ideology. As an advocate for democratic socialism and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell began to view the Church as its own authoritarian regimen…the same way, he believed those worshipping the Church were succumbing to a fad of “power worshipping” – or, idolizing those with power opposed to the morals and ethics of the institution wielding that power…

(1984 as a Religious Critique, 1.)

¹¹ Ecc 4:1-3.

¹² cf. Heb 1:3.

¹³ cf. Eph 1:20-22.

¹⁴ cf. Rom 8:18-25; 1st Cor 15:20-28; Phil 2:4-11.

¹⁵2 Cor 4:7-18.

[This article originally appeared on Invospec.org]

The Primary Focus of Black Lives Matter

Whereas CRT (Critical Race Theory) and SJ (Social Justice) are somewhat removed from one’s everyday experience as they are more “abstract” and less personal, Black Lives Matter is concrete, with its leaders, members, and supporters involved in flesh and blood socio-political activism. Repudiations of Black Lives Matter – as a movement as well as a slogan – are often met with negative knee-jerk responses from the movement’s professedly Christian supporters. Christian supporters usually think that BLM is motivated by a desire to right racially motivated social, judicial, and political wrongs. And if that were truly the case, there would be at least a prima facie justification for supporting the movement. Racism – by which I mean the hatred of anyone who is judged as not belonging to one’s phenotypically distinct ethnic group, the flip-side of which is the showing of partiality to those who are judged as belonging to one’s phenotypically distinct ethnic group – is wicked. We ought to preach that hatred is murder. We ought to preach that God condemns partiality. We ought to remind ourselves daily that all men – even those against whom we have what we perceive to be justifiable grievances – bear the imago dei and, therefore, are to be shown respect and honor as such.

However, this is not what Black Lives Matter is primarily endorsing. Rather, BLM is a spiritual movement that is antagonistic toward the truths of the Christian faith. As Hebah H. Farrag and Ann Gleig note in their article “Despite what conservatives think, Black Lives Matter is an inherently spiritual movement” –

Since its inception, BLM organizers have expressed their founding spirit of love through an emphasis on spiritual healing, principles, and practices in their racial justice work.

BLM leaders, such as co-founder Patrisse Cullors, are deeply committed to incorporating spiritual leadership. Cullors grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and later became ordained in Ifà, a west African Yoruba religion. Drawing on Native American, Buddhist and mindfulness traditions, her syncretic spiritual practice is fundamental to her work. As Cullors explained to us, “The fight to save your life is a spiritual fight.”1

The leaders of BLM

…see themselves as inheritors of the spiritual duty to fight for racial justice, following in the footsteps of freedom fighters like abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

BLM leaders often invoke the names of abolitionist ancestors in a ceremony used at the beginning of protests. In fact, protests often contain many spiritual purification, protection and healing practices including the burning of sage, the practice of wearing white and the creation of sacred sites and altars at locations of mourning.2

Thus, while some Christians are led to think that marching, chanting, and singing with BLM protesters are merely political activities, the organization does not agree. The organization views participation in its various forms of activism as participation in spiritual practices.

Some have argued that the movement’s spiritual focus takes a backseat to its primary socio-political focus. However, Farrag elsewhere recounts that BLM’s leaders have stated that it is “first and foremost a spiritual movement.” She writes –

On June 2, 2020, Black Lives Matter’s Los Angeles Chapter sponsored an action in front of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s house…The action, what many would call a protest, began like a religious ceremony. Melina Abdullah…co-founder of BLM-LA, opened the event explaining that while the movement is a social justice movement, it is first and foremost a spiritual movement.

She led the group in a ritual: the reciting of names of those taken by state violence before their time—ancestors now being called back to animate their own justice:

“George Floyd. Asé. Philandro Castille. Asé. Andrew Joseph. Asé. Michael Brown. Asé. Erika Garner. Asé. Harriet Tubman. Asé. Malcom X. Asé. Martin Luther King. Asé.”

As each name is recited, Dr. Abdullah poured libations on the ground as the group of over 100 chanted “Asé,” a Yoruba term often used by practitioners of Ifa, a faith and divination system that originated in West Africa, in return. This ritual, Dr. Abdullah explained, is a form of worship.3

By the admission of its own leaders, BLM is “first and foremost” a “spiritual movement” engaging in worship rituals that take the form of political activism.

BLM vs. “Institutional” Christianity

What is more, according to its leaders, BLM’s

…approach necessitates that communities work to dismantle systems of oppression not only in the state, but also between communities, within communities, in families, in gender relations, in religious practice, and ultimately, within oneself.4

To be opposed to “white supremacy,” in other words, is necessarily to also be actively opposed to, and actively seeking to dismantle, systems of oppression in “religious practices.”

Lest one think that BLM is simply opposed to “religious practices” that are legitimately sinful (e.g. hating one’s neighbor under false pretenses of piety), we must note that it is not merely the wicked actions of Christians in the past that are identified as constituting a “system of oppression” but “institutional Christianity” in general. Farrag and Gleig tell us that –

The history of white supremacy, often enacted within institutional Christianity, has often vilified and criminalized Indigenous and African beliefs...5

Note how this ties together “White supremacy” and religious exclusivism, thereby indirectly indicting biblical Christianity – in which there is only one God (namely, the Trinity) and one way of salvation and communion with God (namely, the perfect life, death, burial, and resurrection of the Son of God) – as a tool of systemic oppression that must be dismantled.

