U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is seen Monday. The Democrat defeated Adam Laxalt, a Trump-backed Republican and former Nevada attorney general. The win means Democrats retain the U.S. Senate. Gregory Bull/AP
I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.
After a lot of hype about a big Republican showing in the Mid Terms, the results were less than overwhelming. It appears that the GOP will retake the House, so that’s something. But the Senate will remain in the Democrats’ hands. Further, none of the Covid lockdown governors were removed, as Gretchen Whitmer and Kathy Hochul both held on to their seats in Michigan and New York respectively. It appears as if voters in those and other states said, in effect, “lock us down harder next time!” A friend of mine relative to the result in Michigan commented, “Those people get what they deserve.”
If it was an honest vote, I couldn’t argue with that. Of course, there’s the district possibility that it was not an honest vote. But more on that below.
Queen Athaliah Orders The King’s Children to be Killed by Harmen Jansz Muller, Hadrianus Junius, and Gerard De Jode.
And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal.
II Kings 11:1
Today we continue our look at how Christians are to conduct themselves when they find themselves living, as we are here in America in 2022, under an evil and hostile government.
For most of us in America and in the West generally, the idea that we ever would find ourselves living under a government that actively hates us and seeks to harm us has seemed like a paranoid fantasy. Yet with the growing power of globalist organizations such as the Vatican, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the Bilderbergers, as well as individuals such as Bill Gates and George Soros, Americans, and citizens of other once free Western nations have found themselves living under governments that are actively and openly hostile to their political and economic liberties and even their very lives.
This state of affairs raises a number of questions for Christians. How is a Christian to respond when living under a hostile government? Does a Christian have a right to resist an evil government, or does he simply have to put up with whatever laws a rogue government enacts, however evil and destructive they are? If resistance is an option, who does the resisting? What actions constitute proper resistance if resistance can ever be considered proper?
Last week we considered the actions of a private citizen to resist the actions of evil, usurping Queen Athaliah by looking at Jehosheba, who took it upon herself to rescue the only remaining heir of the Davidic throne from the murderous queen, thus preserving the David dynasty. Had Jehosheba not stepped up and saved the infant Joash, there would have been no continuing line of David to sit on the throne of Judah and God’s promise would have been made void. One lesson we can take from this is that private citizens may resist the commands or the actions of a ruler when those actions are evil.
The basis for private citizens is clearly seen in Romans 13. There, we read that the civil magistrate is, “God’s minister to you for good.” If the civil magistrate is “God’s minister,” it is God who is sovereign, not the magistrate. This means that the magistrate’s power is delegated to him by God and does not originate with himself. As such, the civil magistrate is bound by the law of God just as is the private citizen. Rulers do not have a license to lie, cheat, steal, or murder any more than a private citizen does. But if this is the case, who can call the civil magistrate to account? Or to put the question slightly differently, is it ever appropriate to rebel against and forcibly remove from power an evil ruler? And if it is, who can rightfully do this?
The Scriptures rule out the idea of private citizens taking matters into their own hands. Christians are enjoined to pray for rulers so that they may live peaceable lives. Christians can rebuke evil rules for their evil deeds. Take for example John the Baptist’s rebuke of Philip for taking his brother’s wife. But leading a violent rebellion is not something Christians as private citizens are called to do. As further proof of this, we see examples in the Scriptures of men who assassinated evil kings – for example, those men who assassinated King Joash when he went rogue later in life – being treated like murderers.
So, is it ever appropriate for Christians to use physical violence to rebel against an evil ruler? Not for Christian private citizens. But it is appropriate for Christians who wield civil power to do so. In Protestant circles, this idea has historically been known as the doctrine of the lesser magistrate. In his book The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates: A Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government, Matthew Trewhella defines the doctrine of the lesser magistrate thus,
The lesser magistrate doctrine declares that when the superior or higher civil authority makes unjust/immoral laws or decrees, the lesser or lower ranking civil authority has both a right and duty to refuse obedience to that superior authority. If necessary, the lesser authorities even have the right and obligation to actively resist the superior authority (1).
Note well, as Trewhella has defined it, the doctrine of the lesser magistrate states that lower ranking civil authorities not only have the right to actively resist superior authorities, but when those superior authorities make unjust or immoral laws or decrees, they even have the duty to do so.
Let us now turn to the example of the faithful High Priest Jehoiada to see how his interposition helped to remove a wicked government and restore the God-ordained Davidic monarchy to Judah.
