Email thread on spiritual insight from historical works

Simon of Australia writes:

I've actually been getting the message to read Decline and Fall [Gibbon] again. Yes - ALL OF IT. I can make it my project at work because I get a nice long hour to sit in our cafe for lunch, so that's 5 solid hours a day if I commit.


Its those kind of times where you need Decline and Fall, and the Bible obviously.

I respond:

Also, the history of the Roman *Republic* era is relevant to our times. Gibbon doesn't cover that. That Arthur Gilman book I talked about is a quick overview. Oliver Goldsmith wrote a history of Rome that is also free on Amazon Kindle. Mommsen's famous history is on the republic. The late Roman republic era is not all that different from the empire era events Gibbon describes though. Worth having the full picture though.

Spiritually, Puritan types read Gibbon for end time history insights. They were Historicists regarding the book of Revelation, but even if you don't hold to that school the fact that history repeats (or rhymes) makes Gibbon uniquely relevant for this purpose. Meaning, Gibbon shows the spiritual pageant better than other historians. - C.

Simon of Australia responds:

I started in earnest today. It's good to get back to - the quality of it....

I respond:

I didn't want to mention it because it might seem like competition, but I've started Gibbon and am in chapter 14 currently. I paused though to read that Arthur Gilman book on the Roman republic. Years ago I read the first 12 chapters of Gibbon. I just re-read them and now am in chapters new to me. I'm also spot reading de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. It has spiritual realm insight qualities too. Almost like you can see descriptions of types as they are in the spiritual realm. His description of 'Negroes' (old term) and Indians is like that. How they differ. Hard to describe quickly. - C.

THEOCAST: boys drinking deep at the hose of Michael Horton

Just became aware of a Reformed podcast. It's called Theocast. Their main concern seems to be Christians making efforts to develop in the faith. They think this is not only stupid but dangerous. It's dangerous to make efforts. This means Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progess is dangerous and stupid because Christian makes efforts on the Way to the Celestial City. These Theocast boys apparently think Christian is supposed to ride a magic carpet called Faith along the Way to the Celestial City.

"Faith, bypass Vanity Fair. Keep on the Way. Good, faith, good," the Theocast boys obediently say. (Giving their obedience to Michael "You don't do anything! the faith is 100% objective!" Horton, ultimately, and not the Bible.)

Meanwhile, Christian struggles through Vanity Fair, catching all manner of shit from the world, but developing, being tempered, in the process. While the Theocast boys ride their magic carpet, Faith, on down the Way to the Celestial City.

What is the difference between Christian and the Theocast boys? The Theocast boys are shallow and inexperienced and not tempered to any degree.

Their deeper problem is they don't understand how to talk about sin or will. They've never been taught a language that would make that clear to them. They've been to 'seminary', but they've never acquired understanding of what the Bible teaches.

There's also a side issue here where all these types seem to have issued out of churches and church experience where they were told if they didn't have a buzz cut and drink Pepsi from an actual bottle while wearing short-sleaved, button-up white shirts they would go to hell. So because those non-biblical requirements were put on them they are now rebelling against all that by saying you don't do anything when you are a Christian. Do they understand regeneration? Who knows. Once regenerated you are able to make efforts. Prior to regeneration you are able to sin, unable to not sin. After regeneration you are able to sin, able to not sin. See the difference there?

And they struggle with a lack of understanding of will. They don't know the categories of will such as self-will vs. God's will. Acting from God's will doesn't mean you don't make any effort. It's God-enabled effort, yet it's effort none-the-less. I forget the exact J. I. Packer phrase he used in the chapter on Sanctification in his Concise Theology, but I think it was God-enabled effort. It's probably a better phrase than that, but I don't have the book at hand.

For instance, in the midst of a difficult event (when normally, in your fallen state, you would explode in resentment) to act from God's will will seem like a type of non-action, yet it is effort never-the-less. To be able in the moment, a difficult moment, a storm of a moment, to gather yourself, separate yourself from the immediate external noise and inner chaos, and just simply wait, wait on the Lord is the phrase. But just to have it in you to be able to step back and not be captured by the world and the noise and the violence and idiocy and whatever is going on...THAT, that is ability to act from God's will. It is NOT an ability given to you at your ritual water baptism, Theocast boys. You anti-pilgrims. You have to work on it, develop it, cultivate it, think about it, practice it, DO it.

Stop listening to Horton and R. Scott Clark. They are shallow. Get your basic Reformed doctrine from the Puritans (yes, they exist). Seminaries in general don't teach the practice of the faith. And if they - or you - dissuade Christians from making any effort to practice the faith they - and you - become demons.