Given that the postmodernist wholesale rejection of “metanarratives” is embraced by the founders of BLM, it follows that “institutional Christianity” – by which we may assume it is meant “orthodox Christianity” – has neither an innate nor bestowed right to deem other religious beliefs and practices as illegitimate, immoral, demonic, and of no benefit to any person. This view reduces the Word of God to a mere cultural production that has no claim to universal applicability. Consequently, Christians who declare that the gods of all the nations are demons,6 and who declare that those who follow their false gods become like them (viz. foolish, deaf, dumb, and blind)7 are viewed as purveyors of “cultural genocide,” illegitimately applying their local “truths” universally.8

Institutional Christianity, BLM founder Patrice Cullors, explains “policed the way [blacks] are allowed to commune with the divine.”9 For instance, whereas Christianity explicitly and overwhelmingly predicates masculine attributes of God, understands man’s role to be that of the head of the household, and explicitly teaches that women are not called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, the Ifa religion places woman at the center of its practices.10 As Oyeronke Olajubu explains –

…[in] the practice of divination among the Yoruba […] female aesthetics feature prominently in all domains of Yoruba religious life. Ifa poetics, symbolism, iconography, and indeed the Odu (the oral texts that constitute the Ifa corpus, which is the wisdom storehouse of the Yoruba and the core of the divination focus) are symbolized as female, often as the essential wives of Ifa.11

Whereas “institutional” Christianity “polices” the roles of women, Ifa gives women numerous prominent religious roles from which to choose.

The Divine Self?

Additionally, whereas the Scriptures teach God and man are ontologically distinct beings,12 and that the desire to be God is the root sin of all sins,13 the Ifa religion teaches that the self is divine. As Wande Abimbola explains –

…the Yoruba religion…is based on what can be described as a worship of nature. We believe that when our divinities, known as Òrìsà, finished their work on earth, they then changed themselves to different forces of nature. […] The earth itself (herself) is a divinity. Human beings are themselves divine through their Ori (soul or unconscious mind) and Èmí (divine breath encased in our hearts), which are directly bestowed on humans from Òlódùmare, our High God.14

Hence, from Oct 2nd – Oct 4th of this year, BLM held “Black Women are Divine” events in which black women were encouraged to “reclaim [their] Divinity in the name of…the countless women [they’ve] lost.”15

BLM is Not Spiritually Neutral

At this point, it should be clear that BLM is not religiously neutral but actively promoting a syncretic form of the Ifa religion that, through political activism, engages in the following practices –

Idolatry
Ancestor worship
Prayers to the dead
Drink libations
Exorcisms16
Healing Ceremonies

All of these behaviors, we must note, are strictly forbidden by God in his Word. As it is written –

Leviticus 19:31 – “Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God.”

Deuteronomy 18:9-12 – “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.”

Isaiah 8:19-20 – And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.

God very clearly detests the actions that BLM is engaging in; consequently, he condemns their actions as abominable.

You Shall Not Be Unequally Yoked

Despite all that has been covered in this article, there will be some who argue that it is possible to work with BLM without engaging in their sins. However, what does the Scripture say?

2 Corinthians 6:14-18 – Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will make my dwelling among them
and walk among them, and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
Therefore go out from their midst,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
then I will welcome you,
and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”

 Ephesians 5:11 – Take no part in the unfruitful works of     darkness, but instead expose them.

1 Timothy 5:22 – Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure.

Revelation 18:4 – Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues…”

God’s Word is by no means unclear on this matter – Christians are forbidden from engaging in the spiritual rituals practiced by BLM through political activism. Ironically, however, it is BLM, and not contemporary Christian supporters of BLM, that correctly notes its political activism allies are not neutral participants in a secular demand for a non-spiritual end. One cannot serve two masters – Either one is with Christ and, therefore, against the paganism of BLM (expressed through its slogan chanting, name chanting, marching, singing, protesting, etc); or one is with BLM and against Christ.

There is no other option.

---

1 https://www.mic.com/p/despite-what-conservatives-think-black-lives-matter-is-inherently-spiritual-movement-33913424, Accessed Oct 10, 2020. (emphasis added)
2 ibid. (emphasis added)
3 “The Fight for Black Lives is a Spiritual Movement,” Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, June 9, 2020, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/the-fight-for-black-lives-is-a-spiritual-movement. (emphasis added)
4 ibid. (emphasis added)
5 Despite What Conservatives Think. (emphasis added)
6 cf. Ps 96:5.
7 cf. Ps 115:4-8, 135:16-18; Rom 1:18-23.
8 For more on this subject, see Turpin, Katherine. “Christian Education, White Supremacy, and Humility in Formational Agendas,” in Religious Education, Vol.112, No. 4 (2017), 407-417.
9 ibid.
10 This notwithstanding, Yoruba culture is patriarchal. Women are considered to be less than men not merely with respect to physical strength but moral capacities as well. For more on this, see Familusi, O.O. “African Culture and the Status of Women: The Yoruba Example,” in The Journal of Pan African Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 2012), 299-313.
11 “Seeing through a Woman's Eye: Yoruba Religious Tradition and Gender Relations,” in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), 45. (emphasis added)
12 cf. Gen 1:26-27 & 2:7; Num 23:19; Job 33:12b; Pss 90, et al.
13 cf. 2 Pet 2:4 & Jude 6; Eze 28:11-19 & Isa 14:4b-21; Gen 3:4-7.
14 “Religion, World Order, and Peace: An Indigenous African Perspective,” in CrossCurrents (September 2010), 308-309. (emphasis added)
15 https://blacklivesmatter.com/black-women-are-divine.
16 BLM leaders believe that through their political activities they can “exorcise” evil from various geographical locations. Elise M. Edwards, in her paper “’Let’s Imagine Something Different’: Spiritual Principles in Contemporary African American Justice Movements and Their Implications for the Built Movement,” writes –

