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You are already filled, you have already become rich, you have become kings without us; and indeed, I wish that you had become kings so that we also might reign with you. (2Corinthians 4:8)
The Lord Jesus both began and ended his public ministry by entering the Temple and cleansing it. His disciples observed His zeal for His Father’s House as He cleaned out the Temple’s peddlers and moneychangers.
It’s telling, though, how our annual celebrations of His triumphal entry, marking the conclusion of His three years of public ministry, pull up hard and stop short. We celebrate the palm fronds, shouting children, and the Lord mounted on His donkey as he entered Jerusalem. Sometimes we even include the wicked priests and scribes getting all hot and bothered about the children’s cries of praise, but usually that part of the account is brought up only to remind one another of Jesus’ touching response:
And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased, And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say?
And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? (Matthew 21:15-16)
“Babes and sucklings” praise God most perfectly. Think on that, young mother, as you nurse your little one.
Somehow I’d clomped that exchange onto the palm fronds and cloaks and Jesus entering the city. Notice, however, that it was the children’s praise of Jesus, their “shouting in the temple,” that angered the priests and scribes. The confrontation occurred after the joy and worship had moved from the city gates into the Temple.
The Temple rarely makes it into our Palm Sunday worship and preaching. Our focus, remembering and reveling in Jesus’ triumphal entry, is the palm branches and Hosannas on the road into the city. Our little ones enter the sanctuary waving palm fronds, singing “Hosanna in the highest, blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord.” It brings tears to the eyes of their mothers and grandmothers because they know God has perfected His praise in these little ones. It’s so holy.
Truly.
What we recognize as we watch and listen to the children waving their branches and singing each Palm Sunday is, “For once they got it right. Jesus finally received the praise He’s due. King of kings and Lord of Lords! Hallelujah!”
The children got it right, but we only get it half right.
We celebrate Holy week from joy to joy, from Palm Sunday straight to Easter. But my favorite worship service each year has always been our midday Good Friday service.
Of course, no one refers to an irreligious man as a “Christmas and Good Friday Christian.” It’s always, “He’s a Christmas and Easter Christian.” Half-serious, I’ve suggested no one should be allowed to come to worship Easter morning if he hasn’t worshipped with the people of God on Good Friday.
Back to our celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry: why doesn’t it include His triumphal entry of His Father’s House—the Temple?
Maybe it’s because, like Christmas Eve, Palm Sunday is a worship service intimately connected with little ones and their mothers and celebrating Jesus’ triumphant takeover of His Father’s House would scare the little ones and their mothers. Adding a focus on Jesus’ prophetic ministry swinging his whip and overturning the tables and cash registers of the peddlers of religion would not be women-and-children-friendly.
Still, Jesus’ entry of the temple, condemning and violently attacking the temple’s degraded culture of religion-as-mercantile-enterprise shows our Lord’s glory and authority at least as much as His entry of the gates of Jerusalem. What a triumph! What a victory! See how Jesus shut down the perversion of His Father’s House of Prayer for All Nations!
How telling it is that this very triumphant triumph remains to us a very scary scene—and this despite the plain fact that this very violence was the physical context and backdrop to the children’s cries of worship.
Do we not celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry to the Temple because it has no application to the American church today? Is it not a part of our Palm Sunday worship because the little children wouldn’t understand?
But wait a second. Back then the children had no problem celebrating Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple. It inspired their joyful worship.
Simultaneously, though, those children’s very public joy and worship infuriated the priests and scribes. Here is the full account from Matthew 21:6-17:
The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, and brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their coats on them; and He sat on the coats. Most of the crowd spread their coats in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in the road. The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!
When He had entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, “Who is this?”
And the crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.” And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a robbers’ cave.”
And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children who were shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became indignant and said to Him, “Do You hear what these children are saying?”
And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise for Yourself’?”
And He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
All the city was stirred and they asked, “Who is this?”
Note the answer: “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.” Then, immediately, this: “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables.”
Our Lord’s triumphal entry of His Father’s House cannot be separated from His triumphal entry of Jerusalem. Both entries are a single triumph and both must be linked in our Holy Week worship just as they are linked in the Gospels.
To see our Lord’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem as the main event and His triumphal entry of His Father’s House as a sideshow (and barely that) during our celebration of Palm Sunday is damning of us.
“Damning?” How and why?
Damning because our silence about Jesus’ triumphal entry to His Father’s Temple proves the perpetual truth of His condemnation of the pastors and seminary professors of His Own day, given very publicly:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’
So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. (Matthew 23:29-32)
The steady state economy of the culture established in God’s House under God’s priests, pastors, and scribes is, and has always been, to gag, persecute, and kill the prophets—and to oppose any and all reformations. Of course we don’t celebrate Jesus’ cleansings of His Father’s House! When have the established religious leaders ever done so?
We’re too busy making a name for ourselves. We’re too focussed on our next book at the center of our next book table at our next conference—all carefully documented on socials by our stupid sheep who think of their posts publicizing us as their contribution to “God’s work.”
We’re the ones who tell them we are doing “God’s work” when the truth is we are busy servicing our sheep’s pious superstitions which demand a religion of the body—the ceremony, ritual, and sacramentalism perched on top of our carefully constructed foundation of mercantile religious trafficking. We’re so busy. Our victories wear us out so that we never have time to stop and allow the Nazarene prophet to speak still today.
Remember, Jesus both began and ended his earthly ministry by cleansing the Temple, His Father’s House.
Both cleansings were triumphant, but in the eyes of the pastors and elders of His time, both were failures.
Maybe even embarrassing—unless, that is, we’re reading about them in a book 2,000 years later.
Let’s be clear. I’m against triumphalism, and I think there is a lot of it going around.
But I’d like to try to articulate a danger among those who, like me, are against triumphalism. One of the things I’ve begun to notice in my life more and more often is that opposition movements often unwittingly adopt the presuppositions of their opponents. It is easy to oppose a bad idea at the surface level, but usually we need to dig deeper.
In triumphalism, the promises of God are twisted into something unbiblical. An inappropriate “Victory in Jesus” attitude can look like the holiness movement that claims we can attain perfect sanctification in this life, or it can look like the health and wealth gospel, claiming faithful Christians will gain, well, health and wealth. One is wholly spiritual, the other is wholly physical. Both are wrong, and both share an underlying error. The similarity is often missed because of the stark difference, but both are immanentizing the eschaton—claiming that some particular promise of God that applies only in Heaven can be attained here on Earth.
There is profit to discussing the degree to which we should understand God’s various promises spiritually or physically. And we should not focus on certain promises while blinding ourselves to others. But wherever any type of triumphalism is promoted, it should be opposed, and we cannot effectively do so without rejecting its premises.
Take for example the triumphalistic error that points to growth in church attendance as proof of God’s approval. Working your way backwards it looks like this: “We are growing, therefore God is blessing us, therefore we are doing the ‘right thing.’” The result is ultimately a refusal to call men to repentance because of a pragmatic commitment to numeric growth.
Now look at the reactionary, defeatist error that unintentionally accepts the same false premise: “We are not growing, therefore we are standing firm against error, therefore we are doing the ‘right thing.’” This results in a refusal to share the gospel with others, lest they join us. It is an attitude of exclusion and judgmentalism.
They look opposite, but they are almost identical when you look deeper. Both groups are blocking the door into the Kingdom of Heaven over the same mistake.
Both of these errors exist in the real world, not just in theory. Both also afflict Reformed men, not just idiots.
The shared false premise is that we can judge our obedience purely based on the visible physical outcome. Nothing could be further from the truth. Growth and wealth are no proof that you are being faithful, but for exactly the same reason, lacking growth or wealth is no proof of faithfulness.
This is not hard to defend biblically. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
The opposing groups in this argument, having both made the same error, both need to be reminded of the same thing: we must believe the promises of God.
He has promised both blessing and suffering to His people. To refuse either one is to reject His promises. If we mock the weak and suffering for not having God’s blessings, we mock Job, most of the prophets, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus. If we throw shade on the faith of those who have received good things in this life, we shame Job (again), David, Esther, and the Apostle John.
Why choose between two errors? Strike at the root by rejecting the premise.
Andrew Henry returns to the podcast, joining Pastor Tim Bayly to discuss why they are thankful for the United States of America and what the need of the day is for Christians living in her. They discuss the American Revolution and its messy complexity; John Adams; the desire for simplistic explanations amid conflicts and controversies; the work of politicians and pastors; living in your station; localism; the crisis of discipline; and cultivating the ability to say “I was wrong.”
Show notes:
- Alfred F. Young, Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution
- George W. Forell, “Luther and the War Against the Turks,” Concordia Theological Monthly: Vol. 17, Article 52.