Jesus said be awake (that takes development, practice, effort), and love your enemies (again, something that requires practice and experience...effort).

Paul said now it is high time to awake out of sleep. He is not referring to head-on-pillow sleep. The sleep he refers to requires effort to get out of. To be more awake in the moment requires effort. To act from God's word rather than from life influences requires effort.

Final note: maybe stop lecturing until you know what you're talking about.

James White steps outside his safe space and gets exposed

This is why James White always carefully selects who he will and won't debate. Normally he would avoid Robert Spencer like the plague, but White is currently in a bit of a maelstrom, and he's trying to repair and protect his reputation for being an all-knowing, triumphalist debater guy rather than a dupe, useful idiot, simpleton who eats whatever a practiced Muslim apologist puts in his mouth.

Notice in the clips above that White gets schooled on basic facts he was ignorant of (that Jihad is offensive or defensive and what that difference means, for instance) then reacts by going into his high school level sophist mode? Obviously this tells you what White is all about, but it also tells you what his followers and defenders are all about. Some of those defenders surely can see what White is engaging in in these moments, so maybe his defenders see White's entire career as an exercise in some kind of subterfuge and they have chosen to be in on it. Otherwise they all are just ignorant and dishonest like White. The latter is probably what is going on.

Never discount common ignorance in the phenomena you see going on all around you.

One note: why is David Wood always silent on these matters? He is a colleague of Robert Spencer, he advertised this debate on his social media, yet he never weighs in on James White. Why is there this silence regarding White from other Christian leaders, teachers, personalities? I suppose it's the natural reluctance people have of critiquing someone they suspect has a mental illness? Something is going on...

An email, about cultural Marxism hitting you between the eyes

Just discovered this person's YouTube channel. A couple of example videos linked below. The first is 28 mins., but very fast, and the second is a follow up video that is 3 mins.

The subject is cultural Marxism. We all know about this by now, but having it hit you between the eyes in a documentary like this is valuable. One thing this doc does is it simplifies the influences behind cultural Marxism. Satan tactically portrays himself as a myriad of fragmented things with different names, so that we don't see the one influence behind the curtain. The only thing this doc is missing is the Christian understanding that these evil ideas get their strange propagation and power to influence everything from the supernatural spirit of Satan. At the end of the first link he asks, how did these evil mediocrities and their ideas get so much influence? He couldn't answer it. Christians know. Though the person speaking in the video may be a Christian for all I know. He doesn't mention Christianity though. This is spiritual warfare.

First one here.

Second one here.


- C.

Imagine the pearl clutching when Jesus starts killing

The nevertrumpers at National Review Online, godless moralists all, are predictably upset about an English dude running over holy Muslim people of God, er, Allah, er, Satan. They used the analogy of the protests at the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Ceasar. Those were wrong too. Here's a comment someone left:

Re : the SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK business. WHY oh why do I know that NR and Country Clubbers were in the audience shocked SHOCKED that the great unwashed had DARED to go past the NO DOGS AND PEASANTS sign out front and disrupted THEIR evening on the town with the "right sort". Oh Reginald show the riff raff out the service entrance this minute!! This is why trump won.

Something about Law and Gospel theology has missed

There is a big area theologians have missed regarding the Law and the Gospel having to do with how human beings (en masse) enforce a twisted, distorted, upside-down version of the Law on other human beings (individuals, for the most part).

Luther touched on it, but I've lost the quote. I wrote something on it, but I can't find it. When I say Luther touched on it I mean just that, touched - merely touched - on it. Perhaps not even knowing where he was going with it or understanding it.

It's about the Law as a mass face or influence that blankets everything. It becomes more noticeable when it emerges as movements such a political-correctness or the demonic indulgence in smug self-righteousness and being holier-than-thou. Godless puritans is a phrase that gets at it, though unfortunately that keeps alive shallow and wrong popular notions of what the Puritans were all about. Godless moralism is probably better. It always includes a sense of entitlement. A shout of this is our time, our world, you listen to us, you are evil, you aren't holy like us. Conform to our demands or we destroy you.

There is an unspoken (and unconscious) claim of sinlessness on the part of the moralists. Black Lives Matter could just as well be re-titled Black People Without Sin. Social Justice Warriors are Young People Without Sin.

And this force of upside-down, distorted, twisted Law is meant (by Satan) to crush all into a totalitarian conformity and tyranny. A dead soul state of existence.

This is seeing the Law as a curse, though a more mystical, if you will, aspect of its curse. A curse as force that blankets and strangles and threatens and menaces. The Gospel frees us from this dark, dense, blanketing-like force (and from being an obnoxious, dead-in-sin unaware active part of it as well).