Cullors…is inspired by indigenous spiritualities and Ifà…She explains that the spirituality of many Black Lives Matter activists is not based in traditional or formalized religious communities. Many of the activists felt rejected or even “pushed out” of churches because of their queer identities or challenges to patriarchy. Nevertheless, they continue to practice their spirituality through “healing justice work,” working to exorcise their communities of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

[Religions (2017), 8, 256. (emphasis added)]

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

-          Leviticus 25:10

 As is the case with many Americans, I’ve watched with horror the violence and rioting that has gripped this nation for nearly six months now.  Substantial parts of many of our largest and most famous cities lie in ruins from the predatory acts of mobs affiliated with organizations such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa. 

These overtly violent and leftist organizations have, with the apparent consent of local government officials, loosed a reign of terror in America’s cities the likes of which most Americans never imagined possible. 

The Covid lockdowns are another assault on liberty.  As recently as the beginning of this year, who would ever have imagined we’d have government officials attempting to dictate how we celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with our families, or attempting to interfere with our liberty to worship the Lord in our churches?  Yet the so-called pandemic has been used as an excuse for government to suspend personal liberties we nearly all took for granted, close down our businesses, put us out of work and make us dependent on the government dole.

To add insult to injury, they have slapped masks on us, which do little and perhaps nothing at all to slow the spread of the virus but are most effective when it comes to humiliating and dehumanizing people and showing them who’s boss. 

Then to top it off, the Democrats committed election fraud on a shock and awe scale resulting in a Joe Biden “victory” to which we’re all supposed to accede, no questions asked. 

For as long as this author can remember, he’s heard talk of the decline of America and the decline of the West.  John Robbins noted in his essay “The Religious Wars of the 21st Century” that the West has been in decline for more than a century.  The reason for the decline?  Writes Robbins, “The Biblical theology that created Western civilization five hundred years ago has all but disappeared from the West.”  Robbins’ words were simply a restatement of the main thesis of Gordon Clark’s A Christian View of Men and Things that had been published over fifty years earlier. 

The American republic and the freedoms and prosperity Americans historically have enjoyed did not come about as some random occurrence.  It was not lightning in a bottle or happenstance.  The freedoms and prosperity of the United States is the result of the ideas that were believed by the people of America at the nation’s founding.  And their ideas about liberty – both political and economic – were the result of their believing the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation which began 251 years prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.   

In his booklet Christ and Civilization, John Robbins remarked that, “God blessed his people in Western Europe and America beyond anything they could have imagined, and his blessings spilled over into society at large, creating what we now call Western civilization” (45).  Christ, Robbins tells us, promised this in his Sermon on the Mount, when he told his disciples to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness and that all the things they sought – food, clothing, etc. – would be added unto them. 

Robbins continued,

All these things – the things we call Western civilization – were added to the European and American Christians, on an historically unprecedented scale, just as Christ had promised.  And they were added because their priorities were straight:  They believed the Gospel, seeking first the Kingdom of God and his imputed righteousness, not their own righteousness or prosperity (46).

So how is it possible that a nation conceived in liberty, one that traces its founding back to the landing of the Puritans in December 1620, come to a point where liberty hangs by a thread and republican government is but a step from being extinguished?

In a word, unbelief.

As heirs of the founders of this nation, we have not guarded our doctrine.  We have, as the Israelites in the time of Isaiah and Jeremiah, forgotten our God.  And for this reason, all these things have befallen us.

It was mentioned above that this author has for most of his life read and heard about the decline of America and the West.  But while he’s heard about these things for decades and has taken them seriously, they always seemed rather theoretical and distant, but now they are at our front door. 

At the risk of sounding alarmist and of falling prey to the tendency to overstate the long-term implications of current events, it seems not a stretch to me to say that if Joe Biden is successfully cheated into the White House in January, it will be the end of our republic. 

The entirety of the American establishment – political, academic, business, religious, media, financial, and entertainment – is behind a Biden presidency.  The only thing that stands in their way are the Trump deplorables, and they have little to no institutional or cultural power. 

In fact, they have so little power and are regarded with such contempt that they can be insulted and physically assaulted and no one – not even the people and institutions that supposedly are on their side - will defend them.   

