Liberty vs. tyranny, and the supernatural

Paul of England writes:

I've been reading The Devil In History

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Devil-History-Communism-Twentieth/dp/0520239725

That's a book C put us onto last year. It's very good, quite academic in tone but not overly. What is very clear, and it comes through in the first pages, is that Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Ceausescu. (I suppose there are others) all of them owed everything to Lenin. Not merely the imagined ideological pretense but the legitimized violence for the defence and protection of the mystical body of the state. That whole Mao thing is replication. They embalmed Lenin, his body is still on display today. You can go to Red Square and have your own Bolshevik religious experience at the Lenin sarcophagus. That's what all these types do, become false (death) gods. What's interesting with all these types is their desperate need to create a Year Zero - Pol Pot could be added to the list. Death is just what they do.

There are a ton of youtube video's out there. some interesting old footage of Russia ...

Curiously and almost an aside, one theme I find especially interesting from that period of Russian history is the Former People. These Year zero concepts invent former people as a necessary means of legitimizing their existence.

I see it also in the effect of Modernism in art and poetry in 1912 - it so utterly wipes the slate that there are a bunch of people that are left with no relevance whatsoever. Victorian poetry for example, so flabby and sentimental and dead. It happens at lesser levels (think 70's prog rock after the Sex Pistols). It's a fascinating theme - I see parallels to this everywhere. This isn't to say that a former person is finished but culturally they are left with nowhere to go. Bougoureau would be a good example, in art. It took a 100 years for his work to surface and reconnect.

There's more to this than art and politics though. C Influence has that exact same effect. It took everything to get there and then none of what went before has any weight anymore, the whole force and purpose changes The Contact is transcedent. I think of Bunyan's Christian leaving the village. He is already regenerated and no more of the village.

Former people caught out by the devil's force in the world Vs former people who left the world (if still in it) to fight for His Glory. We are all former people.

I respond:

And remember why this subject is so interesting. It's because in this fallen world it's easier to see the supernatural when it manifests as evil than to see the supernatural when it manifests as good. And we crave to see the supernatural. We want to know what's beyond and that there is a beyond.

An example of seeing the supernatural manifest as good is when a person truly gets saved supernaturally from an accident. If you've been there you've been there. If your particular case is imagination then so be it. Not everybody's is.

Also just getting saved as in salvation. Regeneration is a supernatural act of God effected by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.

But anyway...

Another thing I thought of reading your email is this: The Book of Revelation tells us there is a false trinity that counterfeits the real Trinity. The Dragon (Devil), the Beast, and the False Prophet.

You mentioned how all these totalitarian movements invoked the name of Lenin. Lenin is the Dragon behind it all. He represents the Devil on earth in this case. The Beast is all the totalitarian collectivist states with their soul-killing machinery of tyranny, ultimately existing to provide human suffering and human death to feed as sacrifice to the Kingdom of Satan. And the False Prophet(s) are the Stalins, the Hitlers (who learned his game from Marxists), the Maos, the Pol Pots, the Castros, and all the wannabees.

Vern Poythress' the Returning King is very good on these things, counterfeit and so forth:

http://www.frame-poythress.org/ebooks/the-returning-king/

That page is the HTML book in full, but I downloaded the page and sent it to my Kindle and lo and behold it reads and is formatted just like a book. Only illustrations and links link back to the web page. - C.

And, a further note:

Also, this subject is the subject of liberty vs. tyranny, and it is foundational. For understanding and discernment, but also...

If you have *any* trace of sympathy for the Devil left in you *it will show in your politics* (even if you have long ago accepted orthodox - Apostolic/Reformation era - biblical teaching). *And*: if you are still prone to fear the world more than God (easy to do for any of us granted) it too will show in your politics.

Not saying everybody has to have the same political opinion to a 't', but you can see the general outline here.

This is just another subject your email made me think of... - C.

In the spiritual realm

I know it's Christmas, but to me it just means the stores are all closed.

