Elizabeth Chasteen Day, organizing director for ACLU of Ohio, cheers during a gathering for supporters of Issue 1 at the Hyatt Regency in Columbus. Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch.
But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was no remedy.
2 Chronicles 36:16
A note to the reader…Before starting on this week’s post, I want to let you know that, Lord willing, I plan to pick up my recent series on “The Religious Wars of the 21st Century, and Update” starting next week. This weekend I was out of town and that played havoc with my usual writing schedule. And wanting to post something, I thought I’d offer my thoughts on Ohio’s much-commented-on election results from last Tuesday.
On Tuesday, November 7, Ohio voters shocked the nation by voting to add a very liberty abortion provision to the state’s constitution and passed a law legalizing the sale and taxation of marijuana. Commenting on the abortion vote, one article I saw had the headline “The Ohio Vote is Only the First Step in America’s Descent into the Valley of Death’s Shadow.”[1] To which I thought, “I’m not so sure.” Not to defend the vote or abortion generally. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is that it certainly isn’t the first step in America’s descent to destruction. The West in general, and America in particular, have been collapsing for well over a century. Tuesday’s vote was hardly the first step in our destruction. We’ve been taking such steps for my entire life, and I’m 57 years old. I was born in 1966 and America was even then in the throes of the sexual revolution and the hippie sex, drugs, and rock and roll culture. The Civil Rights Movement was destroying civil rights and feminism was on the rise.
The Wittenberg Church Door where Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses, October 31, 1517.
In two days, we will mark the 506th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door.
Luther wasn’t the first to push back on the theological and political abuses of the Roman Church-State. John Wycliffe in England had done so 150 or so years earlier. Jan Hus, another reformer, was murdered by the Church-State in 1415, just 102 years before Luther’s famous act.
Predating these men were the Waldenses, Italian Christians who left the Roman Church-State and built their own civilization in the valleys of the Alps. According to Wylie in his History of the Waldenses, “When their [the Waldenses] co-religionists on the plains entered within the pale of the Roman jurisdiction, they retired within the mountains, and spurning alike the tyrannical yoke and the corrupt tenets of the Church of the Seven Hills, they preserved in its purity and simplicity the faith their fathers had handed down to them.”[1]
As our nation, as the whole of the formerly Christian West, turns more and more away from its historic Protestant roots and more and more toward tyranny of various stripes, I cannot help but wonder if we twenty-first century Protestants will not have to follow in the footsteps of the Waldenses to escape what appears to be a coming wave of persecution in our own time.
Pope Francis stands on an altar facing the U.S. before celebrating Mass during a February 2016 trip to Juarez. The papal visit was one of the El Paso Times’ top stories of 2016. Robin Zielinski/Las Cruces Sun-News
In his book The Incarnation, Gordon Clark criticized the Council of Chalcedon for its failure to define the terms it used in the famous creed it produced. “Discard or define,” was Clark’s slogan.
John Robbins put the same thought this way, if you define your terms, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
So in the spirit of Gordon Clark and John Robbins, I’d like to take time to define the terms used in the title of this talk.
Antichrist
My definition of Antichrist is that which was accepted by nearly all Protestants before the 20th century. Antichrist is the office of the papacy. The original language of the Westminster Confession of Faith summed up this view quite nicely in Chapter 25.6. It reads, “There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense be head thereof: but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.” But this language was altered in the 1903 revision of the Confession by the Presbyterian Church USA to remove the language identifying the pope as “Antichrist,” “man of sin,” and “son of perdition.”