In a brilliant monologue from June 1, 2020, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson explicitly made this point.  “When the mobs came, they abandoned us,” was his opening line.  But it was really at the 12:31 mark that he got down to naming names of Republicans and conservatives who, when Republican voters needed them the most, instead turned on them, denouncing them as a bunch of racists. 

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It is scarcely possible for me to contain the anger I have for the cowardly politicians and others who, on the one hand say that they are behind you, but who, on the other hand,  abandon you to the mobs when the going gets tough.  It’s even worse than that, as Tucker Carlson pointed out.  Not only did people in the Trump administration, including Trump himself, do little to nothing to defend their supporters, or even simple law and order for that matter, but many of them actually piled on, saying in effect, “You know all those terrible names the Dems and BLM and Antifa are calling you – fascists, racists, etc. – well, they’re right; you really are all those things and you deserve the beat down your getting.” 

Yesterday, I was reminded once again of the astounding level of verbal and physical abuse Republicans and Trump supporters have been subjected to over the past five years.  A peaceful protest – not mostly peaceful, but actually peaceful – by Trump supporters in Washington D.C. turned violent when the demonstrators were attacked by violent mobs of Antifa and BLM.

But the obvious violence went largely unreported in the mainstream media.  No one asks Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or other Democrats to denounce such violence.  And really, if Biden were an honorable man, no one would even have to prompt him.  He’d do it on his own accord.

To borrow a phrase from Antifa, Joe Biden’s silence, and the silence of the Democrats, the silence of the media pundits, the silence of most Republicans, the silence of the academics, the silence of the Hollywood and entertainment elite, the silence of business big shots, the silence of the Big Tech executives is violence.  They allow, permit, condone and justify the open assault of peaceful Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. 

These are the same arrogant elites who will unctuously lecture their fellow Americans on justice while they themselves know nothing of it. 

Is it not abundantly clear at this point that now is the time for freedom loving Americans, and I mean here in particular, freedom loving Protestants, to take a stand to defend the nation founded by their forefathers? 

So what does that mean in practice?  For starters, it means praying for your country.  It means, in the first place, praying that the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone be widely preached and believed.  It is this truth that created Western civilization and it is what will sustain and preserve whatever can be salvaged out of the current mess. 

It also means praying that justice prevail and lies be exposed.  Never, never, never in all my life have I witnessed such fraud as what took place during the November 3 presidential election.  It is imperative that Joe Biden be prevented from taking office in January.  He is a fraud and a usurper, plain and simple. 

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said this in an interview:

NEWT GINGRICH: Well, it's a nice sentiment. First, you go out and the Democrats steal five or six states, and that's what Republicans believe we're watching. We think we have evidence of a lot of it. Then you turn around and you say let's forget four years of Nancy Pelosi, let's forget four years ago of impeachment, harassment, opposition, hostility, hatred, and now that I've won, why don't we make nice together? 

I think he would have to do a lot to convince Republicans that this is anything except a left-wing power grab, financed by people like George Soros, deeply laid in at the local level, and, frankly, I think that it is a corrupt, stolen election. It's very hard for me to understand how we're going to work together without some very, very big steps by Biden. And I have -- I have doubts if the left-wing of his party would tolerate him genuinely trying to work with Republicans.

[…]

JEDIDIAH BILA: Yeah, Newt. No, I just want to ask you for clarity, because the accusation of incidents of voter fraud, which do happen in every election, unfortunately, is very different from the accusation of a stolen election. That's very serious. The implication here is that there's enough widespread voter fraud going on that would have changed the outcome of the election. I haven't seen evidence of that to this moment. Is that what you're suggesting has happened here?

GINGRICH: What I'm suggesting is you don't see the evidence because the local officials who are Democrats hide the evidence and then turn to you and say, "Since you have no evidence." So they say, "Oh, we let the poll watchers in the building." That's right. But they kept them far enough away they couldn't see anything. And I think I can show you case after case, it happened magically at almost exactly the same moment on election night that a series of key states quit counting, almost as though they were coordinating what they were doing. 

The Bible says “Thou shalt not steal,” but the Democrats have stolen the election, and done it with breathtaking boldness.  In doing this, they have lived down to the well-earned reputation as the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion.  In truth, the Democrats simply can’t help themselves.  It’s who they are.  It’s what they do.  It is, as it were, in their political DNA.  And they must be stopped.

It was our Protestant forebears that founded this country, and in its hour of need it is up to us to defend her.  We must pray and then we must act.  Not in foolishness, but in knowledge of the truth.  Not in fear, but in boldness.  Not in doubt, but in faith.

In Proverbs we read, “A righteous man falling down before the wicked is as a troubled fountain, and a corrupt spring.”  

If you and I remain silent in the face of obvious evil, we are that righteous man who falls before the wicked.  We must not let that happen. 

So what does it mean to act?  What does it mean to refuse to fall down before the wicked?  It has been my purpose to leave this open.  What each of us does is dependent upon the opportunities presented to us.

Take, for example, when Jerusalem was surrounded by the Babylonian army and the enemies of Jeremiah lowered him into a dungeon to die.  A certain Ethiopian eunuch named Ebed-Melech organized a rescue party and pulled Jeremiah out, saving his life. 