I keep thinking about (it keeps coming to mind) how we are all in various schools and circles in the spiritual world and how that manifests here under the sun, so to speak.

It could explain the bizarre reaction I get (from the very beginning) when I'd appear on a Christian forum or blog or similar environment. I'd just have to say "Hi" and I'd get "What are you doing here!! Get away from us!! Ahhh!!!"

Like it would be like an Aborigine in full tribal get up shows up at the most white neighborhood, the most white family in Australia for Christmas dinner. Just out of nowhere.

And I think it is that way in the spiritual world because people settle into these schools and circles and they attain a degree of peace and comfort from the dangers around them, and when something threatens to throw that out-of-balance you see the kind of reaction I've seen.

And this speaks to development of being as a real thing. My history, my experience, has brought me to where I am, in terms of being. I know I am different from other Christians. They obviously sense it too. And it's real. I can't complain when they freak out or refuse to interact. It's actually normal.

And what makes it more difficult for them is I scare them because I don't seem to be attached to anything they recognize as a school or circle. Like Odysseus scared one of his hosts because it seemed like the gods were against him, partly because he was alone.

We can all situate ourselves within this scenario.

So I have to see that my school is not church level Christianity, but order level. It is what I've been presented with, and it is what I've set out upon. With some success. If you then leave your first love, as Revelation puts it, you need to return to it or you are really nowhere. Odysseus had to return to that upper chamber where Penelope awaited.

Where I am at in the spiritual realm calls on me to be saturated with the word of God (something I've done with the complete readings); active on the battlefield with real, awake, discernment; in the full armor of God (doctrine at its most on-the-mark essence); with God and the Host of Heaven for my protection. I don't have the comfort of a group, or circle of protection (and obviously don't want it, with its limitations).

To the others, in the other various schools and circles in the spiritual realm, I may look pathetic, or alone, or despised of God, or just strange, or dangerous, but it is really just that separation that is between the [here I'm editing out special terminology] common, worldly level of man and the uncommon higher level. The in-between level is looking both ways, which causes much of this confusion and disorder.

Roland de Lassus Psalmi Davidis Poenitentiales

Disc 1
http://youtu.be/40eoPAVTYc4

Disc 2
http://youtu.be/ffd5zv2R-ag

If you listen to this work complete you will come across very remarkable passages. Overall as well it is very special. Youtube is a goldmine for polyphony. It would be very expensive to explore polyphony by buying CDs. I did it back before the internet, but so much is now on YouTube. This one is special and worth owning.

My energy is not right for the churchians

This comment I wrote was deemed not worthy of being on a Calvinist blog thread:

A lot of cults and heterodox groups are feeling their strength currently. Atheists as well. Homosexuals. Socialists. Hedonists. The spirit of disobedience (the Spirit of Satan) is putting a strong wind in all their respective sails. Not surprisingly they are all sailing in the same direction as well.

Maybe they didn't get the metaphor (or something), but more likely their churchian sensibilities can't take that much going against the world in their precious churchian environment. The person is an ally of James White, by the way.

James White, burned like Eck in Protestant fashion

"The modern love for manuscripts was no part of the history [of Christianity down through the ages]. Mss. were not the object of devotion. Mss. were not looked upon as "treasure," "blessing to the church," etc. This is the language of modern empiricism. When one hears this language come from a speaker one should immediately recognise a departure from true Protestantism.

The text underlying the AV is the reformation text. The translators did not consult "mss." in the sense the word is used of Sinaiticus. The "treasure" is the Word; the revelation of God's will and its preservation is the "blessing to the church." Protestants recognised that this treasure and blessing was to be found uncorrupted in the text which had passed down to them."