Queen Athaliah Orders The King’s Children to be Killed by Harmen Jansz Muller, Hadrianus Junius, and Gerard De Jode.
And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal.
“If their princes exceed their bounds, Madam, no doubt they may be resisted, even by power.” Those were John Knox’s words in response to Queen Mary when she queried him about the rights of subjects to resist their princes.
Was Knox right? I contend that he was. It is my contention that not only may an evil government be resisted, but it is in fact the duty of Christians to resist civil authorities when they, in Knox’s words, “exceed their bounds.”
Last week, we began our look at Christian resistance to an evil, usurping civil magistrate. Part of the answer given was what Christians should not do: engage in private rebellion. One example of sinful rebellion we looked at in the Word of God is found in II Kings 12:20 where we read that King Joash was murdered by two of his servants. When Joash’s son, Amaziah, came to power, he had the men responsible for the assassination of Joash put to death, and rightfully so.
But what is the positive duty of the Christian? If Christians are not to engage in private rebellion by assassinating a ruler, even if the ruler is unjust as was Joash in his later years as king, what are believers to do? We also explored that question last week in our discussion about the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate (DLM). The DLM tells us that when a higher authority becomes corrupt, it is the right, indeed it is the duty, for lesser civil authorities to interpose between the corrupt higher authority and the people. And not only do lesser magistrates have the right and duty to resist, but that right and duty extends up to and includes removing from office and, if the situation calls for it, executing the offending higher authority.
This week I’d like to look at one very clear example of this found in the books of II Kings and II Chronicles concerning the evil, usurping Queen Athaliah.
Although it is not the main purpose of this essay, it’s worth mentioning that the account of Queen Athaliah is an important text also for refuting feminism. Many today, including many Christians, have had their minds so twisted by 200-plus years of feminist dogma that they find it strange that anyone would oppose women serving as rulers of cities and nations. In fact, there a probably few ideas that can incite people to anger than to suggest that God has denied women the right to political leadership. But the thundering Scot John Knox was not so blinded and rightly argued against women rulers in his “First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” a work which this author considers among the greatest essays ever written by a Christian.
Tammany Hall as a ferocious tiger killing democracy by Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly.
“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
Last week brought with it a couple of major events, neither one of them good for America. In the first place, there was the passage of the comically, propagandistically names Inflation Reduction Act, an Act guaranteed to increase, not decrease inflation. Not to mention an Act that sics 87,000 new IRS agents on the American people – more specifically, it sics them on the middle class and small businesses that don’t have the legions of tax lawyers and accountants to fight back against the IRS – an Act that implements parts of the liberty destroying, World Economic Forum, Vatican approved Green New Deal, and an Act that manages to extend Obamacare subsidies passed as part of Covid relief.
In short, it’s another unconstitutional boondoggle that will do exactly the opposite of what it claims it will do.
Then there’s the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. Many writers have rightly compared this raid to the sort of thing one would expect in a banana republic. Given the disturbing trend of both the Democrats generally, and the Biden Regime in particular, to politicize justice, this raid must be seen as a continuation of their attempts to outlaw their political opponents.
One can find many articles in the mainstream and even alternate conservative and libertarian press denouncing both the Inflation Reduction Act and the raid on Mar-a-Lago. But none of them, in this writer’s opinion, get to the heart of the matter.
Jesuit-educated Nina Jankowicz (Masters from Georgetown University) has been tapped by the Biden Regime to head up the new Ministry of Truth, known formally as the Disinformation Governance Board.
When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.
Proverbs 29:2
“But clearly our entire principles of the country was founded on, you cannot have a Ministry of Truth in this country. And so let’s get real here. Let’s make sure that we’re doing things that benefit Floridians and Americans, but we’re not going to let Biden get away with this one. So, we’ll be fighting back.”
Those were the remarks of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis last week in response to the Biden Regime’s announcement of a new Ministry of Truth – the Disinformation Governance Board is the actual name for this new group that will fall under the umbrella of the equally Orwellian named Department of Homeland Security.
For years, many have warned Americans of the creeping police state in this nation, and the day for it has finally arrived. Actually, it’s been here for some time, but the fruits of the authoritarian mindset of our rulers have become much more manifest over the past two years.
Ohio senatorial candidate J.D. Vance shared tweeted out this screen shot from a recent NBC News broadcast. It would seem that if you question the liberty destroying Covid protocols demanded by the Democrats or think the 2020 presidential election was stolen, the Department of Homeland Security thinks you just may be a terror threat.