Not long after when the Babylonians had breached Jerusalem’s walls, God spoke to Jeremiah and told him to tell Ebed-Melech that his life would be spared, “because thou hast put thy trust in me.” 

“God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him,” says the author of Hebrews. Because of this, we can have confidence, as did Ebed-Melech, the he will reward our efforts on behalf of justice and truth if we put our trust in the Lord.

What will that look like in this case, a reward from God?

I don’t know.

Perhaps we can save the American republic.  Perhaps not.  Ebed-Melech didn’t save Jerusalem from being sacked and burned with fire.  Jeremiah’s decades of preaching truth didn’t prevent the exile of the Jews to Babylon.

But God rewarded these men nonetheless.  And he will reward us as well, if we seek his face and speak his truth with all boldness. 

My brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s time to stand for liberty.  It’s time to stand for the truth. 

When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal.

-          2 Kings 11:1

“To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature, contumelious to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance, and finally it is the subversion of good order, and of all equity and justice.”

To modern ears could a more offensive sentence be found in all of literature?  Not having read all of literature, this author does not pretend to be able to answer that question definitively.  Yet with that said, it is hard to imagine an idea more repugnant to 21st century readers than this quote from John Knox’s essay “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women” (hereafter, TMR).

We have, all of us living in the West in the early 21st century, been steeped in feminist theory from our youth up to the point where, for most of us, Knox’s words are little more than noise from a bygone era with no relevance for us today, except perhaps as a cautionary tale to warn us about how bad the bad old days really were.

Liberal Democrats, were they to read Knox, would quickly be triggered, alternating between outrage, ridicule and calls to have his ideas removed from social media.  Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, would attempt explain away what Knox wrote by saying that he was a product of his age, that what he was really writing against was 16th century liberal women and that if he were alive today he would gladly support a female presidential candidate so long as she was pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and promised to fight against the Green New Deal. 

Contemporary Protestants, even supposed Bible believing ones, would be embarrassed by Knox’s words.  Most likely, they would hope that no one would notice what he wrote.  Were someone to bring up TMR with them, they would find some way to explain it away and quickly change the subject.  Some Protestants can’t seem to gush enough about the prospects of a woman president.  In 2012, Republican Michelle Bachmann was considered something of a favorite among Evangelicals. According to one article, Evangelical pastors could not gush enough about her candidacy, with one Presbyterian minister saying of her that, “She was speaking the language of the heart of the people in this room.” 

Commenting on Bachmann’s presidential run in the Washington Post, D. Michael Lindsay observed that many outsiders were surprised to see Bachmann, who posited herself as a Christian conservative, both running as a presidential candidate and receiving widespread support from Evangelicals.  Lindsay went on to write, “The reality is that evangelicals today have crafted a notion of what feminist scholar Marie Griffith calls ‘practical Christian womanhood,’ whereby adherents hold seemingly contradictory notions regarding authority and gender ideals.”

But contrary to Marie Griffith, there is nothing “seemingly contradictory” about Evangelicals, on the one hand, supporting what Lindsay called “traditional gender roles at home” and, on the other hand, supporting a woman for president.  This is an actual contradiction, one of many compromises that Protestants have made with the world.  Is it possible that the weakness and ineffectiveness of the Protestant church in the 21st century is somehow related to its refusal to think, speak and act logically in accord with the teaching of the Scriptures? 

The idea that Knox was serious about what he wrote and may actually have been right, that is simply unacceptable to modern men and they will not hear it.  And this includes a great number of 21st century conservative Christians. 

But Knox was right.

There, I said it.  And I’ll say it again.

Knox was right.

It has long been this author’s view that feminism is not only one of the most ungodly ideas ever advanced in philosophy, but also one of the most destructive in practice.  Ideas Have Consequences is the title of a well-known work of philosophy by American Richard Weaver.  He understood that it was ideas that were primary, actions followed from them.  This was also the position of Gordon Clark and John Robbins.  As Robbins noted in one of his lectures on philosophy, our practice – the actions we take in life - is always based upon some prior theory.

Feminism is based upon the idea that man and women are in all respects equal and, therefore, the feminists logically conclude that there is nothing at all inappropriate about  promoting “a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation or city.”  Further, not only is doing so not inappropriate, but it is a positive good, for it liberates women from the oppression of the patriarchy.

Another implication of this idea, that men and women are in all respect equal, is that anyone who opposes promoting a woman to a position of political authority is not merely wrong, but a very bad person with questionable motives.

In a 1980 presidential debate with then president Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan famously asked the viewers, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”  Many think this was one of the decisive moments of the 1980 presidential election that saw Reagan unseat Carter. 

With all the turmoil we’ve seen in 2020, with our civilization apparently collapsing about us on a daily basis, perhaps it’s worth asking a similar question today.  Is society better off today that it was before feminism?  Does our government function better now that feminist philosophy and practice dominates both parties and all branches of government?  How about our schools and universities?  How are they doing?  Are they better off now that Women’s Studies has become standard fare on campuses everywhere? Or let’s look at families.  Are they better off now that women have won the right to sit in a cubicle eight or more hours a day working for some corporation that couldn’t care less about them rather than being keepers at home, working for their husband and children who love them?  What about churches?  Do feminist churches preach the Gospel more faithfully in the 21st century then they did in the non-feminist 18th century?