The Gospel frees us from being unconscious of it and a victim of it in the sense of it being an inherent part of our being, but the Gospel doesn't free us from the obnoxious action of it. If anything our new state as regenerated believers makes us more of a noticeable target of this Satanic counterfeit force.

Christianity is not about being 'good', it's about being awakened and making contact.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

The Law of God infiltrates everything, and not just as a positive example. The fact of Law itself (for instance as the necessary thing that makes sin a real thing) exists and manifests through humanity as an unconscious mass force. Fallen humanity co-opts the existence of the Law and distorts it, mostly actually turns it upside-down, and enforces it as a group demand on all individual humans; demanding their conformity to the group and destroying any rogue cells, if you will.

Once a person begins to awaken and then is actually regenerated by the word and the Spirit they are then in full conflict with this Law. Intense friction commences. The easy route is to give in and go with the easy current of the Devil, naively as a self-perceived silent noncombatant thinking they're not a part of the evil but that they're just being common-sense and realistic. Going along to get along.

Yet this friction is valuable to a real Christian on the Way. It is this friction that provides the necessary heat to develop and temper the New Man within the regenerated Christian.

When this friction is met with Be Awake and Love Your Enemy (to paraphrase our Savior's two great commandments); replacing all sleepy - and fierce - resentment with awakened gratitude (not an easy thing at all) then the Christian develops. Conscious labor, intentional suffering in the face of the friction from this odious, massive, all-pervading distorted Law that manifests through all humanity.

[All posts on esoteric elements of the Law that theology has missed are here.]

Some things you can't understand without theology

Comments under a Victor Davis Hanson article:

PV
The only themes VDH seems to not want to touch on are: the nationalism vs. globalism theme which is at the foundation of the nevertrump whining; and also the fact that this is spiritual warfare, and Trump is the Christian in the arena surrounded by Satanists and asinine moralists. (I won't mention the Washington, D.C. pedophile rings as a sub motive in a lot of the nevertrump noise.)



Bill Kenny
This is satire, right?



Charles Stewart Jr.
Globalists are satanically created evil 1-worlders waiting for the arrival of the Anti-Christ.

Nationalists were God created by the Tower of Babel that sent like-speakers to settle all the parts of the world. There they developed localized languages and DNA [due to climate and leader dominance] and then the Tribes grew into Nations.

Je comprende vous?




Kristana Arp
This has got to be satire. If not, I despair for Americans' mental state.



PV
Whether he (Charles Stewart Jr.) meant it as satire or not it is true. God put people within borders with their own languages. The Devil wants no borders and everyone mixed and at each other's throats to facilitate world tyranny. In the very end times Satan and his spiritual children assert dominion over the entire planet. Satan is unbound and able to deceive the nations, which he couldn't before. Christians are to confront the Devil and never acquiesce. In this process God's elect are called out and tempered.

Submit to your church leaders, you sheep!!

This is from an article by some seminary doofus named Julius J. Kim.

I know somebody who gets a lot from the R. C. Sproul website this article was posted at, so I want to say I am not slamming R. C. Sproul. I've read numerous books written by him.

But look at this:

Submission to Leaders

Being a member of the church includes receiving the blessings God has provided for our growth and maturity, especially as we submit to the church’s leadership. God established the church with a structure for pastoral oversight and spiritual leadership. Like weak and defenseless sheep, members of the church are blessed to have the guidance and protection of shepherds. Hebrews 13:17 calls on Christians to “obey your leaders and submit to them.” Why? “For they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” The pastors and elders of a church are called to care for the “flock” of God as they follow the pattern set by Christ, the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:1–5).

As leaders under the authority of Christ and the Scriptures, pastors and elders are called upon to promote the marks of a true church: the faithful preaching of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the true exercise of discipline. Through this, members of the church receive the grace of God in Christ.

Why don't these church leaders submit to me? What's the difference? I'm human, and I'm also not the one Mediator between God and man, just like they aren't. Also, I have the word of God too. In many forms. On many gadgets, and in beautifully bound leather.

He quoted Hebrews like a Romanist. They always leave out this: Heb 13:7 Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.
Heb 13:8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
Heb 13:9 Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines.

They had the word of God. Which was a rare possession back then. Not so rare today. Oh, but, you say they have seminary educations? Which seminary? Oh, a conservative, orthodox one? Like Westminster Theological Seminary? Good, solid Reformed seminary, right? That employed Peter Enns for twenty years (who is pretty much the equivalent of a doctrinal blood drinker, and always has been)? Good discernment, conservative, orthodox seminary. Not to mention employing Norman Shepherd. God knows who else they've employed or still employ. These are professors, folks. The very people who teach these benighted seminary graduates.

