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Archive for May, 2021

Detail from The Tower of Babel by Peter Brugel, 1563.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

  • Genesis 1:1

“Is there any good news?” That was a text a friend sent me a few months back.  My answer to him was something like, “not really.”

As a Christian, I know full well that there is good news in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that all who believe in him are justified and accepted as righteous in the sight of God.  That promise never changes no matter what the headlines say.

But if we look strictly at the headlines concerning the events of the day, there has been very little good news at all for nearly a year and a half.  In truth, the bad news has been pouring in for a long time, but it seems to have gone next level since early 2020. 

The Covid hoax – I say hoax not in the sense that no one died of Covid-19, but in the sense that the wildly overstated danger of this disease was used to crush political, economic and religious liberty in what appears to be a world-wide orchestrated event to centralize power among the globalist elite – the BLM hoax – we’ve been lectured for what seems like forever that America is hopelessly racist and that racist police unfairly target black Americans, but there is little evidence to support these statements and much to contradict them; yes, black Americans have higher rates of incarceration than other groups but that is because of the uncomfortable fact that they commit a wildly disproportionate amount of violent crime – and the 2020 election hoax – we were told in no uncertain terms that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure in history, while at the same time anyone who pointed out glaring irregularities in the election was dismisses as a QAnon conspiracy theorist and deplatformed from social media – all worked together to make 2020 a uniquely depressing year for those of us who lover liberty and truth. 

And the knock-on effects of those hoaxes are still with us in 2021 and likely will continue to be with us in the foreseeable future. 

At the very least, these hoaxes are examples of false witness bearing, a violation of the ninth commandment.  Which law, although not formally committed to writing at the time of the events in Genesis 1-11, was nevertheless in effect. 

The three hoaxes listed above are certainly not the only hoaxes Americans are subjected to daily.  We must not omit the transgender hoax in which we taught to accept that men really can become women and women really can become men.  And if you don’t believe it, well, very bad things are in store for you.

And we’re not yet done with hoaxes.  As if all the above weren’t enough, now the major news networks are pushing UFO’s. It’s almost as if a there’s a concerted effort to distract people.

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First Indiana Heavy Artillery in Baton Rouge, LA, the so-called “Jackass Regiment.” This was my great-great-great grandfather Hiram Bennet Matthews’ unit in the Civil War.

First Indiana Heavy Artillery at the siege of Port Hudson, LA

Picture of a C-47, the same type plane my great uncle Paul Matthews flew as a pilot on the Burma Hump

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Detail from The Tower of Babel by Peter Brugel, 1563.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

  • Genesis 1:1

Smash the patriarchy.

That’s a common turn of phrase these days.  And those who use it fell fully justified in their doing so.

After all, it’s self-evident that patriarchy is an evil social construct from the benighted past that cannot be removed from society fast enough. For those slow to embrace the revolution, opprobrium, exclusion and possibly even violence await.    

Patriarchy, in the eyes of a doctrinaire feminist, is merely a social construct.  Feminists view man – a feminist likely would prefer a less “sexist” term such as humanity – as a blank slate whose thinking can be shaped in one way just as easily as in another.  In feminist thought, a matriarchy is just as natural as a patriarchy.  Traditional sex roles – man as primary breadwinner, wife as keeper at home – could be changed to a 50/50 partnership in all things, or even flipped on its head. 

Put another way, the historic relationship between men and women is merely a convention such as deciding which side of the road to drive on.  In America, we drive on the right side of the road.  In Great Britain, Australia, and Japan, they drive on the left side of the road.  It really doesn’t matter which side of the road you drive on.  The important thing is that every agrees which side. 

But in feminist thought, it’s not enough to say that patriarchy is a convention.  In feminist thought, patriarchy is oppression, a system designed by men to unfairly keep women from achieving their full potential.  Such an unjust system must be smashed. 