The answer to all these questions is not merely no, but a hard no.  But it’s worse than that.  Not only are the institutions of civil government, the church and the family not better off now than before feminism, they all are markedly worse off.  Within fifteen years of women winning the right to vote, America and other Western nations found themselves with a bloated, unbiblical and socially destructive welfare state.  Schools and universities today are little more than Marxist indoctrination centers that teach students not only to hate and despise their parents and their entire civilization, but also leave their students saddled with unpayable debt for the privilege of learning anti-Christian nonsense.  The practical effects of our ungodly educational system – a system in which feminism plays a major philosophical role – was on full display last summer in the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots.  Many of the “peaceful protestors” didn’t even know whether they were male of female.  And families, they’re a mess too.  Marriage rates for Westerners are plummeting as are birth rates.  This should come as no surprise.  Feminist philosophy makes it impossible for men and women to relate to one another in the way God intended.  If the home becomes a battlefield where a husband and wife have to fight for dominance every day over everything, isn’t it just easier and more sensible to avoid marriage and children altogether?

Sometimes one will hear conservatives and Christians defend feminism by saying that it was a needed corrective back in the day but it just went too far.  We can’t reject feminism in toto as the reactionary Knox did.  No, we must be reasonable and hold fast what is good in feminism while avoiding the extremes.  This sounds reasonable, but it is foolishness.

Feminism was always an ungodly idea.  From the very beginning it was rebellion against God and his Word.  As proof of this, take the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments that came out of the famous Seneca Falls Conference held that year.  That conference, considered by historians as marking the start of First Wave Feminism, issued the Declaration which contained sixteen resolutions.  Time does not permit a discussion of all of them, but let’s take two as representative.

• He [man] allows her in church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

• He [man] has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.

Both these propositions are easily refuted from the Scriptures.  “Let the women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak…Let a woman learn in silence with all submission, And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence…A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife….”  These are not suggestions, neither are they culturally conditioned, neither is the language obscure.  It takes willful ignorance to construe these statements in any other way than to say that they forbid women from holding church office and serving as ministers. 

The same principle applies to civil government, which is the focus of Knox’s TMR. In TMR, Knox argues from the lessor to the greater when he writes,

The Apostle takes power from all women to speak in the assembly [church].  Ergo, he permits no woman to rule above man.  The former part is evident, whereupon does the conclusion of necessity follow.  For he that takes from woman the least part of authority, dominion, or rule will not permit unto her that which is greatest.  But greater it is to reign above realms and nations, to publish and make laws, and to command men of all estates, and finally to appoint judges and ministers, than to speak in the congregation….

If anyone objects to Knox’s logic here, let him ask himself who created church and civil government?  According to Scripture, the civil magistrate is as much a minister of God as is the preacher, for both derive their authority from him.  See Romans 13, for example, where Paul calls the civil magistrate God’s minister. If civil and church government are both created by God, then we can infer the principles that apply to one also apply to the other.  Going back to the quote above from the Washington Post, for Protestants to, one the one hand, hold to what the author called “traditional gender roles at home” [they are not traditional, they are God ordained] and, on the other hand, to promote a woman for president so long as she’s a conservative woman, is not “seemingly contradictory” but rather actually contradictory. 

The second resolution represents a direct attack of Scripture, for it says that men have usurped “the prerogative of Jehovah himself in claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.”  This is wildly off the mark.  For it is not man who assigned a particular sphere to woman, but Jehovah himself: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church”…“[let the] older women…admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands”…”as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.”      

None of this is difficult theology.  The language of the Scriptures is clear and unambiguous.  Indeed, it would be hard to see how it could be clearer.  The problem is not the clarity of the Bible.  The problem is that sinful men have willfully rejected God’s counsel.  The feminist wind sown in the 19th century has become a whirlwind in the 21st, one that threatens to blow away what remains of Western Civilization. 

It was noted above that it takes willful ignorance to not see what the Scriptures plainly teach about men, women and their roles in the government of the family, the church and the state.  Certainly, those who claim to be teachers of Israel bear the greater sin, for they fail to teach their congregations what the Word of God so clearly states.  And if the preachers fail to preach the truth, it should come as no surprise that ordinary Christians fail to understand and believe it.  They perish for lack of knowledge.  And not Christians only, but their civilization as well.

Closing Thoughts

America has been building its Monstrous Regiment now for over 150 years. If we use the 1848 Seneca Falls Conference as a starting point, it's been at work on this project for a full 172 years. In truth, the ideas expressed at the Seneca Falls Conference originated much earlier.

It remains to be seen whether we will get our first woman president in the person of Kamala Harris. Technically, she's Joe Biden's running mate and is slated to take office as Vice-President should Biden win. Practically, many people think she will be more in charge than Biden will be, even if he remains in office for a time.

It likely was not a slip of the tongue when last week when Harris made reference to the "Harris Administration" and the next day Biden talked about "the Harris/Biden administration." Some thought this was a gaffe. A more likely explanation was that it was an attempt to signal to the feminist base that a vote for Biden would result in the first woman president.