- Andrew mentions Samson, so I thought to include…
Calvin’s comments on Numbers 6:6.He shall come at no dead body:This, too, they had in common with the high-priest, that they were not even to mourn for their relations. Although Moses enjoins two things, that the Nazarites should make themselves unclean neither by entering the house of mourning, nor by mourning themselves, it was indeed a duty of humanity to bury the dead; but if any of the people had touched a dead body, or had come near a death-bed or bier, they were polluted. But God demands more of the Nazarites, lest, they should contract uncleanness; for it was not sufficient for them (as will be seen again presently) to purify themselves according to the accustomed means, but it behoved them to be far removed from all things that would pollute them. But why the touch of a dead body was a pollution, we shall consider more at large in its proper place. Now it must be briefly concluded, that because by death is represented God’s curse, the wages of sin, the Israelites were thus admonished to beware of dead works. (336) As to the mourning, the reason of the prohibition was different, viz., that those who professed the special service of God, should set, an example to others of magnanimity and submission. If it were sinful to weep and lament when our friends are taken from us, Christ would not, have wept. at the tomb of Lazarus; but because perturbation is always associated with grief, and men in their mourning are too apt to give way to ambition and pomp, and voluntarily and purposely provoke themselves to excess, as though nature did not already carry them further than is right, the Nazarites could not give an example of moderation, if they had mixed themselves with mourners. Wherefore, as they were before restrained from daintiness, so now a remedy is applied to the opposite disease, viz., to sorrow. But, although all ought, to seek to indulge it moderately, yet something more is prescribed to the Nazarites, that, as if disentangled and stripped from earthly affections, they should go further than the rest of the people; as we shall see hereafter with respect to the priests.
Aish.com article titled, “Samson – Contact with Dead“:
In terms of coming in contact with dead animals, that is not an issue for any type of Nazarite. The Torah only forbids his coming in contact with “a dead soul” – but not a dead animal (which doesn’t possess a true soul) (Talmud Nazir 48a). (answered by Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld.)
- Here’s the picture of my great-grandfather, William A. DeWalt, which hangs in our living room. He holds my uncle, Curtis DeWalt: “H. R. 10174. William Dewalt, aged 78 years, late a private, Company A, One hundred and fifty-fifth Regiment Pennsylvania Infantry, from April 20, 1862, to June 6, 1865 (length of service, 3 years 1 month 17 days), is now pensioned under certificate No. 47837 at the rate of $46 per month under general law for loss of left arm above elbow.”
Desire to become a pastor? Check out New Geneva Academy. Listen to NGA’s brand new podcast, “What I Wish They’d Told Me,” here or watch video here.
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
Celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday, I thought it good for us to be reminded that love never denies the sins of those we love, whether our wife, our sons and daughters, our church, or our homeland. True love doesn’t require perfection, but is most visible and genuine when it covers a multitude of sins.
The man who acknowledges our multitude of sins is the man who truly loves the United States of America. Our motto is not “My nation, right or wrong,” but “My nation, right and wrong.”
To love our homeland is to confess we have murdered one quarter of the little ones through whom God has blessed our women’s wombs, and we have been drowning in this genocide for decades, now. Before man and God, we confess our people’s bloodlust, as well as our love for our people. We accept our corporate guilt, not pointing the finger at our neighbors and saying we are innocent of their bloodshed. From love of neighbors, we confess this and many other sins and plead with God for mercy. Daniel is our example.
Now then, this piece below by G. K. Chesterton has served as my faithful reminder that we must oppose those peoples and nations who present themselves as “faultless beings.” We must not acquiesce to their lies of superiority which inevitably bear the fruit of the oppression of the weak and vulnerable.
Yet defending the weak and vulnerable against these predators, we must not use our defense as an opportunity to demand our history be hagiography. No history of anyone should be hagiography. God is good. Man is not.
Here then is G. K. Chesterton’s third (of three) “Letters to a Garibaldian,” by which he brings his book, The Appetite of Tyranny, to an end. What was the context of his writing?
Chesterton had recently suffered a health crisis that went on for months, leaving him in a coma-like state. But then, God had mercy and Chesterton returned to health and the world of the living, only to discover that his people were now at war.
Chesterton was no hawk. He had opposed his nation’s Boer Wars, but this war was different and he now wrote in support of England’s war against Germany. England had gone to war against Germany a few months earlier upon the German’s invasion of England’s neutral neighbor, Belgium. (For those interested, here’s more on this work’s cultural and historical context.)
Do read Chesterton’s letter, but be warned. Those who preen over their morals by multiplying the offenses they take at other’s words will have a heyday here. Leave them to it. Life is too serious and short to waste a moment paying attention to twits.
The Prussianised German, of whatever blend of races he may be, has one quality which may perhaps be racially simple; but which is, at any rate, very plain. [He] has no reactions. He does not laugh at himself. He does not want to kick himself. He does not, like most of us, repent—or occasionally even repent of repenting. He does not read his own works and find them much worse or much better than he had expected. He does not feel a faint irrational sense of debauch, after even divine pleasures of this life. Watch him at a German restaurant, and you will satisfy yourself that he does not.
In short, both in the most scientific and in the most casual sense of the word, he does not know what it is to have a temper. He does not bend and fly back like steel; he sticks out, like wood. In this he differs from any nation I have known, from your nation and mine, from the French, the Spanish, the Scotch, the Welsh and the Irish. Bad luck never braces him as it does us. Good luck never frightens him as it does us. It can be seen in what the French call Chauvinism and we call Jingoism. For us it is fireworks; for him it is daylight.
On Mafeking Night, celebrating a small but picturesque success against the Boers, nearly everybody in London came out waving little flags. Nearly everybody in London is now heartily ashamed of it. But it would never occur to the Prussians not to ride their high horses with the freshest insolence for the far-off victory of Sedan; though on that very anniversary the star of their fate had turned scornful in the sky, and Von Kluck was in retreat from Paris.
Above all, the Prussian does not feel annoyed, as I do, when foreigners praise his country for all the wrong reasons. The Prussian will allow you to praise him for any reasons, for any length of time, for any eternity of folly; he is there to be praised. Probably he is proud of this; probably he thinks he has a good digestion, because the poison of praise does not make him sick. He thinks the absence of such doubt, or self-knowledge, makes for composure, grandeur, a colossal calm, a superior race—in short, the whole claim of the Teutons to be the highest spiritual product of Nature and Evolution. But as I have noticed a calm unity even more complete …in slugs, slow-worms, mangoldwurzels, moss, mud and bits of stone, I am a sceptic about this test for the marshalling in rank of all the children of God.
Now I point this out to you here for a very practical reason. The Prussian will never understand revolutions—which are generally reactions. He regards them, not only with dislike, but with a mysterious kind of pity. Throughout his confused popular histories, there runs a strange suggestion that civic populations have failed hitherto, and failed because they were always fighting. The population of Berlin does not fight, or can’t; and therefore Berlin will succeed where Greece and Rome have failed.
Hitherto it is plain enough that Berlin has succeeded in nothing except in bad copies of Greece and Rome; and Prussians would be wiser to discuss the details of the Greek and Roman past, which we can follow, rather than the details of their own future, about which we are naturally not so well informed.
Well, every dome they build, every pillar they put upright, every pedestal for epitaph or panel for decoration, every type of church, Catholic or Protestant, every kind of street, large or small, they have copied from the old Pagan or Catholic cities; and those cities, when they made those things, were boiling with revolutions. I remember a German professor saying to me, “I should have no scruple about extinguishing such republics as Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua; they are perpetually rioting for one thing or another.”
I said I supposed he would have had no scruple in extinguishing Athens, Rome, Florence and Paris; for they were always rioting for one thing or another.
His reply indicated, I thought, that he felt about Cæsar or Rienzi very much as the Scotch Presbyterian Minister felt about Christ, when he was reminded of the corn-plucking on the Sabbath, and said, “Weel, I dinna think the better of him.” In other words he was quite positive, like all his countrymen, that he could impose a sort of Pax Germanica, which would satisfy all the needs of order and of freedom forever; leaving no need for revolutions or reactions.
I am myself of a different opinion. When I was a child, when the toy-trade of Germany had begun to flood this country, there was a priggish British couplet, engraven on the minds of governesses, which ran—
What the German children delight to make
The English children delight to break.I can answer for the delight of the English children; a just and godlike delight. I am not so sure about the delight of the German children, when they were caught in the infernal wheels of the modern civilisation of factories. But, for the present, I am only concerned to say that I do not accept this line of historical division. I do not think history supports the view that those who could break things could not make them.
This is the least intrusive approach by which I can touch on a topic that must of necessity be a delicate one; yet which may well be a difficulty among Latins like yourself.