Two of the best Presbyterian theologians of the 20th century did not offer much in the way of objection to the removal of this language from the Confession. Writing in the November 28, 1936 issue of the “Presbyterian Guardian,” J. Gresham Machen commented that the edition of the Confession adopted by the Presbyterian Church of America[1] was the same as the doctrinal standards that existed in 1902, “except that two brief statements – one declaring the Pope to be Antichrist and the other declaring it to be sinful to refuse an oath when the civil magistrate requires it, are omitted.”[2]
B.B. Warfield noted in his article “The Confession of Faith as Revised in 1903” that “The motive of the revisers seems to have been to avoid calling the Pope of Rome ‘that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God” – which does seem rather strong language. Why the revisers wished to avoid applying these terms to the Pope of Rome we can only conjecture. But their avoidance of it need not imply that they – some or all of them – felt prepared to deny that the Pope of Rome is the Antichrist of Scripture.”[3] As do many Bible-believing Presbyterians, I count myself an admirer of B.B. Warfield, but these comments from him are disappointing. The most likely reason that the revisers excised the language identifying the Pope of Rome as Antichrist, man of sin, and son of perdition is the very one Warfield denies was their motive, that they – some or all of them – were prepared to deny that the Pope of Rome was the Antichrist of the Scriptures. The history of the American Presbyterian church since 1903 substantiates this reasoning, as even highly educated Presbyterians from that day to the present have become increasingly willing to deny that the Pope of Rome is the Antichrist of the Scriptures, something that was once clearly understood even by the plowboy with a Bible.
But what the revisers did by striking the Confession’s language about the identity of Antichrist was something far worse than merely sowing confusion about who Antichrist is. By denying that the Pope of Rome is the Antichrist, the revisers of the Confession also denied the entire Protestant system of prophetic interpretation known as historicism, of which system the identity of Antichrist as the papacy is a key component.[4]
It seems to this Presbyterian in the Year of Our Lord 2023 that the removal of the Confession’s language on the identity of Antichrist, while it may have appeared minor to observers at the time, opened the floodgates for the false Jesuit eschatologies of Preterism and Futurism – both of which deny a present Antichrist, instead placing him far in the past or at a time still to come – to come pouring into Protestant church, thus blinding, as it were, even the elect to the work of Antichrist taking place right in front of their noses.
One of these works, I argue in this paper, is the flooding of America with illegal aliens, many of them Roman Catholics, for the purpose of subverting our Protestant Republic, capturing the nation for Rome, and incorporating it into Rome’s planned system of world government.
And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.
I bring this up because Edward’s view of Scotland, at least as depicted in the movie, seems to have been adopted by every government, every university, and every institution of any power in the Western world.
Except for Viktor Orban in Hungary, I cannot think of a single head of state in the West that is not openly working for the destruction of his own people. It’s an amazing phenomenon to behold and one that demands an explanation.
In Canada, Justin Trudeau is at war with the Canadian people. The trouble with Canada is that it’s full of Canadians. The current occupant of the White House (I do not call him president) has openly and repeatedly expressed his disdain for a large swath of the American people. The trouble with America, in Jesuit Joe’s opinion, is that it’s full of Americans. The seed was sown for recent Islamic riots in France by the French government’s policy of importing millions of Muslims into the country over the past several decades, such that Muslims now make up about 10% of the French population. In Great Britain, the government’s decades-old immigration policy has reduced London’s white British population to minority status, while the government shows no interest in stopping the illegal alien invasion coming across the English Channel. In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government has attempted to destroy the nation’s farmers under the guise of fighting climate change. There are reports that Rutte’s government intended to take 3,000 farms and use the land to house migrant invaders. And speaking of Scotland, the new Scottish First Minister is a Muslim named Humza Yousaf. Imagine that. A Muslim ruling in the land of John Knox. Apparently, Scotland is no longer as full of Scots as it was in Edward’s day.
I could go on, but the pattern is clear. Western governments have abandoned the idea that they are the servants of the people and are instead attempting to destroy their own people.
A member of the Secret Service is seen in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on August 9, 2022. GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty Images
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
The United States of America is under an occupation government.
At the present, we have a government that is not of, by, or for the people. Rather, we have one that is of, by, and for the Deep Staters, the bansksters, the crony capitalists, the globalists, and the Vaticanites.
That Joe Biden is an illegitimate president ought to be clear to all. There are any number of ways to know that Biden was not legitimately elected by the American people and the Electoral College. Perhaps the easiest way to know the fix was in is to look at what happened when the Hunter Biden laptop story broke shortly before the 2020 vote.