But even if Donald Trump retakes the White House in 2020, the issue of a female president will not go away. It will merely be delayed. Trump himself has promoted the idea of a woman president and seems to be preparing his daughter Ivanka for this role.

In the opinion of this author, barring a new Reformation or the near-term return of Christ, America will succeed in completing it Monstrous Regiment in an upcoming election cycle, perhaps as early as 2024. The guiding feminist philosophy of the schools and churches of America requires it as does the political spirit of the age.

As Christians, this is an opportunity for us to speak out. Let us take it.

When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal.

-          2 Kings 11:1

“I wouldn’t vote for her.”  That was Ayn Rand’s curt response to a question from a woman in the audience of the Phil Donohue show.  She had asked Rand, “Do you believe that there is going to be a day when there is going to be a female in the White House as President and how do you feel about that?”

From the questioner’s reaction and from that of the audience, Rand’s answer was not expected, neither was it appreciated.  You can see the 1979 clip for yourself here, https://youtu.be/cL8g7zy6qxw.

Worth noting is how shocking and controversial Rand’s statement was as far back as 41 years ago.  Now this was the Phil Donohue Show, and Donohue himself was a feminist, and his audience, most likely, tended to skew liberal.  But that said, it is not clear that the audience reaction from a conservative Republican audience would have been much different.  Certainly in 2020, any Republican expressing anything remotely approaching Rand’s statement would quickly find himself making an apology tour. 

Donald Trump has expressed his support for a female president on more than one occasion.  In late August, Business Insider ran the headline “Donald Trump plugs Ivanka as the first female president claiming Kamala Harris is ‘not competent’ enough for the top job.” Note, Trump’s objection to Kamala Harris was not that she was a woman, but that she was not the right woman.  Further, he promoted his daughter as the right person to be the first female president.

There have been rumors for some time that Trump has wanted to see his daughter in the Oval Office, and the prominent role she had at last month’s Republican Convention and the statement reported in Business Insider certainly support those rumors.  It would not shock this author to see Ivanka declare herself as a presidential candidate in 2024 with the full blessing of her father.  Of course, she will have other female rivals to the throne, quite possibly including former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. 

In fact, it would not surprise this author at all if the 2024 election doesn’t bring us the choice between a Republican woman and a Democratic woman presidential candidate.  It’ll be pick your poison. Of course, the conservatives and liberals will tear one another apart with each side passionately denouncing the choice of the other party, while both parties miss the fundamental error they are committing.  That is to say, both sides will be equally ignorant that, in the words of John Knox, “To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature, contumelious to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance, and finally it is the subversion of good order, and of all equity and justice….”   

Yes, way back in 1558 John Knox dropped the mic, so to speak, on the matter of government by women in his devastating treatise “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.”  In it, Knox did not argue, as so many feminized men are prone to argue today, that this or that woman was unfit to hold public office because of her position on this or that issue.  No, Knox’s argument was more fundamental and more Biblical than that.  Knox argued that the Bible prohibited women from severing in civil government altogether. 

Knox was right.

After reading it, I want to stand, applaud and praise the Lord for the insight and courage that he gave the Scotsman.

So impressive is “The Monstrous Regiment” that had Knox done nothing else in his life except to write that treatise, it would be enough to qualify him for Christian hero status.  Without a doubt, “The Monstrous Regiment” is one of the greatest political treatises ever written by a Christian and a serves as a model for how Christian scholars ought to use the Scriptures when dealing with political questions. 

Let’s take a closer look at Knox’s work to see if we can identify what makes it so devastating. 

For our walk through, I’ll be using the Trinity Foundation’s edition of “The Monstrous Regiment” titled “The Place of Women.”

Worth noting is that “The Place of Women” was first published by the Trinity Foundation in August 1984, most likely as a response to Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale’s choice of Geraldine Ferraro as his vice-presidential running mate in that year’s election.

Since that time, other women have followed in her footsteps, most notably Sarah Palin, who served as John McCain’s running mate in 2008, Hillary Clinton who headed the Democratic ticket in 2016, and now Kamala Harris who’s Democrat Joe Biden’s pick for vice-president.   

The Scripturalism of John Knox

Wonder it is that among so many pregnant wits as the Isle of Great Brittany has produced, so many godly and zealous preachers as England did sometime nourish, and so many learned men of grave judgment as this day by Jezebel are exiled, none is found so stout of courage, so faithful to God, nor loving to their native country, that they dare not admonish the inhabitants of that Isle how abominable before God is the Empire or Rule of a wicked woman, yea of a traitoress and bastard....

What an opener!

Here, Knox shows two traits that are lacking in most Christians today: discernment and courage.  In his Trinity Review “Why Heretics Win Battles,” John Robbins noted that, “Their [Christians] lack of discernment stems from a lack of knowledge of Scripture, and their lack of courage comes from a lack of belief in the promises of Scripture.”

The Prophet Hosea declared, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” And just as it was true in Hosea’s day, so it is also in ours.  The level of ignorance of Scripture, even among today’s Bible-believing Protestants, is shocking.  As a result, many have found themselves blown this way and that by the winds of popular culture, including feminism.