Against this preposterous Prussian upstart we have not only to protect our unity; we have even to protect our quarrels. And the deepest of the reactions or revolts of which I have spoken is the quarrel which (very tragically as I think) has for some hundred years cloven the Christian from the Liberal ideal.
It would ill become me, in whose country there is neither such clear doctrine nor such combative democracy, to suppose it can be easy for any of you to close up such sacred wounds. There must still be Catholics who feel they can never forgive a Jacobin. There must still be old Republicans who feel that they could never endure a priest. And yet there is something, the mere sight of which should lock them both in an instant alliance. They have only to look northward and hold the third thing, which thinks itself superior to either: the enormous turnip-face of ce type là, as the French say, who conceives that he can make them both like himself and yet remain superior to both.
I implore you to keep out of the hands of this Fool the quarrel of the great saints and of the great blasphemers. He will do to religion what he will do to art; mix up all the colours on your palette into the colour of mud: and then say that only the purified eyes of Teutons can see that it is pure white.
The other day the Director of Museums in Berlin was said to be setting about the creation of a new kind of Art: German Art. Philosophers and men of science were at the same time directed to meet round the table and found a new Religion: German Religion. How can such people appreciate art; how can they appreciate religion—nay, how can they appreciate irreligion? How does one invent a message? How does one create a Creator? Is it not the plain meaning of the Gospel that it is good news? And is it not the plain meaning of good news that it must come from outside oneself? Otherwise I could make myself happy this moment, by inventing an enormous victory in Flanders. And I suppose (now I come to think of it) that the Germans do.
By the fulness of your faith and even the fulness of your despair, you that remember Rome, have earned a right to prevent all our quarrels being quenched in such cold water from the north. But it is not too much to say that neither religion at its worst nor republicanism at its worst ever offered the coarse insult to all mankind that is offered by this new and nakedly universal monarchy.
There has always been something common to civilised men, whether they called it being merely a citizen; or being merely a sinner. There has always been something which your ancestors called Verecundia; which is at once humility and dignity.
Whatever our faults, we do not do exactly as the Prussians do. We do not bellow day and night to draw attention to our own stern silence. We do not praise ourselves solely because nobody else will praise us. I, for one, say at the end of these letters, as I said at the beginning; that in these international matters I have often differed from my countrymen; I have often differed from myself. I shall not claim the completeness of this silly creature we discuss. I shall not answer his boasts with boasts; but with blows.
My front-door is beaten in and broken down suddenly. I see nothing outside, except a sort of smiling, straw-haired commercial traveller with a notebook open, who says,
“Excuse me, I am a faultless being, I have persuaded Poland; I can count on my respectful Allies in Alsace. I am simply loved in Lorraine. Quae reggio in terris…
“What place is there on earth where the name of Prussia is not the signal for hopeful prayers and joyful dances? I am that German who has civilised Belgium; and delicately trimmed the frontiers of Denmark. And I may tell you, with the fulness of conviction, that I have never failed, and shall never fail in anything. Permit me, therefore, to bless your house by the passage of my beautiful boots; that I may burgle the house next door.”
And then something European that is prouder than pride will rise up in me; and I shall answer:—
“I am that Englishman who has tortured Ireland, who has been tortured by South Africa; who knows all his mistakes, who is heavy with all his sins. And he tells you, Faultless Being, with a truth as deep as his own guilt, and as deathless as his own remembrance, that you shall not pass this way.”
Men who say their church is a threat to their family have two choices: either repent and start to heed your shepherds’ warnings or find a new church and heed your new shepherds’ warnings.
Normally, what happens instead is the man takes his wife and children out of their home church into a new church that doesn’t know them and/or never warns nobody.
Let me warn you. We pastors and elders—along with our wives—never stop listening to men telling us they took their family out of their former church because it “wasn’t a Safe Place.” From long experience, we know this normally means the man or his wife got warned and rejected the warning.
But warnings are the essence of the calling of God’s prophets, pastors, and elders. The Apostle Paul summarized his ministry to the Ephesian congregation saying he “never stopped warning” them, adding that he did it “from house to house,” “day and night,” and “with tears.”
A church led by faithful shepherds is no safe place for hard hearts.
What I write above is inspired by a good article I read this morning which reminded me of the constancy of stubborn sheep. Calvin repeatedly points out that the teachable man is one in a hundred.
If the warning above applies to you, be assured it was written from love for sheep like you—and take heed. Be teachable under your shepherds’ warnings. Don’t despise them. Making their work hard is not good for your soul, nor the souls of your wife and children.
With love,
[God said] Assemble the people to Me, that I may let them hear My words so they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children. (Deuteronomy 4:10)
Above is today’s lead article from Chronicle of Higher Ed. In other words, wasn’t thje purpose of education to form students’ minds and character? They admit they’ve lost their way. Instead profs get tenure and raises by getting published, then citations. This is what they call “research.” With this as higher ed’s priority, profs teach and work with students as little as possible.
We need to see this admission on their part and see, ourselves, how this sort of abandonment of anything like true instruction has left us with an uneducated electorate which cannot and will not sustain our democracy.
This is a deeper problem than higher ed’s DEI, abortion, socialist, Democrat, sexual abomination rot. So if higher ed stops its maniacal emphasis on publishing, it’s a step in the right direction. Surveying socials’ vein-popping howling purveyors of tripe, America’s cry should be, “Back to teaching our children well!”
At home, first—with Dad doing as much of it as possible.
At church, next—with the pastor and elders doing as much of it as possible. We need to return to Calvin’s practice of teaching the children each Lord’s Day. Then, when the children reach 8-12 yrs old and were ready to be interviewed for being seated at Lord’s Table, having taught them, Calvin knew them.
Our neighbors’ children, third—with Christians taking over the education of our nation’s children. By hook or by crook.
A caution. I’m not just talking about our children. I’m talking about loving our neighbors by teaching their children, too. Loving our neighbor and homeland is a Christian duty and should lead us to care about the education of our nation’s children. Loving American exceptionalism should lead us back to what created it, which was a biblical education. Not medieval, but biblical. Not Roman Catholic, but biblical. Not Athenian, but biblical.
Medieval learning was not what produced Puritan New Englanders who sat and listened to Jonathan Edwards’s two-hour sermons, and understood them.
Try reading one yourself. Realize the world’s highest literacy rate was back then, and it was not because of a medieval curriculum or education. it was because of the Bible.
Pastors don’t need to write books and get famous and rich. We need to forget fame and fortune, returning to our calling to teach our Lord’s lambs.
This episode wraps up the conversation between Tim, Joel, Judy, and Mulu. The Lintons describe the amazing Sundays their church family spends together, which run from the crack of dawn until the night. Their ministry is “organic,” focusing on making disciples of Jesus Christ who go beyond the superficial. The church in Yilan County, Taiwan is all about living life together, just like Bonhoeffer wrote about in Life Together. Along the way, they also talk about the ins and outs of worship music and the merciful discipline of children.
The first part of this interview is here. Another interview with Joel and Judy can be heard here.
Desire to become a pastor? Check out New Geneva Academy. Listen to NGA’s brand new podcast, “What I Wish They’d Told Me,” here or watch video here.
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
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Joel and Judy Linton, missionaries and church planters in Yilan County, Taiwan, join Pastor Tim Bayly again. Their conversation will continue in the next episode.
During this session, Joel, Judy, and Tim discuss the conversion and discipleship of a particular family that has become a central source of strength in the church plant in Yilan County (you’ll hear from one of them directly during the podcast!). They also discuss the nature of language and how it shapes a people—preparing or hindering their understanding of Scripture, the necessity of discipleship (not merely conversion), and how a church should make decisions about age-specific ministries.
For more about Joel and Judy’s work in Taiwan, visit their website here.
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
Churches aren’t buildings but people, so conflict is no surprise. Scripture recounts an abundance of conflict within the New Testament church, but notice what these conflicts accomplished:
[W]hen you come together in church, I hear that schisms exist among you; and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. (1Corinthians 1:18-19)
God’s Word explains divisions within the church bear the fruit of making it clear who has God’s approval. Painful as they are, church fights are used by the Lord to clarify who is right. Since truth is precious, this is a blessing. But how does God make it clear who has His approval?
Elders are church officers God calls to declare who does and doesn’t have His approval.
When Moses appointed one elder for every ten sons of Israel (Exodus 18), those elders’ purpose was to heal divisions by judging conflicts. This continued in the New Testament where Scripture records Apostolic commands that the elders silence schismatics (Titus 1:10-11); and concerning conflicts, that elders make judgments and lead souls to repentance, forgiveness, and restoration (Galatians 6:1-2). Our Lord prayed that His disciples would be one as He and His Father are One. Naturally then, elders are called to work to this end. They are to guard and restore the unity of the church until that day when we arrive at our true Home where abuse, envy, hard heartedness, heresy, and divisions are no more.