According to the article “Smash The Patriarchy: 8 Ways To Do It With Love And Compassion,” smashing the patriarchy, “refers to challenging the dominant social, political, cultural, and economic thoughts that value the idea of hegemonic, toxic masculinity over everything.” 

Feminists, it seems, have made a Baal out of smashing the patriarchy together with all it supposed toxic masculinity.  While King Jehu feigned to serve Baal much, the feminists have actually done so and reaped the rewards of their choice.

It’s not unusual to find articles talking about how much more unhappy and stressed out women are today compared with their mothers and grandmothers.  Unable to account for this phenomenon, the simultaneous success of women smashing the patriarchy and their increasing unhappiness, secular writers have taken to calling it “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.”   

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RLL 57: War in the Middle East and John Kerry in Rome
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Detail from The Tower of Babel by Peter Brugel, 1563.

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

  • Genesis 1:1

In an article titled “Pope Francis Calls for Giving United Nations Organization ‘Real Teeth,’” the current occupant of the seat of Antichrist says that, “The twenty-first century is witnessing a weakening of the power of nation states, chiefly because the economic and financial sectors, being transnational, tend to prevail over the political.” 

That economic and financial sectors have throughout history have operated across national borders, and that the Bible in no way prohibits international trade, these things the Pope does not want you to think about.  These forces, the Pope tells us, in some undefined way “prevail over the political,” and this, we are to take on the Pope’s word, is a very bad thing that can be fixed only by ushering in an even bigger government, a world government run by the UN. 

So what does the Pope mean by “economic and financial sectors” prevailing over the political?  Given his authoritarian dislike of economic and political liberty, he likely means that, despite the best efforts of regulators to stamp out economic and political liberty, people, ordinary people, are still free to make voluntary economic decisions in their perceived best interests.  Liberty of this sort is deeply disturbing to globalist tyrants of all sorts, whether we’re talking about religious globalists such as the Popes of Rome – all of them, Francis included, are Antichrists who hate, loathe and despise Christ and his people whom he freed spiritually, politically and economically – or secular tyrants of the sort who run the UN, the World Economic Forum or any number of other globalist busybody organizations. 

There’s an old saying, if it doesn’t fit, get a bigger hammer.  The drive for world government is all about elite globalists such as the Pope getting a bigger hammer to beat the nations and peoples of the world into their mold, imposing on them by force the choices and behaviors the elite want them to exhibit, but which if left to themselves the people would not choose. “There’s just too much liberty out there,” is ever the cry of the tyrant. 

In times past, those who warned about a plot to impose world government on the nations of the earth were viewed as kooks.  “That’s conspiracy theory!” people would cry. 

But the push for world government, while it is a conspiracy in the proper sense of the term, is certainly no unsubstantiated rumor spread by fact challenged individuals.  It’s an open secret, possibly one of the worst kept secrets ever.  The Pope’s of Rome and other Vatican officials simply cannot stop themselves from openly longing for world government and constantly take the opportunity to tell everyone how wonderful their brave new world will be.

As Christians, we cannot endorse world government.  But how can I say this?  As Christians, we must always ground our ideas about politics and economics in the Scriptures.  So where in the Bible does is the matter of world government and individual nations ever brought up?  Is it brought up at all?  In short, yes.  The Bible has a stance on world government.  God opposes it.  Further, God endorses the idea of a system of nation states of the sort that came about as a result of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which concluded the Thirty Years War.     

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The Religious Wars of the 21st Century,” by John W. Robbins

The Religious Wars of the 21st Century,” audio version

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Detail from The Tower of Babel by Peter Brugel, 1563.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

  • Genesis 1:1

“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”  This quote, or some variant to it, has been attributed to several prominent people.  In searching for the origin of the quote, I found it credited to such notables as John Knox, William Tyndale, and Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson used “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” on his personal seal.  Jefferson wanted to use this saying on the Seal of the United States

Whatever the origin of the quote, many Christians today are troubled by the notion that it is ever a Christian’s duty to resist tyranny.  Citing Paul’s injunction in Romans 13 “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities,” they take Paul’s command to be, if not an absolute, at least something very close to it. 