One sees this principle at work in many areas.  We are trained to see the Bible as applying only to learning how to be saved and only between the hours of 11am and 12pm on Sunday mornings, and let secular thinking guide us the rest of the time.

Now it is certainly not my intention to say that the Bible is not about learning about how to be saved from one’s sins or that it is wrong to study the Bible between 11am and 12pm on Sunday’s. Not at all. The point is that the Bible, while furnishing us with the information we need to be saved, is not, as the fundamentalists would have use believe, limited to that.  The Bible is an entire system of thought that covers and authoritatively governs, not just soteriology, but every field of knowledge.  The Bible, in short, has a systematic monopoly on truth.  Not some truth.  All truth.  God’s truth is all truth.

This includes the truth about politics.  This may seem strange to some, that the Bible has anything, let alone anything decisive, to say about politics.  “Separation of church and state,” some Americans may cry.  Well, yes, separation of church and state is a Christian idea.  But it’s one thing to say that the New Covenant prohibits theocracy (it does) and quite another to say that God’s Word is not authoritative in settling political matters. 

If there be any who doubt that the Bible speaks authoritatively on matters of politics, consider the question of the origin of civil government.  Where does it come from?  Very clearly, it comes from God himself, the first example being found in Genesis 3 where God placed two Cherubim “at the east of the garden of Eden” and a “flaming sword.”  The purpose of this was “to keep the way of the tree of life.”  Put another way, God did this to prevent sinful Adam and Eve from stealing his property. 

In the New Testament we see that the civil magistrate is called “God’s minister” and is charged with punishing those who practice evil and with rewarding the good.

Government is not a secular invention of man, but a divine institution created by God as punishment for, and as a partial cure of, sin.    

And because civil government is a creation of God, if governors are to understand how to rightly govern, they must appeal, not to secular philosophy, but to the Word of God. 

Unfortunately, the pregnant wits of the Isle of Great Brittany lacked the discernment to understand what God had said in his Word about proper civil government.  Had they possessed Knox’s insight, perhaps they would have taken a stand with him.

But lack of discernment was not the only issue with the clergy of Knox’s day.  Another was lack of courage. 

Knox complained that among the men of Great Brittany, “none is found so stout of courage, so faithful to God, nor loving to their native country,” to speak out against the Monstrous Regiment. 

Lack of courage is also a problem in our own day.  In the Preface to his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins noted that, “The world of American scholarship seems to have partitioned itself, at least with regard to the study of the Roman Church-State, so that the study of the Roman Church-Sate has been reserved for Roman Catholics” (page 10).  Robbins posits that one reason for this may be fear of being labeled “anti-Catholic.”  He goes on to write that this fear, “undermines all scholarship.” 

Indeed, it does.

Fear is debilitating.  It causes Christians to self-censor, so that they dare not speak publicly, perhaps so that they dare not even admit to themselves privately, concerns that they may have with this or that issue out of fear of the consequences that may follow.

Now admittedly in our feminist ruled age, talking about God’s prohibition on women rulers is a scary topic.  As a friend said to me in an email about last week’s post, some “Christians” would consider it to be “fighting words.”  No doubt he’s right.  Therefore, when dealing with sensitive topics, it’s not wrong for Christians to use prudence.  As Jesus himself enjoined his hearers, “Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.”  You don’t have to go up to your feminist colleague at work on Monday and begin defending “The Monstrous Regiment.” If you do, you may find out what Jesus meant by his warning, “lest they turn again and rend you.” 

But if we Christians never discuss the tenants of their faith, and the political statements of Scripture are just as binding as the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone, is that not a failure on our part to do our job of being “salt and light” to a dying world. 

Just stop and look around you.  What do you see?  You see an entire civilization going mad, quite literally perishing for the lack of knowledge.  As Christians, we are called to speak truth at all times, but now the need for truth is desperate.  We live in a time when men think then can become women, and women think they can become men…or some other previously unknown category such as “nonbinary.” Rioters, looters and felons are the good guys who peacefully demonstrate, but the cops are evil and must be defunded.  Racking up massive, unpayable debts is now the American way, while financial prudence is considered foolishness.  One commentator I follow calls these Satanic inversions.  He’s right.  This is what Isaiah meant when he condemned those who called good evil and evil good. 

Speaking God’s truth, that, “To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, contumelious to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance,” is to risk accusations of hate speech and court cancellation.  But to say this is simply to present God’s truth to the world, without which it will perish.  Though the world would call it hate speech, standing on the Word of God and declaring it to the nations is an act of mercy, for how will they hear without a preacher?        

As Christians, we can take courage from the many verses in Scripture that promise God will reward the faithful.  In Psalm 28 David wrote, “The LORD is my strength and my shield,” and one can find many other such verses in the Psalms and elsewhere in Scripture. 

Toward the end of his epistle to the Ephesians, Paul wrote that believers wrestled not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in high places.  In light of this, what were the Ephesians to do?  Run and hide?  No! Paul told them to put on the whole armor of God, their one offensive weapon being “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” 

As Christians, we need to learn to apply the Word of God to all areas of life as did John Knox in matter of politics.  Knox was able to take the stand he did, not on his own, but because he both understood the Scriptures and believed the promises of God to those who are faithful.  May we be his imitators.

(To be continued…)