In recent years, this Biblical office and calling of elders to resolve conflict has led many non-Presbyterian churches to change their governance structure so their congregation is led and governed by elders. No longer is it just one elder who serves as the congregation’s pastor with discipline being the responsibility simply of the assembled members of the church.
Jonathan Edwards would approve of this change, returning to a number—to a plurality—of elders.
Centuries ago in Northampton, Massachusetts, Edwards served a church that was congregational in polity, and Edwards lamented the prevalence of congregationalism’s “unsettled, independent, confused way of church government.” In a letter to the Rev. Mr. Erskine dated July 5, 1750, Edwards wrote:
…as to the presbyterian government, I have long been perfectly out of conceit [lost any favorable view] of our unsettled, independent, confused way of church government in this land; and the presbyterian way has ever appeared to me most agreeable to the word of God and the reason and nature of things….
What is this “presbyterian way?”
“Presbyterian” is a transliteration of the Greek word presbyteros—”elder.” Although many think “presbyterian” indicates the congregation or denomination baptizes infants, this is not the meaning of the word. “Presbyterian” simply designates a church governed by elders. This is the reason Edwards would have approved of churches returning to governance by elders.
Scripture is not perfectly clear about all facets of church governance. Many have wished it were otherwise. Still, Scripture clearly lays out three basic principles.
First, as the Gospel spread from city to city across the Roman Empire where Christian churches were planted, each of those churches was governed by elders:
After they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. (Acts 14:21-23)
Elders were appointed “in every church,” so it is good and right for us to return to this New Testament pattern.
Second, among all the elders who together “ruled” the church, the Apostle Paul designated some “who work hard at preaching and teaching,” commanding they be given “double honor”:
The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. (1Timothy 5:17)
Historically presbyterians have referred to the elder whose work focuses on “preaching and teaching” as their “pastor.” He is the elder who feeds them God’s Word each Lord’s day, and thus these men are called “pastor,” a word derived from the word “pasture.” Within God’s flock, it is typical for these men to be treated with “double honor.”
Be careful to honor your elders. Their work is not easy. Yet be even more careful to honor those who work hard at preaching and teaching—who pasture you. God Himself commands they be honored “especially.”
Third, when the elders in the church of Antioch were hopelessly divided, the New Testament shows they appealed to another authority to help them resolve their conflict:
Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And when Paul and Barnabas had not a little dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue….
When they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. But some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed stood up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses.”
The apostles and the elders came together to see about this word. (Acts 15:1-6)
Down through church history, this appeal by the elders of the church of Antioch to the church of Jerusalem to settle their conflict has been called “the Jerusalem Council.” Across twenty centuries of conflicts, heresies, and divisions within one congregation, it has been the habit for that congregation’s elders to appeal to the elders and pastor(s) of other congregations for help resolving their conflict. This pattern laid out in Acts 15 is still followed today in churches around the world.
Summarizing these three principles of New Testament church governance:
- Elders are to be appointed in every church.
- Elders who work hard teaching and preaching are “especially” to be given “double honor.”
- Divisions within one church that aren’t being resolved locally are to be submitted to the officers of other churches for their consideration and judgment about how to restore their own congregation’s purity, unity, and peace.
This is the Biblical case for adopting a presbyterian structure of church leadership and government. It is Biblical for a plurality of elders to maintain and restore the unity of their own church, but also to serve as a court of appeals ready and willing to help restore the unity of other churches.
In our book explaining the work of elders titled Elders Reformed, Pastor Von Hagen and I have outlined some of the benefits of presbyterian church leadership. We hope we have done so in a non-dogmatic way. The book includes some advice for the elders in a newly elder-ruled church, giving some recommendations and warnings for elders within their congregation which has recently moved to elder rule.
Yet regardless of whether the office of elder is old or new in your church, I recommend Elders Reformed to those who want to grow in their understanding of the Biblical foundation and responsibilities of this God-ordained office.
With this short summary of the Biblical office of elder, let’s look more closely at this account of Acts 15 laying out a Biblical method of peacemaking when it is the pastors and elders themselves who are in conflict.
Typically, churches with a plurality of elders have meetings of their pastor and elders at least monthly. Within historically presbyterian churches, this combined group is called the “session,” and their meeting the “session meeting.” (This word “session” comes from the Latin sessio, “to sit.” So session meetings are sitting meetings of the church’s officers, the church’s authorities. This entire group of sitters in these meetings—ruling and teaching elders, elders and pastors together—have come to be called a church’s “session.”
In the home, unity or conflict within the family flows from the unity or conflict of the father and mother. Just so, unity or conflict within the congregation flows from the unity or conflict of the elders. Maintaining peace and unity within the church’s session is difficult work, and when that work is not successful, the church knows this full well and suffers from their shepherds’ division.
We must not fool ourselves about this.
Division is common within churches’ marriages and families. Division is also common between individuals and families within the church. So then, sadly but predictably, division is common within churches’ sessions (elders boards).
Here is a Biblical recommendation for resolving divisions within a church session—the governing board of elders and pastor(s).
Let’s come at the matter from a different direction.
Churches that have adopted elder-rule for their own congregation should finish the task by establishing elder-rule for their session (elders board), also. It is not just the sheep who need help with conflict resolution. Shepherds need this help, too.
When the pastors and elders themselves are in conflict, they need to have a court of pastors and elders above them to whom they can make an appeal for help resolving that conflict. I write “above them” to indicate that, just as they have responsibility for those church members who are below them, so the pastors and elders themselves need other pastors and elders above them. They need fellow pastors and elders they can turn to for help; men over them in authority they have promised to submit to and depend upon for counsel and conflict resolution.
This is the reason the title reads, “Churches need elders: both down and up.” A court—whether secular and civil or Christian and ecclesiastical—needs a court of appeals. Authority should flow both down and up. Autocracy is not Biblical, whether we’re speaking of a single Czar or a single session.
This appeal up to higher authority in the church is on display in Acts 15 where Scripture provides the history of the Apostle Paul and Barnabas opposing the Judaizers who had come to them from Jerusalem. Arriving at the church of Antioch, these men were dividing it and destroying souls (see Galatians) by teaching that Gentiles couldn’t be saved unless they got circumcised. This led to the church in Antioch appealing to the church in Jerusalem for resolution of their congregational conflict. When we say the church of Antioch appealed to the church in Jerusalem for conflict resolution, elders were appointed in every city, so it was the elders of Antioch appealing to the elders of Jerusalem.
Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue. (Acts 15:1-2)
We’re not speaking about who leads the elders in their pastoral work within their own congregation. Among historically presbyterian (elder-rule) churches, this task has normally fallen upon the pastor who has what is best understood as a “first among equals” calling. Is this first among equals simply a function of pastoral pride and self-seeking?
No.
Anyone who has worked with animals knows the animals trust and are devoted to the man who feeds them. Thus it is only natural that the weekly preaching of the senior pastor as the principal feeder of the flock leads to the flock trusting him in a way that the rest of the pastors and elders can’t help but acknowledge. For this reason it is normal for the other members of the session to seek and establish the senior pastor’s leadership of their session (if this is not already constitutionally established). The normal order of authority in presbyterian churches is for the session to be comprised of the pastor(s) and elders, with the pastor moderating.
Let’s leave it at that. I know some disagree, and God bless you.
The main concern being addressed here is the frequent lack of understanding by formerly congregational, but now elder-rule presbyterian churches, of the need to provide for conflict resolution and accountability for the elders and pastors themselves. When moving to elder-rule, the question that must be asked is who shepherds the elders themselves?
To make it clear why this is a critical matter needing attention, consider how many times we all hear of conflicts among the pastors and elders of a church? How many times have the pastors and elders of our own churches been known to be in conflict? How many times are pastors in conflict with their elders? How many times are elders in conflict with their pastor? How many times are congregations mad or attacking their pastors or their elders?
When a church has established a relationship of accountability with a group of churches—say five or ten—these conflicts may be taken to the pastors and elders of those churches for help on those occasions when the conflict is deep or longstanding enough to have resisted resolution
Historically, churches have called this group of churches they have agreed to be in submission to their “presbytery.” If your own congregation lacks such help in resolving serious conflicts, find one and join yourself to likeminded churches. If you are looking to start a presbytery or wish to join one, contact Evangel Presbytery. Both paedo and credo baptists are welcome.
It would be a joy to hear from you. You may send an email to our stated clerk: Pastor Alex McNeilly: clerk@evangelpresbytery.com.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! (Psalm 133:1)
Many have debated how to interpret the often ignored Song of Songs. We are uncomfortable with our sexuality, so those embarrassed by what they read have often understood the book as a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the church.