The New York Post broke the story in October 2020, and immediately the Democratic/Deep State machine went to work to discredit it. The Deep State intelligence agencies went to work with a letter signed by 51 intelligence professionals saying that the story smacked of Russian disinformation. The New York Post had its Twitter account suspended and no reference to the “laptop from hell” was permitted on Facebook and probably any other major social media platform.
A year and a half later, whaddya know, all the major propaganda outlets – by this I mean the New York Times, The Washington Post, and others of their ilk – came out and finally acknowledged that the laptop is real.
Of course, it was real. That was obvious at the time. And we don’t need the lying mainstream news outlets to confirm this for us. But the fact that the Times and others lied to the public about the laptop until well after the election shows that the fix was in.
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.
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.
I’m really glad I’m not one of those people,” I thought to myself. The year was, I think, 1978 and I was 12 years old and in the 6th grade.
So what was it I was glad I wasn’t? Just who were those people?
Calvinists. Yes, the dreaded Calvinists
You see, I was reading my history textbook. You know, the kind of big, thick general history textbooks we used to have. The ones that started out talking about the Sumerians and ended somewhere around WWII.
This particular textbook had managed to find room for a paragraph or two on the Protestant Reformation. Part of me is tempted to blast the textbook writers for devoting one or two lousy paragraphs to the greatest Christian movement since the days of the apostles. But when I think about it, I shouldn’t be too harsh on them. After all, at least they mentioned the Reformation. I’m not sure if textbooks today would do even that. Further, the textbook writers managed to get at least one important detail right: the importance the Calvinists laid on of the doctrine of election.
It was the doctrine of election that offended me. It struck me as insufferable arrogant. To me, it sounded as if the Calvinists thought they were God’s chosen people because they were innately better than everyone else. Of course, that’s not what Calvinists taught then or teach now. But that was my assumption. Calvinists believed then and believe now that no one is worthy of God’s grace. That’s why it’s called grace! If sinners were in some way worthy of God’s grace, then grace would no longer be grace.
But I didn’t understand that then and wouldn’t until many years later.
I was a church kid growing up. Looking back on it, I believed many true things about God, but I didn’t know the Gospel of Justification by Faith (Belief) Alone.
One of the points I was confused on, and it’s a very common point of confusion in American evangelicalism, is the relationship between regeneration and faith.
In my 12-year-old self’s understanding, I thought that I first had to believe before I could be regenerated.
I’ll come back to this thought later, but for now, let’s leave it at that.
Martin Luther as Hercules Germanicus by Hans Holbein, 1523. “In the picture, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Duns Scotus and Nicholas of Lyra already lay bludgeoned to death at his feet and the German inquisitor, Jacob van Hoogstraaten was about to receive his fatal stroke. Suspended from a ring in Luther’s nose was the figure of Pope Leo X,” The Reformation Room.
Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
2 Corinthians 3:17
“Then the children of Israel…forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies” (Judges 2:11,13-14).
It’s often been noted that Israel under the judges went through a number of cycles of faith in the Word of God prosperity, followed by unbelief, leading to bondage to foreign powers, followed by repentance, and finally deliverance from oppression.
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this cycle is the close connection between belief and liberty, on one hand, and unbelief and oppression on the other. The passage just quoted from Judges is a good illustration of this principle.
Put another way, spiritual liberty, faith in the Lord, leads to political and economic liberty. Rejecting the Word of God produces slavery both political and economic.
Put still another way, spiritual liberty leads to political and economic liberty, spiritual bondage to political and economic bondage.
Not only did this pattern hold true in ancient Israel, it also holds true today. It was the widespread preaching of and belief in the Gospel of Justification by Faith Alone that spiritually freed the people of the nations to which the Reformation came from the bondage of sin and guilt. And those same nations were the very ones to become the freest states on earth politically as well as the most prosperous.
Martin Luther’s courageous rejection of – in the name of written revelation, logic, and freedom – of this faith-works religion laid the necessary theological foundation for the emergence of a free, humane, and civilized society from the ancient and medieval paganism of Christendom. The result was religious freedom and her daughters: political, civil, and economic freedom (38).
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. First spiritually, then in other ways politically and economically.
Lux Lucet 