The Borg, a recurring antagonist in Star Trek the Next Generation, was a group of cyborgs linked in a hive mind called “the Collective.” The Wikipedia entry on the Borg tells us that the goal of the Borg was to absorb the technology and knowledge of other species through the process of assimilation with the ultimate aim of achieving perfection.
One could think of the Borg as the ultimate expression of collectivism, an idea that stands in opposition to the historic western, Protestant idea of individualism, which can be defined as “a doctrine that the interests of the individual are or ought to be ethically paramount” (Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary).
Two authoritarians of a feather. One’s already been convoyed. The other is scared to death of getting the same.
Were you to ask me what Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, and Jay Powell all have in common; I would answer you this: a belief in their own unaccountable power.
In his book Lex Rex (Latin for The Law is King), Samuel Rutherford set forth the Christian idea that governors, as well as the governed, alike were both under the law.
Throughout most of human history, it was the exact opposite. Rather than the law being king, it was Rex Lex, the king is the law. Put differently, The law is what the king says it is, and he himself is above it.
The notion that the law – and we mean by “the law” the law of God – is king and not man is a thoroughly Biblical and Christian idea. It is not an accident that Protestant Samuel Rutherford set forth this idea in a book instead of some Roman Catholic scholar. The idea that both the ruler and the ruled stand under the law and are responsible to God is a concept that was rediscovered at the time of the Reformation in implemented in those nations to which the Reformation came.
Those of us who live in the West, as badly decomposed as it is, have enjoyed the privilege of living under a system of government that acknowledged this principle. As recently as two years ago, one could still think of this great idea as operable. But beginning in 2020, Western governments initiated a coup détat of sorts, replacing the Protestant idea that the law is king with a technocratic tyranny in which unaccountable bureaucrats and puppetized elected officials rule us like kings.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
Ephesians 6:10
Commenting on Ephesians 6:10, Gordon Clark said of this verse, “Here begins the peroration of the epistle.”
“Peroration” is not a term most of us commonly use. It means the concluding part of a discourse, especially the concluding part of an oration. A second meaning of “peroration” is highly rhetorical speech. In light of this definition, Clark’s calling verse 10 the beginning of the epistle’s peroration certainly seems appropriate. Verses 10-18 of Ephesians chapter 6 are memorable, not only for the message itself but also for the rhetoric Paul uses to make his point.
In this passage, Paul uses the figure of a Christian soldier armed to do battle against the wiles of the devil
Now this passage on Christian spiritual warfare has many applications. But the focus of my comments today will be concerning Christians and the present battle against Covid tyranny.
For nearly two years, Christians the world over have been subjected to a remarkably intense political, economic, and psychological assault by the political, academic, religious, and business elite of the world. This assault, whether in the form of unprecedented lockdowns, vaccine mandates, or restrictions on movement, ultimately is not a political battle, although it involves political oppression. Neither is it fundamentally economic in nature, even though the pushers of the Covid narrative have certainly attacked ordinary people economically while at the same time vastly enriching many billionaires who benefited from the lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov before their meeting, in Geneva, Switzerland, January 21, 2022. Alex Brandon | Reuters
“The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us….”
President Biden is considering deploying several thousand U.S. troops, as well as warships and aircraft, to NATO allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, an expansion of American military involvement amid mounting fears of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, according to administration officials.
The situation in Ukraine, long-simmering in the background, appears to be coming to a head. There are a number of issues contributing to the growing tensions between Russia and NATO, the most important of which is the possible inclusion of Ukraine in the NATO alliance. Russia has made it clear that NATO expansion into Ukraine is unacceptable. In the words of Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov, “It is absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never ever becomes a member of NATO.” American Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have countered by stating that Russia has no say in the matter of who is allowed into NATO.
What are Christians to make of this? Is Russia right to object to Ukraine joining NATO, or are the Americans right to seek to incorporate Ukraine in the NATO alliance? Are both sides wrong? Scripturalists, those who believe that the Bible has a systematic monopoly on truth, including truth on foreign policy, seek to answer these questions by appealing to the Word of God, the 66 books of the Bible. What do they say?
There is no greater threat facing the true church of Christ at this moment than the irrationalism that now controls our entire culture.
John W. Robbins, “The Trinity Manifesto”
After nearly two years of continuous madness, the pandemic of Covid irrationalism and totalitarianism has yet to run its course. For that matter, the worse the scientific case gets – let alone the Biblical case – for vaccine mandates and other impositions on liberty, the more strident the calls for more stringent measures become from the true believers in the Covidian cult.