We know from Ephesians 5 that a proper relationship between a man and his wife is ultimately a picture of our Lord and His bride. But that means, if you want to find things about Christ and the church in Song of Songs, you’ll first need to find out what it says about a man and a woman.
In point of fact, there is quite a bit of metaphor in the book. However, most of the metaphors in the book point toward sexual things, rather than away from sexual things. For example, in chapter 4, the man describes the woman as a “garden.” She invites him to come into the garden and eat its fruits. He then describes the fruits and his partaking of them. They are both then urged to “Eat, friends; drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers” (5:1). This is certainly a metaphor for the physical relationship between the man and woman.
One thing that is inescapable is the delight that the man and woman take in one another physically. You might remember the visual descriptions that each gives of the other, with some similes that sound odd to our modern ear, like, “Your two breasts are like two fawns” (4:5). But sight is not the only sense that is mentioned. The whole poem is sensuous. Sound is found together with sight in 2:14. Elsewhere we find tastes, smells, and the sense of touch. Emotional senses are appealed to as well, with descriptions of love, jealousy, desire, and lovesickness.
If the Apostle Paul reminds us of our duty in the marriage bed, the author of Song of Songs reminds us of the delight to be found in it. There are many metaphors and euphemisms in the book, but the delight in physical love is quite literal and inescapable.
Today we have inherited a Victorian sensibility that blushes to speak of the fact that a man wants to see the “form” of his lover—even outside! (2:14)—or that a woman wants to be kissed (1:2). And we live in a day where sex has been so perverted that we are inclined to view it as a necessary evil, like many at the time of Augustine did.
Sex is not dirty or impure in its nature. God made it holy and good. Song of Songs is a sweet, innocent picture of what sexual desire and delight are like if they have not been perverted by impurity through lust, pornography, fornication, and adultery. Unfortunately, both men and women are often affected by these sins in such a way that our love is hampered by the guilt, shame, or disgust we feel the moment we sense a hint of sexual desire in ourselves or our spouse.
So read the Song of Songs paying attention to the way it shamelessly returns over and over to the physical union between the lovers, and the clear desire they express for each other.
HOW TO PRAY Adoration – Praise God for making us both body and soul capable of feeling such deep desire, pleasure, and love. * Confession – We have often worshiped and idolized these bodies and sex. * Thanksgiving – Thank God for healing even sexual wounds that feel deep and hopeless. * S*upplication – Please, God, give us faith that sex is good and that you made us male and female for a good reason.
Note: this was first posted at ChristChurchCincy.com as a Weekly Reading Guide for our church
A friend just asked what books would be good for every Christian to have in his library? My assumption is the phrasing “in his library” is an acknowledgement that some books in our library are reference works we consult, but don’t read.
This is a short list, and some of these books aren’t the usual ones, but each of them has had a lifelong impact on me and often recommended to others—particularly those in high school, at university, or young adults.
Yes, I know these seem way too difficult for our young adult children, let alone teenagers. Truth be told, they seem too difficult for us who are older and longer in the faith. But they are priceless, and those who drink will be filled!
Asterisks (*) beginning the line indicate the link is to a preferred translation.
Ampersands (&) at beginning of line indicate books I consider helpful to have in hard copy for ease of adding bookmarks and margin notations. This can also be done on Kindle.
To be read (alphabetical order):
& Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore (biography of Adoniram Judson)
& Joseph Alleine, An Alarm to the Unconverted: The Sure Guide to Heaven (audio recording also available)
- & Augustine, Confessions (audio recording also available)
& Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (older work, but classic; Oberman is also good)
& Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (great devotional work, actually, and extremely helpful in judging whether you can trust your pastor)
& Joseph Bayly, Out of My Mind: The Best of Joe Bayly (my dad; I mention it because it presents Christian thinking on many current issues that Christian celebrities chronically avoid)
& Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind (audio recording also available)
& Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (audio recording also available)
John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress (audio recording also available)
-
& John Calvin, Institutes (some tough slogging, but some easy; mandatory; use either Beveridge or McNeill/Battles editions; you can’t trust more modern translations) (audio recording also available)
-
John Calvin, Sermons on Genesis (new translation extremely expensive, but worth every single penny)
& G. K. Chesterton, The Thing (start with “Drift from Domesicity”), What’s Wrong with the World, The Everlasting Man… (audio recording also available)
-
& Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom 1854 – 1855
-
Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (in this work, Luther demonstrates how properly and pastorally to man up and respond to the false doctrine promoted by Bible scholars who are squishy pedants—similar to his interlocutor, Erasmus) (audio recording also available)
& J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (audio recording also available)
- & Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians (Don’t buy any translation other than Philip Watson. You can find used copies here. For why you must not buy other modern translations, read this. It will help you understand why some of these recommendations have an asterisk before the name, meaning this recommendation is for a specific version or translation.)
& Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000 (really, anything by Murray, but this one’s a good place to start)
& John Owen, The Mortification of Sin and The forgiveness of sin: A practical exposition of Psalm 130
& J. C. Ryle, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots (audio recording also available)
*The Old Testament (try the Robert Alter translation for some of the OT—say, the Pentateuch, which our family read through for family devotions; otherwise the NASB95 or KJV or American Standard Version; I only mention the Old Testament because no one needs to be told to read the New Testament)
The Westminster Standards (Confession and both Larger and Shorter Catechisms)
To be consulted:
& On Bible times during our Lord’s ministry, here are two recommendations, one short and one long: Henri Daniel-Rops, Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (short); and Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (long)
John Calvin: Commentary on the New Testament (Morrison w/Torrances produced this twelve volume set on the New Testament and it’s a much better read than the Calvin Translation Society set of commentaries which have all his commentaries on entire Bible. But it’s expensive. I have both and I’m recommending both, CTS for OT and Morrison/Torrances for NT. Tomes of modern Bible scholars rarely hold a candle to Henry, Ryle, Luther, Calvin, etc. By the way, all Calvin’s commentaries on the entire Bible can be accessed for all of Scripture on sites such as Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) and Study Light.)
Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Bible (you can freely consult this on many websites—see links directly above—but make sure what you read is not the “concise,” but the unabridged, version.)
The New Bible Dictionary (no need for its companion volume, New Bible Commentary)
J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels (here I’m only providing a link to the first of four volumes)
Jonathan Edwards, Works (this is a real reach, but reading one single sermon is worth the cost of both volumes; maybe start by reading “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence“online.)
One final thing.
During seminary, I took everything I could from dear Roger Nicole (who after moving to Reformed Seminary in Orlando, went full bore into the feminist error, sad to say). He was reputed to be one of the best book buyers in America when it came to works dealing with church history, Scripture, theology, etc.
Talking with Dr. Nicole one day, knowing I had been frequenting used bookstores, he commented, “Never buy a book that’s been out less than ten years. If it’s any good, it will still be around—and cheap!” He smiled conspiratorially.
Speaking of which, as I was leaving South Hamilton for the Midwest—where I had just accepted a call up in Wisconsin—I took one last dive into the bookshelves of the thrift shop run by the local Episcopal church where Richard Lovelace, Lars and Betty Gren, and a host of others attended. I’d found a few good books there the past couple years, but only visited every six months or so.
This final visit, I saw Ryle’s Holiness—and it was hardbound! Excited, I opened it up and it was in perfect condition. Published in England decades earlier, it had only one marking. Inside the front cover was the signature, “Thomas Howard.”
Betty Gren’s (better known as Elisabeth Howard Elliot Leitch Gren) brother.
Author of Christ the Tiger. Of Splendor in the Ordinary (a great book).
English professor at Gordon College.
At the time, he’d just announced he had converted to Roman Catholicism. To their credit, Gordon College let him go, explaining to him and the community that his conversion to Rome was not compatible with their doctrinal commitments.
Just a couple years later, we were visiting my mother and she said she had been invited to Dave and Phyliss Howard’s home for dinner. Dad and Mother had been close to the Howard family back when we lived in Philly, so Dave and Phyliss were pleased to inform Mother that Tom and his wife, along with Betty and her husband, Lars, would be there.
Mary Lee’s family was also close to the Howard clan, so I asked Mother to say hello to them for us. Also, “Please tell Tom I was in the South Hamilton thrift shop of his former Episcopal church just before taking my first call and moving out here, and was delighted to pick up his copy of Holiness he’d discarded.
Have fun with the book list.
The point of warfare is to kill and win, but means to that end must be carefully considered. Man’s bloodlust is seldom suppressed when he realizes he possesses some new advantage over his enemy. Warfare has been a history of advantages gained by technological innovations, and often those advantages involve being able to hide oneself from the enemy.
Tim and Andrew discuss some of those technological advantages across history, particularly our latest—drones. The moral calculations in warfare are always complex.
And as we consider these things, please, can we remember to pray for those who make decisions for us about international relations and war?