I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.
Psalm 18:3
“America is under sustained attack,” wrote Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar in a recent tweet.
In what way? you may ask.
The Rep. Gosar went on to site a few examples. “America is under sustained attack on its sovereignty with open borders, against its culture by race hustlers, against our public fisc [fisc meaning state treasury], and against our political/medical dissidents with a capricious legal system.”
The Congressman is right on all counts.
Worth noting is that Rep. Gosar’s tweet was in response to a tweet by Ronna McDaniel, Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who had tweeted out “The Republican Party stands with the people of Cuba fighting for freedom!”
Rep. Gosar finished his tweet writing, “For the love of everything holy Cuba can wait. Help America First.
Again, Paul Gosar is right on target.
The Democrats have openly become the party of treason and tyranny, while the Republicans uselessly tweet out about the goings on in other countries while ignoring the fire in our own house.
To borrow a turn of phrase from Isaiah, our cites are burned with fire (Antifa and BLM riots) while strangers devour our land before our face (Biden’s treasonous open borders polity, what some migrants call “la invitación”), yet all the Republican leadership can do is tweet out about demonstrations in Cuba. Apart from a few individuals – Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Thomas Massie, the afore mentioned Rep. Paul Gosar and some others – very few Republicans have taken any kind of public stand against the deliberate destruction of the United States of America by the treasonous, lying, illegitimate Biden regime, the Democratic Party, and Deep State technocrats such as the Jesuit Anthony Fauci.
America is under sustained attack to a degree and in a way that I personally have never witnessed. And I’d be less than honest with you were I to say that I’ve been unfazed by it. I’ve found myself alternately furious, despairing, and even scared.
In mid-August 2021, Americans are faced, not only with some of the items already mentioned, but by vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, renewed mask requirements and possible lockdowns, not to mention a War On Domestic Terror which is threatening to criminalize political opinions at odds with the ruling elite’s preferred narrative.
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.”
“We will not stand for any attacks against Judge Barrett’s faith,” said Donald Trump at the recent Al Smith Dinner. He told his hearers that “Judge Barrett is a “proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame [Our Lady] Law School,” and described attacks on her faith as “anti-Catholic bigotry.” The President went to state that our nation is strong, because of Catholics and people of all faiths.
Coming from the President, none of this is surprising or even particularly disappointing. Donald Trump is not himself a Christian, so it’s to be expected that he would not understand that the Roman Catholic Church-State, far from being a source of American strength, has worked for over 200 years to undermine our Protestant republic. Given the sorry state of America in 2020, it appears that Rome’s efforts have largely succeeded.
In truth, it was the Biblical, Protestant faith of the American colonists that would go on to shape the political institutions of the United States, which from its inception was a constitutional capitalist republic. “Constitutional capitalism,” as John Robbins correctly noted in Ecclesiastical Megalomania, “is a social consequence of the theology of the Reformers.” Contra President Trump, it was not “people of all faiths” that made America strong. To the degree “people of all faiths” follow the teachings of their religious traditions and reject what the Bible teaches about politics and economics – the politics of the Bible is limited, constitutional government; the economics of Scripture is free market capitalism – to that degree they are a source of weakness, not strength.
The Roman Catholic Church-State, as the largest religious organization in the United States, is the source of a great deal of anti-Christian political thought and action in this country. To say this is not, as the President states, “anti-Catholic” bigotry, but a necessary conclusion drawn from the study of Scripture.
In 1884, Presbyterian minister and Civil War veteran Dr. Samuel D. Burchard famously called the Democrats the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” He was right then, and he is right today. Indeed, the Democratic party has been one of the primary mechanisms Rome has used to advance its anti-Christian Social Teaching in the United States.
Given Rome’s deep philosophical opposition to our republican institutions, it would be foolish for any American Protestant to put aside his concerns about putting Roman Catholics in positions of political authority. This is not to say that a Roman Catholic magistrate cannot faithfully execute the American law, but Rome’s hostility to republican government and claims of ultimate political, religious and moral authority means that a Roman Catholic official will, of necessity, find himself constantly having to choose between two masters, the Constitution and the pope.
In last week’s post, we looked at this problem in some detail. This week let us look further at Amy Coney Barrett’s religious affiliation, this time with an ecumenical charismatic group called People of Praise.
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.
Lux Lucet 