(Look at the recent, actually ongoing, case of Pastor James White. He recently sat on a stage with a Muslim jihadi saying in a puppy dog, beta cuck tone: "You are my mentor, sir. What you teach me I follow." This is a 'church leader.' One would be better off submitting to his dog, if he has one.)

This comes down to how God sees Christians vs. how Satan wants Christians to be. God makes his elect prophets, priests, and kings. Satan takes the sheep metaphor and runs with it to the point of saying: "In the nursery for life, sheep! You eternal milk drinkers! It's not for you to become lions of the faith, or so-called prophets, priests, and kings. Who are you? Submit to my carefully selected church leaders. I, Satan, am a very skilled gatekeeper. My selected leaders will keep you safe. Don't worry. And don't get uppity. And don't read those Bibles either. Let my, ahem, I mean your church leaders read it for you. They'll spend a full hour on half a verse, just like I tell them to. But you're too stupid to catch on even though I tell you this. See you in hell for eternity, sheep."

A rule for living in end times

The end times get into final stage when Satan asserts dominion over the entire planet. Clearly that has been happening since the early 20th century with Marxism and arguably even more so now with Islam operating on top of an entrenched layer of cultural Marxism.

The Devil's two biggest fronts in these latter days have been Marxism and Islam. Islam always, of course, but with the current reawakening of the massive evil that is Islam it takes on the role of being the army of Satan in his putsch to attain dominion over areas of the earth God didn't give him access to prior.

Marxism is the power of the 'air', the universe of discourse, where evil ideas get propagated with lightning speed because they have Satan's power behind them. Marxism does not have to be bloody revolution, but can merely be things like Critical Theory, able to defile institutions and minds and cultures and civilization itself. Cultural Marxism.

How are God's elect to act in these times? How are God's elect to see all this in the light of Scripture?

As one of God's elect the way to see all this is: it may very well be decreed by God, in His plan, that Satan has these victories all the way to the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Yet the Bible tells us to confront the Devil. It doesn't tell us to acquiesce to the Devil's (and his children's) putsch on the entire planet.

This is how to see it: we confront the Devil at every step, and in the process of doing that the already called out elect both temper ourselves in the battle, and - in the demonstration of that battle - call out the rest of God's elect.

Any Christian leader or educator who tells you to acquiesce to Satan's advance all around us is either duped, weak, or demonic.

Neocons

I, like a lot of people, am shaking my head that I ever fell for the neocon ruse. As someone said recently, though, the neocons fooled everybody; they crafted their lies well, and they hid their motives well. It didn't help that their most aggressive critics were know-nothing leftists who snarled at neocons while supporting the same thing on the left side of the uniparty.

In fact, all 'schools' of foreign policy in Washington were really the same thing. Like good Marxists they took the real choice off the table, which was the traditional foreign policy of the Founding Fathers.

Here's a good, non-mainstream article on what neocon/neoliberal mean.

David Goldman (who goes by Spengler at times) is always fun to read when he's talking about his old neocon buddies. He left the movement long ago. In the linked article he demonstrates why Trump is a force for good and what he's up against.

While you're at it go through this page with all its useful links. If you have a knee-jerk dislike or hatred for Trump try to see how that is very shallow (and wicked if you are at all conscious of what he is going against). Many Christians, not street level but seminary educated (which means unknowingly addled by cultural Marxism), took a negative approach to Trump not realizing they were fully on the side of the Devil in doing that.

Islam again kills women and children...James White gets angry at Christians

[Update: James White has run for the tall grass. He was challenged to debate a former Muslim on these issues and on White's recent behavior, and White has refused. White always runs when confronted. He embodies the worst of modern Christian leaders and educators. He's shallow, but he also seems to take pleasure in seeing the Devil have victories in this world, in these end times. A sign of a lack of regeneration, among many other signs...]

Once again, just after another bout of heroic woman stabbing and child massacring James White doesn't disappoint in his refusal or inability to acknowledge that the 's' in Islam stands for Satan.

Like 99% of pastors in America James White is a beta cuck unconsciously brain-addled by cultural Marxism.

If you're a pastor "in good standing" in America you can't believe in anything "wacky" like the supernatural. The world will mock you, and you can't have that. The Holy Spirit has nothing to do with the word of God and its preservation, and Satan has nothing to do with Islam.

_____
Update: James White is finally being recognized as an apostate and useful idiot for Islam:

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1401529089913442

http://www.worldviewweekend.com/radio/audio/brannon-howse-june-7-2017

http://www.worldviewweekend.com/radio/audio/brannon-howse-june-8-2017

http://www.worldviewweekend.com/radio/audio/brannon-howse-june-9-2017