Mentioned in the episode:
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power by Victor Davis Hanson
Flannery O’Connor: “If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the bind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber” (from A Memoir of Mary Ann).
Modern Times by Paul Johnson
More helpful links: one and two and three and four.
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
When I read Scripture, for decades any text that shows the distinction between the true and false shepherd I’ve been marking “FS.” On my Kindle are many hundreds of them. Before I started reading on Kindle, I’d filled the margins of several Bibles with this and similar notations.
When I was ordained, I figured it was my obligation to grow in knowledge of the responsibilities and temptations intrinsic to pastoral ministry; and thus the start of this habit continued now forty-two years.
The other day, I found and marked a new one I’d never noticed before:
As the lion or the young lion growls over his prey, against which a band of shepherds is called out… (Isaiah 31:4)
The duties of shepherds of animals bear directly on the the duties of shepherds of God’s sheep. Here I wrote “FS” in the margin to call attention to my duty to respond to God’s call when the growling lion has taken sheep for its prey and those sheep need to be rescued.
The false shepherd refuses to fight the lion and rescue the sheep from his mouth. He saves himself and the sheep dies. The good shepherd fights the lion, rescuing the sheep from his mouth although he might be maimed or die doing so.
When I started this habit, I used “FS” for false shepherd rather than “GS” for good shepherd. For years, in the back of my head, I wondered why? For a long time, I kept using “FS” simply for the sake of simplicity. Why confuse things by changing it, so the marginal note pointing to characteristics and duties of both false and good shepherds was the abbreviation for false shepherd.
Wouldn’t “GS” have been better? God’s people are not supposed to be motivated by warnings, are they? The Christian life is a life of faith—not fear–right? Doesn’t perfect love cast out all fear?
Is any act of faith legitimate that is motivated by listening carefully to warnings?
Haven’t we been listening to a monotone of “love and gratitude” being the only proper motivations for Christian living? God doesn’t scare the Christian, right? He is the perfectly loving and longsuffering Heavenly Father, isn’t He? And Jesus: at the very bottom at His most genuine Self is gentleness and lowliness. Surely we’ve all learned this by now?
No, but rather such are the doctrines of false shepherds and such false teaching destroys sheep and flocks. This can be said with certainty because I have multiple Bibles filled with “FS” next to this sort of deception issuing from the mouths of the lying prophets of Scripture.
I’ll record only one:
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?”
And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:21-23)
Good reader, I’m sure it’s crystal clear to you why every Bible I’ve marked “FS” in its margins has this notation next to these verses, above. Isn’t every pastor ordained to prophesy in Jesus’ Name? If so, pastors today are ground zero of those Jesus is warning, and His warning here is neither gentle nor lowly.
It is as intense and harsh and authoritative as it can be.
That’s why this wonderful warning has been superglued to my mind and conscience and heart my entire life of ministry. Oh Lord, please do not allow me to preach and practice lawlessness! Please know me. Inside and out. Through and through. Know my going out and my coming in. Know my daydreams and, when I sleep, my nightmares. Know my secret sins and my confessions and repentances.
“I don’t want to get away from You! Help me!!”
When you read the Bible, it’s helpful to write in the margins. But be careful not to note just the positive things; just the promises of good to come.
Be very careful to note that half of Scripture that is the warnings; the threats of bad to come.
If you read the sermons and letters of the prophets and apostles across Scripture, note how consistently their messages from God have both promises and warnings—Divinely balanced. Then think: if this is what was needed by God’s covenant people of the Old and New Testaments, what on earth would lead us to think—let alone for pastors and authors to preach and teach us—that this has changed; that all God’s people need today is reassurances of grace, providence, and coming glory; of the kindness, gentleness, lowliness, longsuffering, mercifulness, and love of the Godhead promised to all those who belong to Him?
Sermons, podcasts, and books quick to speak this way to God’s sheep are evil. They are flattery, and flattery is one of the most notorious marks of false shepherds warned against across Scripture:
There is nothing reliable in what they say. Their inward part is destruction itself. Their throat is an open grave. They flatter with their tongue.Hold them guilty, O God; by their own devices let them fall! In the multitude of their transgressions thrust them out, for they are rebellious against You. (Psalm 5:9-10)
Avoid flattering your own soul by giving more attention to God’s “yes” than His “no;” more attention to His promises than his threats and curses.
Leading those God has placed under your authority, instruction, and protection, be vigilant to serve them God’s “no” and warnings in direct proportion to their presence in His Own words to His Own people recorded in His Own Scripture.
So when you read your Bible, write “W” in the margin next to every promise and warning God gives us from His tender love. The father who doesn’t discipline his children doesn’t love them.
Why “W” for warning rather than “B”for blessing?
It’s helpful in our discipline of ourselves to note particularly the part of God’s revelation that our rich and decadent age is fully convinced does not apply to us.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. (2Timothy 3:16-17)
In Junior High, each Wednesday after school I went to my aunt’s house and did some work for her before she gave me dinner and sent me off to our church’s Wednesday evening youth program. At the time, “Aunt” Gail was in her eighties and I remember her promise box. This was a small box a little larger than a package of 3″ by 5″ cards, open at the top and containing a stack of little slips of paper with Scriptural promises. It was the centerpiece of her dining room table.
If you picked out a slip of paper, it always read something like:
Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Deuteronomy 31:6)
But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (Isaiah 41:10)
There were at least a hundred similar promises in that promise box. These boxes were popular among Evangelicals back in the early sixties and we smile condescendingly at such simplicity.
Even as a Junior Higher, I was uncomfortable with this Scripture diet. It didn’t match the Scriptures Dad would repeat to us at home. Here are three he repeated so often we knew them from memory:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. (James 1:8)
When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)
No matter how many slips of paper you picked up and read, every last one was positive. Negative promises were banished. One never read descriptions of God’s people’s tastes and sin such as this God spoke to His people through His prophet Isaiah:
[T]his is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. (Isaiah 30:9-11)
Terrible rejection of God’s word by God’s people, so what did God promise them?
Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon: Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters’ vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit. (Isaiah 30:12-14)
These are God’s promises to His people who reject His Word and prophets; who demand, “Speak unto us smooth things.”
Stop and ask yourself: should our children not have the privilege of growing up hearing us say to them, quoting God’s warning through Isaiah: “Speak unto us smooth things.” Should they not grow up knowing this by heart? Should we not quote words of God which help them tremble before our Holy God?
We don’t have promise boxes, now. We have promise pulpits and promise bestsellers and promise social media posts. Still, we are the same people of God needing the same diagnosis as God’s people Isaiah warned.
This particular text from Isaiah 30 is instructive to us because what is quoted above is immediately followed by this:
In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. (Isaiah 30:15)
For sure this was in every promise box, and still today it is endlessly repeated so that many of us know it by heart. But is that what Isaiah 30:15 actually says?
No. Rather, here is the entire verse:
For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not. (Isaiah 30:15)
How is it that we repeat everything but this final phrase? Is this final phrase not every bit as helpful as what precedes it? Why do we delete the negative and sobering and warning words of God? Is this not proof of our spiritual condition? Our complacency? Our presumption?
This meditation is written as my Bible reading has recently been in Isaiah and I’ve been overwhelmed with such warnings and terrors filling this prophetic word from our merciful Father to His Own people. The book is filled with such hard-edged and rough things. If our children need to eat vegetables and fruit as well as cake and candy, do they not need such a balanced diet of Scripture?
Have faith for all of Scripture being the only proper diet for the souls of your children. All of it—every last word.
God never flatters us. Why would we want to flatter our children? Flattery gets their souls nowhere but Hell. Teach them to run from that horrible place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.
This is an act of faith that you, father and mother, will never regret.
Tim and his wife, Mary Lee, react to some responses to the Out of Our Minds episode, The Family Table.
It is the responsibility of parents to train their children in their own homes so that they will submit to standards when in others’ homes. Their discipline must be constant and firm. Often, parents require the authority of pastors, pastors’ wives, elders, and elders’ wives to bear on their children, whether they asked for it or not and whether they like it or not. Yes, at times, they should take our children in hand and speak pointed words to them. Would that someone had come along to fill the gap left by the sinful neglect of Eli, Samuel, and King David!
Safe Pasture Podcast: feeding the Good Shepherd’s flock.
Intro and outro music is J. S. Bach’s, Sheep May Safely Graze (BWV 208):
Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Where a Shepherd guards them well
By still waters ere he feeds them,
To the fold he gently leads them,
Where securely they may dwell
Safe Pasture is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
The family meal: We set the table not only with food but also with conversation and leadership. Efficiency is not the priority of the day. We must slow down, guide the conversation, even after a long day at work. Time at the family dinner table serves as a microcosm of life. A father must concern himself with worship, etiquette (showing kindness to others), and directed conversation, while remembering that it takes discernment to determine which hills he will die on when someone says something obtuse.