The extent of the civil magistrate’s legitimate authority came to the surface in 2020 with the coming of the Covid 19 restrictions across much of the world.  These restrictions not only affected schools, universities, and businesses, but also churches.  Sincere Christians, when considering how to react to government restrictions, in particular government restrictions on church meetings, came to different conclusions.  Some believed it was the duty of Christians to obey every command of the various civil authorities that restricted, or outright prohibited, church meetings.  Others considered it a Christian duty to resist such edicts.  Because of these different views, as a follow up to last week’s post on the divine origin of civil government, it seemed good to me to say something about the relationship of civil government to the church.

To take the suspense out of things, I’ll tell you my view of the matter up front.  Christians are required to obey civil magistrates, but only in the Lord.  The civil magistrate, while a legitimate minister of God, has limited authority.  This was also John Calvin’s view.  He wrote,

The characteristic of a true sovereign is, to acknowledge that, in the administration of his kingdom, he is a minister of God. He who does not make his reign subservient to the divine glory, acts the part not of a king, but a robber. He, moreover, deceives himself who anticipates long prosperity to any kingdom which is not ruled by the sceptre of God, that is, by his divine word (Institutes, Prefatory Address).

Later in the Institutes, Calvin wrote,

We are subject to the men who rule over us, but subject only in the Lord. If they command anything against Him let us not pay the least regard to it, nor be moved by all the dignity which they possess as magistrates – a dignity to which no injury is done when it is subordinated to the special and truly supreme power of God (Book IV, Chapter 20.32).

It is the view of this author that the civil authority has no jurisdiction to regulate how Christian churches conduct their worship services, and that all such regulation represents overreach on the part of the civil magistrate. This is not to say that Christian ministers and Christians themselves are not subject to the governing authorities.  If Christians commit acts that are contrary to the law of God and the just civil laws of society, then they are justly punished by the civil magistrate.  But the regulation or prohibition of singing hymns, capacity limits due to Covid, or even outright prohibition on gathering on the Lord’s Day?  All such restrictions by the civil authorities are tyrannical and ought to be resisted by Christians everywhere.        

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Detail from The Tower of Babel by Peter Brugel, 1563.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

  • Genesis 1:1

In the famous opening sentence of his Treatise on the Social Company, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in change.”   

While Rousseau’s social compact theory of government is not Christian, his observation that man is everywhere in chains certainly rings true.  We can see this in the history recorded for us in the Bible as well as from secular sources.  For that matter, we can see it simply reading the news of the day. 

Jesus himself noted the authoritarian nature of civil government in his response to the disciples’ arguing about who among them was the greatest.  Jesus responded to them,

The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’  But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves (Luke 22:25-26).

Note that the kings of the Gentiles do two things.  First, they exercise lordship.  The Greek verb translated “exercise lordship” can also mean “be the lord or master of.”  Perhaps another way of expressing the meaning of the Greek is to use the English expression “lord it over.”  We talk that way.  We say so and so is lording it over someone.  Certainly, that was true of the kings and emperors who governed during Jesus ministry.  They lorded it over their people.  What the kings of the earth wanted, they took, and there was little to stop them. 

The second thing these kings did was be called “benefactor.”  On one hand they oppressed their people, but on the other, they wanted to be known as men of generosity.  A modern example of this is Joseph Stalin, who, while being one of the most ruthless of the 20th century dictators used the title “Dear Father” among others. 

From Jesus response to his disciples, we clearly see that there is a large gap between the Biblical teaching about how government should operate – the idea that government is a servant to the people – and how it actually does operate.

But even more basic than the questions what should government do and how should it go about doing it is the question, why should one man obey another man? 

To answer these questions, we must turn to the Scriptures where we find the origin of civil government. 

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