Even those from who we have a right to expect rational thought on matters Covid can’t get it right. Here, I’m talking specifically about the Supreme Court’s ruling last week on the Biden regime’s vaccine mandates. The Court struck down as unconstitutional – of course, the Court is nowhere given the power to determine whether a law is constitutional or not, this is a usurped power but that is another matter that I will not address today – the mandate requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to force their workforces to be vaccinated or face ruinous fines. On the other hand, the Court found in favor of the mandate directed at health care professions, stating that any medical facility that accepts federal Medicare and Medicaid dollars must require all employees to be vaccinated.
In his article “Supreme Court Delivers Schizophrenic Ruling,” Paul Craig Roberts noted, “What we have is the complete separation of the law from justice and the violation of the US Constitution that requires equal treatment under the law. The Justices have, again, delivered unequal treatment.”
I had meant to write this post last week, but, as they say, life got in the way. So here’s the belated version for you.
As do many, I find New Year’s a convenient time to stop and reflect on the year past and consider what may lie ahead.
In my case, I like to mention upfront that I’m thankful to the Lord God Almighty for the opportunity to write this blog during 2021. Before I begin each post, I pray that the Lord would grant me the grace to write truthfully, clearly, and in a way that glorifies His name and edifies his people. Moreover, November 2021 marked the seventh anniversary of my prayer to God asking him to help me write at least one blog post a week. By his grace I have kept this pace, posting at least one new item every week since then. Thanks be to God for giving me the strength to do this!
There are times as a writer when I really do wonder if I’m doing the Lord’s will or my own. Has God called me to do this work, or am I just kidding myself and rebelling against him? That he has honored my prayers for this blog, that people still seem to get something out of it, and that I continue to enjoy writing are big hints to me that, yes, I am doing what the Lord has called me to do.
[L]et it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.
– Daniel 3:18
The Book of Daniel records for us one of the most famous of all acts of civil disobedience, the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego to go along with King Nebuchadnezzar’s command to fall down and worship his golden image.
In like fashion today, Christians are being asked, ordered is more like it, to fall in line and worship a new golden image, this time in the form of mask mandates, social distancing, lockdowns, and forced vaccinations where one is given the choice, take the jab or lose your job.
Indeed, the vax fanatics are so filled with confidence and their own sense of moral superiority that they seem not to realize that the policy prescriptions they so ardently pursue sound as if they were lifted right out of Revelation 13. There we read the famous passage about the mark of the beast and the consequences for not taking it.
He [the beast] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name (Revelation 13:16-17).
NKJV
My point in citing this passage is not to argue that the Covid jabs, so beloved by authoritarians the world over, are the mark of the beast which John wrote about. But I do mean to suggest that at the very least, the maniacal effort on the part of Western governments – and that in the face of mounting, hard evidence that the jabs are both unsafe and ineffective – to force vaccinate their populations is most certainly an act that is of the same spirit as the mark of the beast described in Revelation.
Opponents of critical race theory attend a Loudoun County School Board meeting on June 22 in Ashburn. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
Across America, school boards have been losing the battle over Covid restrictions and Critical Race Theory to American parents.
Now they’re getting serious and calling in the heavy artillery.
At least that seems to be the case given the whiney, tattletale-style letter the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent to Joe Biden requesting help from the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the U.S. Secret Service and its National Threat Assessment Center, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
All this, because parents don’t like “education professionals” teaching their kids to hate them, their nation, and their entire civilization.
“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” reads the letter.
In other words, the NSBA thinks all the red-neck parents out there in fly-over country who oppose the brainwashing of their children should just shut up already. And if they don’t, they should be hit with charges of domestic terrorism and thrown in the clink right along with the J6 defendants and all the other deplorable types who deserve to be locked up.
That is to say, the NSBA wants to make disagreeing with school boards a federal offense, in much the same way as many would like to see Covid skeptics locked up who dare express disagreement with Anthony Fauci, the WHO, and Bill Gates.
Lest anyone suppose that I’m advocating an “anything goes” policy at school board meetings, that is not my point at all. As with any public meeting, there are rules of conduct that apply in school board sessions. If someone gets out of line, there are ways of dealing with that person, up to and including arrest if the occasion requires it. These situations can be handled by local law enforcement. But the NSBA wants to make a federal case out of it. Calling on the nuclear option of DOJ shows that the school boards’ main concern is not with ensuring Robert’s Rules of Order are followed. Surely a stern gavel, a security guard, or the local police can handle this. No. Something more sinister is at work here. It appears that the real goal of the school boards is to avoid altogether answering to parents, the very people who pay for the schools, for their appalling decisions on everything from pornographic curriculum, to transgender bathroom and locker room policies, to unscientific mask requirements for students. The goal is the criminalization of dissent from the progressive educratic party line.