Family meals and devotions should not be guilt trips. Keep them simple and focus on what you and your family enjoy most. Many husbands perform at the dinner table and during devotions to meet their wives’ expectations and aspirations.
For more, read or listen to Tim’s Daddy Tried: Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood.
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
NOTE: This post was originally published on Baylyblog.com back in 2012 under the title “A tribute to my mother-in-law, Margaret Louise Taylor, on her one-hundredth birthday…”
Mom Taylor studied for her degree in Home Economics during the late ’30s and early ’40s, graduating summa cum laude from Oregon State University. After marrying her childhood sweetheart, Ken Taylor, she gave birth to ten children in fourteen years.
Engaged for most of the years when the family was young as editorial director of a religious publishing house, her husband, Ken, brought home low wages, so frugality was a necessity and the degree served this young mother and her family very well…
Food preservation, hygiene, cooking, sewing, and home budgeting were part of the Home Economics curriculum, and along with the liberal arts training which came with every bachelor’s degree at the time, these young women graduated with specialized training for their profession of choice—motherhood.
Other women took similarly helpful majors in Elementary Education, Bible, Christian Education (my own mother’s major), and Nursing.
Higher education attacks motherhoodThen came the frontal assault on housewifery and motherhood carried out largely by a new and powerful aristocracy, the “Information Class.” (Today, we refer to them as the Chattering Class or the Liberal Elite.)1
During the late sixties and early seventies, this assault reached fever pitch and the campus environment of higher education was ground zero. College and university students were assigned propagandistic tracts such as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and joined the ranks of those determined to liberate the “Noras” of the world.2 Oxford historian Paul Johnson provides interesting historical details on A Doll’s House, noting that both Karl Marx’s youngest daughter Eleanor and George Bernard Shaw took part in its first private reading in London, Eleanor playing the title role of Nora.
Johnson writes, the “clear message” of A Doll’s House was that “marriage is not sacrosanct, the husband’s authority is open to challenge, [and] self-discovery matters more than anything else.” Johnson concludes, “[Ibsen] really started the women’s movement.”3
The assault on home economicsThe discipline of Home Economics (also known as “household arts”) was an early casualty. Traditionally, Home Economics had enjoyed a comfortably apolitical niche in the world of higher education and the discipline’s guardians had every reason to trust their academic peers would continue to be favorably disposed toward a curriculum so integrally tied to domestic tranquility. It was taken for granted that a dignified and competent wife and mother devoted to her family was a desirable constant in American culture.
But to the feminists, Home Economics was anything but apolitical, so they attacked.
The level of their hostility can be illustrated by Allan Carlson’s account of an address given to the 1972 American Home Economics Association Convention by Robin Morgan, the feminist editor of Sisterhood Is Powerful:
[Morgan] laid the matter squarely on the line. The main emphasis of the organization, she reminded the delegates, was “to reinforce three primary areas: marriage, the family, and the issue of consumerism …. Now those three areas…. [are] the primary areas that the radical women’s movement is out to destroy. So one could say that as a radical feminist, I am here addressing the enemy.”
Morgan charged that young women who passed through Home Economics courses were usually left as “a limp, gibbering mass of jelly waiting for marriage.” Indeed, by feminist standards, Home Economics was so corrupted in its nature that the speaker had only one unambiguous recommendation: “You can quit your jobs.” For those who must stay on, she urged that they work to eliminate the Home Economics requirement for junior and senior high school women and impose it instead on high school men. Home economists should also “tell people the truth” about the housewife’s role and “the despair she faces in her life” and “about the economic bigotry against women.”
Above all, those who stayed in the obsolete profession must work to “change” social mores, not reinforce them. For Home Economics was “hooked” into institutions that were “dying.”
Morgan concluded: “It’s your choice whether you’re going to crumble with that system … while history rolls over you or whether you’re going to move with [history]. I hope that you will join us “but we’re going to win in any event.”
The battle for Home Economics was over almost before it began, and soon the destruction of this discipline was complete.4 Somewhere in mothballs there may be a beautifully preserved specimen of a Home Economics department, but at this sitting I don’t recall running into one person with this major since my own entry into the world of higher education in 1971.
A woman in our congregation who teaches high school Home Economics told me recently that her professional association changed its name from the National Association of Home Economics Teachers to the National Association of Consumer Education. “It no longer has the word ‘home’ in it!” she lamented.
The demise of Home Economics is indicative of a sea change in the thought patterns and habits of women standing at the edge of adult life today. Although elementary education, Christian education, nursing, and even Home Economics are still studied, these degrees are more often chosen for their professional —not domestic—value. Women make academic decisions about coursework and majors with little thought of the value of specific areas of knowledge for running a home, raising a family, or educating children. Instead, the marketability of the degree is everything.
Working mothers become the normNot surprisingly, in a culture that disparages motherhood, we see a decline of conscious preparation for this task by women making academic, financial, and career decisions.
Yet, in lusty defiance of all the rhetoric, men and women still marry, give birth to children, and raise a family of their own.
Then, when children are born, reality hits: Who will be this child’s mother?
Predictably, the government’s answer is more bureaucrats paid by more taxpayers—bureaucrats who are trained and certified by other bureaucrats. Thus, through the expansion of the the government education system’s preschool and full-day kindergarten, liberal elites extend their toxic influence to the earliest days of our nation’s children.
There are significant economic reasons for our nation not to choose this direction, and these reasons have been obvious to thinking women and men across the ages. Chesterton sums up those reasons by pointing out that neither day care and preschool teachers, nor the money to pay them, grow on trees, and it is quite foolish to set up an industry to do what familial—and specifically maternal—love does naturally. Of government employees taking over the raising and care of our young children, he writes: “You are like a lunatic who should carefully water his garden with a watering-can, while holding up an umbrella to keep off the rain.”
The Christian calling of motherhoodThe reasons for Christians to raise, train, educate, discipline, and love their own children extend far beyond economic considerations. The making of the Christian home and the raising of children are at the very center of our calling as followers of Jesus Christ.
Scripture commands fathers to provide for their families5 and mothers to “be domestic,”6 to be devoted to their husbands, their children, and their home.”7
Scripture calls mothers and fathers to train their children,8to teach them about the Lord,9to feed them the Word of God “from infancy,”10and to explain to them the traditions of our Most Holy Faith while sitting in their living rooms, walking through the neighborhood, riding in the car, and lying in bed.11
God has decreed that one purpose of Christian marriage is to raise up for Him “a godly seed.”12
Daycare, preschool, and pumpingTo purport to be faithful to these Scriptural callings by packing our children off to daycare and government school employees is dishonest and disobedient. Its dishonesty consists in the fact that, although many Christian parents give high-minded reasons for turning over the nursing, discipline, and instruction of their children to others, quite often the true reason is that careers, financial security, and peer respect hold a higher place in their values than the approbation of God and the eternal well-being of the souls of their children.
This is not to say there aren’t many Christian women and men who, due to tragic life circumstances, find themselves with no choice in such matters. Consider, for instance, divorcees who work full-time to pay rent and put food on their tables; widowers whose children are cared for during the day by grandparents; and wives and husbands whose physical or mental handicaps require such attention that childrearing must at least partially be provided for by non-family members. Yet even in such circumstances the diligent Christian parent and his or her Christian community can do much to compensate for these circumstances creatively and lovingly.
For an excellent series of stories on just such a family which maintains its health and integrity despite the great hardship of the absence of their father, see the series Five Little Peppers and How they Grew, Five Little Peppers Midway, Five Little Peppers Grown Up, and Five Little Peppers: Phronsie Pepper published by Boston’s Lothrop Publishing Company a century ago. The first in the series has this dedication:
To the memory of my mother; wise in counsel—tender in judgment, and in all charity—strengthful in Christian faith and purpose—I dedicate, with reverence, this simple book.
Part time motherhood is a shameToday though, women can’t be women. In the too-normal case, face the matter squarely and we see that young women now find themselves in possession of all the old responsibilities along with a considerable number of new ones—not the least of which is preparing for, then competing within, the wage-earning world for that level of responsibility, opportunity, and salary commensurate with their abilities.
If they are successful in this competition, landing a good entry-level position with significant chance of improvement, they must be careful to maintain their productivity and commitment such that they don’t jeopardize the position they have prepared for and sought for so many years. Would it not be poor stewardship to win promotions at work only to lose the position later while trying to meet the needs of one’s spouse or children?
Today’s college woman gathers knowledge and degrees useful for the world of business, education, and health care—not marriage and family life. And yet…
There is overwhelming evidence these same women have not disengaged from the timeless rituals of courtship and marriage.
This then is the expectation of our culture for young women today: prepare for life-consuming responsibilities in the world and in the home—both at the same time—then balance these responsibilities for as long as you can as well as you can.