- Rev. Matthew Winzer
Australian Free Church,
Victoria, Australia

This is a powerful rebuke that I had not seen nor thought of before. The context of this statement is statements made by James White in his debate with Chris Pinto. White began to waft poetic about how Sinaiticus was a treasure and blessing to the Church and so on. Mr. Winzer has identified White's (and all supporters of the Critical Text industry and their bibles) foundational approach. White undoubtedly has said similar things in the past yet has never been exposed on it. He's exposed now. Look for him to incorporate a Satanic defense for it in the future, pretending self-awareness all the while as to what he was doing in expressing such things in such a way. "The language of modern empiricism" indeed. James White, burned like Eck in Protestant fashion. Not on a stake, but on his own worldly presuppositions.

* * * * * * *

Somebody questioned Winzer on Christians not seeing manuscripts as treasure: "[W]hy do you say they didn't see Mss as a "treasure"? Witness Calvin for example who many times refers to "older" and "better" manuscripts." (The person who wrote this question, by the way, missed the entire point of Winzer's previous post, which unfortunately is par for the course in these discussions. I.e. the King Rats of the Critical Text industry rely on their vast army of useful idiots to run interference when necessary.)

Winzer responded: "I see where Calvin refers to mss. as witnessing to the reliability of a reading. I do not see where he speaks of mss. themselves as being God's blessing and gift to the church. This kind of language is a part of the infatuation which develops with archaeological discoveries and an over-appreciation for material evidence. Calvin fought a good fight against relic-worship. I doubt seriously that he would have contributed towards another form of it."

(Also, one of the foundational points that Winzer himself introduced to that Puritanboard forum which gets lost constantly is there is a difference between editing a received stream of similar manuscripts vs. *constructing* a new manuscript from divergent sources. The Critical Text industry which White champions is engaged in doing the latter. The Reformation did the former.)

Another major point in all this is this is nothing less than the Counter-Reformation all over again. The main battle thrust of the Romanist Counter-Reformation against the Reformation was to introduce various manuscripts and Bible versions with different readings with the sole purpose of attempting to get Protestants to lose faith in an inerrant and God-preserved word of God and thus to then give their 'faith' back to men and the word of man which would be the Pope and Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.

They talk slow for us because we're stupid

Why are there so many Christians on the internet who write things like this?

Sample paragraphs: "The reason why this debate is an important one is that it challenges a prevailing stream of consciousness regrettably found among many believers these days. Pinto, and similar individuals like him, have taught numerous, undiscerning Christians to live spiritual lives that are, for lack of a better term, conspiratorially driven.

They are being told that church history has been largely shaped by sinister, dark forces that lurk in the shadows. Whether they be the Illuminati, Jesuits, or whatever, those forces ceaselessly toil to disrupt God’s purposes and the lives of Christians everywhere. If Christians are just only made aware of those forces and the evil they attempt to perpetrate and learn to identify and avoid them, why the church in America would be in much better spiritual health."

The writer of the above words comes across as a juvenile intellectual who is merely masturbating his vanity by talking down to Christians like he is talking to five year olds. This really is the common element in these types. You see it in Michael Horton, in James White, in the John MacArthurites like this blogger, it's all over the internet.

One gets the sense that none of these individuals are fully developed adults. Certainly not fully developed Christians. One gets the sense that these people have never been against the world. They've never gone against the easy current of the world. They've always been going *with* the easy current of the world. They've never had to engage in spiritual warfare because they've never been on the spiritual battlefield. These people are pure examples of churchians.

Listen to the White Horse Inn. They talk to their audience as if it is an audience of Kindergarteners. And they get so much obvious pleasure in doing so. Listen to the silly MacArthurites (silly for among other reasons their Mormonish Dispensationalism that they have no clue MacArthur clings to because he's published 500 books and is too invested in it to come off it), they all have the same juvenile, half-angry, belittling attitude with a quick finger to ban and delete anybody who calls them on it. A very smug sense of being secure in the world and with attendant numbers to go along with that.

What does the Bible say about having numbers on your side? You don't need them. For battle anyway. Yet the churchians need them because to do what they do which is to mock and giggle and yank chains and engage in fallacious rhetoric and propaganda (they love to accompany their posts with mocking graphics) they have to have the world on their side. They need the world on their side to do it as smugly and easily and with the degree of juvenile pleasure as they do it with.