“Our patience is wearing thin.” Joe Biden threatens Americans with job loss if they don’t take the Covid shot, September 9, 2021.
If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.
Proverbs 24:10
During what would prove to be a historic win for the University of Cincinnati football team, things got a bit wobbly for a while during the third quarter. Playing on the road at Notre Dame in South Bend Indiana, UC held a 17-0 lead in the second half. But then UC missed a makable field goal. Not long after, Notre Dame went on a touchdown drive and cut the lead to 17-7. Next, UC’s quarterback fumbled the ball. Notre Dame recovered and scored another touchdown. They missed the extra point, so UC’s lead stood at 17-13.
Now if you’re a fan of Cincinnati sports teams, this was the point where you started saying to yourself, “Here we go again.” Without going into all the boring and gory details of years of agony and frustration on the part of the local fan base, let’s just say people in this area are used to disappointment and heartbreak.
But when things were looking their bleakest and many of us were waiting for the Bearcats to find a way to choke, for some reason they didn’t. UC went on a touchdown drive making the score 24-13, and that’s how the game ended up.
I’d like to tell you I knew UC was going to win all along. But that would be a lie. I thought either they either were going to get blown out in some epic humiliating defeat or lose in agonizing fashion at the last second. But neither of those things happened.
UC, much to my shock, far from choking, actually won a huge victory. One that is certainly the biggest win in school’s football history, a history which dates back to 1885. One of the sort I never thought I’d see.
Now you may wonder why I’m starting a post about the present trials facing Christians here in America and around the world by referencing a college football game. After all, it’s just a football game. And football isn’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things.
Football isn’t a Christian enterprise. It’s a sport after all.
But if you think about it, there are a number of references to sports in the Bible. The Author of Hebrews wrote, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Paul wrote, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.” There are other verses along the same lines. So it’s not out of place to reference sports in the context of the Christian life.
In this case, there’s a message for Christians about persevering through adversity.
The U.S. is allowing many Afghan refugees to enter the U.S. without visas, relying on an immigration program known as humanitarian parole. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
“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
“In undertaking this work, I took cognizance of a significant social fact of our time; that, due to enormous financial implications, the phenomenon of emigration will find some relief only in the English -speaking countries. The vast influx of immigrants into Canada and Australia confirms that fact.”
Those are the words of Roman Catholic priest Giulivo Tessarolo, writing in the introduction of a book he edited titled Exsul Familia: The Church’s Magna Charta for Migrants.
As has been covered in the space before, Exsul Familia Nazarethana(EFN) is the 1952 Apostolic Constitution by Pope Pius XII in which he formally laid out the Roman Catholic Church State’s (RCCS) position on migration, immigration, and refugee resettlement. In short, the RCCS believes the more migration, the better.
Why does the RCCS take this stance?
Mass, taxpayer subsidized immigration, migration, and refugee resettlement is a powerful way for globalists – the RCCS is the oldest and premier globalist institution in the world – to destabilize individual nations, break down the Christian system of independent nation states established as a result of the Protestant victory over Rome in the Thirty Years’ War, and institute global government.
I chose to feature Tessarolo’s quote to start this post, because, unlike most statements by officials of the RCCS, Tessarolo’s clearly notes the enormous, implied cost to the receiving nations of the pope’s immigration plans.
In short, the popes of Rome want to destroy independent nation states, impose world government with Rome as the head, all while forcing the citizens of those targeted nations to subsidize their own dispossession. If anyone gets wise to the scheme and objects, Rome or one of its proxies simply denounces him as a “xenophobe” or a “racist” and that individual is either quickly brought to heel or is “cancelled” and driven out of polite society.
That’s a great deal for the occupants of the office of Antichrist. For Americans and citizens of other targeted nations, not so much.
The important point to take away from Tessarolo’s statement is that the RCCS views refugee resettlement as a cost to be dutifully born by the citizens of the receiving nations. In other words, your tax dollars are going to support he RCCS’s plans to destroy your nation.
Put still another way, refugee resettlement is a form of international welfare, the bill for which Antichrist plans to send to you.
Put still another way, refugee resettlement as currently practiced in America and around the world is a welfare racket.
In his classic book War is a Racket, retired US Marine General Smedley Butler wrote, “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to be to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group know what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many” (23).
Lux Lucet 