The Person of the Holy Spirit as Comforter

Simon of Australia sayeth:

God there's heaps of death around me at the moment. Parents of close friends mainly, and relatives. The stakes feel high.

Your time is limited. I feel the actual active holy spirit though - you dont die alone, he comes to collect you.

I respondeth:

At times over the last six months or so I've made efforts to study the Holy Spirit. The *Person* of the Holy Spirit. Just now I thought about how Jesus called Him the Comforter. This tells me when we do have those thoughts of what happens at death it is the Holy Spirit we should think of (which is what you bring up in your email). After all, the Holy Spirit is *in us.* Once regenerated, when we die we die with the Holy Spirit - God - in us. And it was the Holy Spirit that was with Jesus (Jesus as a human man) when He rose from death. I think the more we come into consciousness of the *Person* of the Holy Spirit (not a force or energy, but an actual Person like Jesus or God the Father) the more we develop overall. - C.

Dance of the ......

This is some of the evil angels as they danced above the old Soviet Union amidst the smoke of the offerings of human suffering and death coming up from below:

http://youtu.be/DUmq1cpcglQ

Puritanboard, use some discernment in the battle

Update: In internet forum world the most successful trolls are document dump trolls...because: Nobody got time for that.

Clue to the Puritanboard, the brickwall named 'Logan' is being fed notes from Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you debate 'Logan' you are debating them, and you see how sold out to the Devil the Critical Text side is. When people refuse to concede a single point in a debate on such a diverse topic they are defending the indefensible.

Six ways liberal theologians interpret the Bible in an unorthodox way

Here are six ways liberal theologians interpret the Bible in an unorthodox way:

1. They deny the supernatural.

2. They maximize emphasis on the human authors of Scripture while playing down or denying an overall divine Author.

3. They read Scripture solely as a natural man would encounter it and deny any role of the Holy Spirit or regeneration (having eyes to see, ears to hear) playing a necessary part in it.

4. They atomize (fragment) the various books and parts of the Bible and deny any unified nature of the entirety of Scripture.

5. They treat the Bible as any other human document, looking down on it rather than looking up to it (with the corollary of demanding it have only the authority of man - scholars - in it rather than the authority of God).

6. They deny the Bible can be understood in any propositional way and instead propose that it's really about how the reader responds in the reader's unique way to what he encounters in Scripture (this is all fuzzy and has different theories attached to it).

[Some of these taken from Nathan Pitchford's The Reformers' Hermeneutic: Grammatical, Historical, and Christ-Centered; which can be found in this collection.]

Real Armor of God

When you're talking to a real Christian you are talking to a Christian who wants the real armor of God. So whatever you say means nothing if it doesn't come up to that standard. That angers the church level. It angers the seminary graduates. It angers the false teachers, whether they be ignorant or consciously malevolent.

Biblical doctrine is armor of God. It effects you internally. When you are able to see it (hard core, unwatered down, unnegotiated down to the demands of our fallen nature biblical doctrine) again, when you are able to see it, and accept it, and value it, it effects you internally.

I've been naked on the spiritual battlefield. I know what that is like. I've also been in the full armor of God on the spiritual battlefield. I know what that is like. Once aware of the difference I accept nothing less than the full, real armor of God.

Nothing you can say from the church or seminary or false teaching level will have any effect on me. There's no shaming, or mocking, or fooling that will have effect. If you say to a soldier, here, take this cardboard rifle. Go ahead. It's less of a burden to carry. What do you think the soldier will say to you? He'll say, on the battlefield I need a real rifle, not a fake one. No, I don't want your fake rifle. I don't care if it is less of a burden to me. It is useless to me, and more than that it can get me killed.

A real Christian has the same response. It's simply a practical response to the real situation we are in. We are regenerate. We have the Holy Spirit in us. The Devil, the world, our own inner fallen nature, recognize this and notice us. They confront us. Do battle with us. We need and demand the real armor of God. And our merciful God in His grace makes it available to us.