Some men and women are called by God to the single life and are aware of having been given this spiritual grace.13Most men and women, though, will be blessed by God with marriage and children, and are therefore to raise up a godly seed for the Lord.
Do we allow our daughters to desire motherhood?To fail to acknowledge this and make decisions accordingly in the critical years of life is so sad, really. Why should Christians join the world in despising housewifery and motherhood?
When young Christian women are ashamed to admit their choice of school, major, and method of financing their education is directly related to their commitment to be ready for marriage, making a home, and bearing and raising children, who would deny that the Church is taking her marching orders from the world?
Christians ask their children, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” Pity the poor young thing who answers, “I want to be a mother like Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, or the blessed Virgin Mary.” Her indoctrination is about to begin. “Yes dear, of course you will be a mother; but don’t you want to do something with your life? With your gifts? Don’t you have any, like, you know: aspirations? Wouldn’t you like to be a doctor or lawyer? Wouldn’t it be great to produce a better a better chip design for Intel? How would you like to play in an orchestra?”
Being a wife and mother isn’t enough anymore, is it?
Money, money, moneySo it all starts, and before we’re finished raising our daughters we will have indoctrinated them in the truths held most precious by our culture concerning womanhood: namely, that it’s not sufficient to dream and plan for marriage and motherhood. They must dream and plan for a professional life—a “career”—also.
You’ll never get anyone to admit it, but before it’s over the pressures of these life choices will have a life of their own with concomitant (and tragic) results for the woman, her husband, and their family. The collegiate woman who follows the culturally preferred pathway comes out of college prepared to work in a profession which will give her material rewards commensurate only with her faithfulness to her colleagues and employer. Often she will arrive at her first position saddled with the substantial debt she has accumulated purchasing her education. So when, within a year or two of graduation, marriage appears on the horizon, even if the couple desires to place parenthood above their reputation among their peers or their commitment to the woman’s career, the debt accrued during their pursuit of professional training and accreditation sinks their hopes and they realize having children is not feasible, financially.
The same logic inexorably leads the woman and her husband to the conclusion that, in the event of an accidental pregnancy (accidental according to the finite plans of man, that is), soon after the baby arrives, mother will return to her profession and give over the care of the child to someone else. Thus the mother will keep on the cutting edge of her career and grow dull in her God-given vocation of motherhood.
Restoring the dignity of motherhood will be hard workThis ought not to be. In God’s Household, the “pillar and foundation of the Truth,” we must do our best to honor the Lord in every area of our lives, especially this critical act of Christian faith and obedience which is providing for the Christian home a Christian mother who is well-prepared in every way to fulfill her calling.
You and I must do everything in our power to legitimate—no, to honor—the calling of motherhood, teaching our children as they grow up that no calling is higher. Where is the mother who has found she’s too bright for the task of honing her child’s mind and nurturing his heart?
A dear friend of mine, 83 years old, gave up her graduate fellowship in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard to marry another astronomer she had met there. Soon she had four children, and as they grew she devoted herself to those children, teaching them everything possible. She never missed one of their science fairs, and foregoing the faculty wives’ coffee klatches, she stayed home so she would be at the front door to welcome her children at the end of each school day. She explained it to me:
That’s when they tell you everything. When they walk in the door they’re eager to tell all the things of the day—things are welling up inside of them then. If you don’t get it then, you will not hear it, because they’ll put it aside and do other things.
My own mother adds that a parallel to meeting the children when they get home from school is, when the kids get older, staying up late at night to talk to them after their evening excursions. While her husband built telescopes, observed the sky, and published his research in the Astrophysical Journal, my dear sister Rita trained, nurtured, fed, and disciplined her little ones into adulthood. Today two of those four children have Ph.D.s and the other two married Ph.D.s.
Forgetting for the moment the spiritual side of these children’s instruction, let us ask the smaller question: was this a waste of good intellectual talent? Would those children have been better off—even intellectually—had Mrs. Cuffey completed her graduate work and been awarded the terminal degree?
At this point some would argue for inserting a delicate caveat to indicate there are many ways to raise children—many divergent styles of motherhood—and that some mothers can do it all, while others due to native limitations have to be more focused.
But is it not true that Mrs. Cuffey and others following her path have in fact chosen the more excellent way, devoting themselves to their husbands, children, and home in a way that another mother of children who works full-time outside the home is unable or refuses to? In fact, was not Mrs. Cuffey’s decision to give up her Harvard fellowship and turn toward home a decision laden with spiritual significance—not just for herself, but also for her husband, children, and future generations?
No woman should ever be apologetic for her motherhoodIf we teach our daughters the high calling of motherhood and they take that calling on as their own, it will often lead them to make decisions similar to the one Mrs. Cuffey made. In such cases, certainly their own parents, but also the people of God, must be prepared to provide them deep support for any steps they take to “decrease” that their husbands and children may increase, especially when those decisions close doors behind which lie prestigious honors and large financial rewards. In her excellent booklet, Where’s Mom: The High Calling of Wife and Mother in Biblical Perspective, Dorothy Patterson writes:
Homemaking, if pursued with energy, imagination, and skills, has as much challenge and opportunity, success and failure, growth and expansion, perks and incentives as any corporation, plus something no other position offers “working for people you love most and want to please the most.” Homemaking—being a full-time wife and mother—is not oppressive restraint of intellectual prowess for the community, but a release of wise instruction to your own household; it is the multiplication of a mother’s legacy to the generations to come and the generous bestowal of all God meant a mother to give to those entrusted to her care.14
My own motherAs I write, leaves are falling, winter is quickly approaching, and autumn’s smells and sounds draw me through fond memories back to my childhood home and my dear mother. There within that home Mother deposited the warmth and love which was its engine and which to this day causes her children and grandchildren such happiness when they return. What sort of a home was it? It was a home where the roof beams were raised to make way for grandparents preparing to die; a home where dinners were almost always late—seven or eight in the evening—because Mother was a perfectionist and had to serve food which showed her love right down to the details of the table service.
Most nights, prior to our sitting down at the table we’d go around turning out all the lights while Mother lit the candles. She loved eating by candlelight and we all got used to Grandpa’s curmudgeonly lament, “A man would like to see what he’s eating.”
Northern Illinois winters were bitterly cold, so while wind blew through oaks standing guard over our home rustling brittle leaves still clinging to branches in January, our front picture window framed three little boys sitting around the fireplace roasting their backs as Mother read aloud from the La-Z-Boy chair. Her husband was once more gone on a speaking engagement as she led us in family devotions—Bible reading and prayer. Then as the evening lengthened, she would pick up a book and read to us until she fell asleep, often mid-sentence Or she would read to us until the old mantle clock caught her eye. Jolted awake by the clock’s chimes (or coming to the end of a chapter), Mother would close the book, saying, “To bed, to bed, you sleepy heads!”
We’d beg, “Oh mother, don’t stop now! One more chapter, pleeease!” More often than not she’d relent, picking up where she’d just left off.
Around that fireplace I was first introduced to the five little Peppers, A. A. Milne, P. G. Wodehouse, and many others. Summertime, Mother’s attention turned to her gardens where she taught us to love beauty—but also to work. We’d complain about the work at times, but each night the dinner table rewarded our labors with tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, green peppers, string beans, squash—all picked fresh that afternoon from our own soil. And the table’s centerpiece would have been some combination of flowers from Mother’s large perennial garden, or roses cut from the hybrid teas carefully nursed through the previous winter.
When as a high school student I first read Pearl Buck’s, The Good Earth, I thought she must have known Mother.
Though I acknowledge this vision is misty-eyed and could well cause some struggling mothers a bout of depression as they think about all the opportunities they’ve lost over the years, who can miss the priceless gift my family, as well as the missionaries, pastors, neighbors, and friends who sat and basked in the warmth of our home, received out of the abundance of the heart of this woman who chose to abandon her life so she could love her husband and children and honor her father and mother in their old age by devoting herself to her home?
Can I ever express my gratitude to Mom Taylor? Also to “Mud” Bayly who was present, concerned, and content within those four walls which were the seedbed of most everything I have come to be? Such is the beauty of my two mothers who demonstrated their godliness in such humbly domestic ways.
By God’s grace, may their tribe increase.
Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised (Proverbs 31:25-30, RSV).
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References| ↑1 | Brigitte and Peter Berger, The War Over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground (Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983). | | ↑2 | For an excellent essay on these matters, see G. K. Chesterton’s, “The Drift from Domesticity,” in The Thing (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1948). Here Chesterton refers to Ibsen as “a very powerful dramatist and an exceedingly feeble philosopher.” | | ↑3 | Paul Johnson, The Intellectuals (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 98. | | ↑4 | See Allan C. Carlson, “Treason of the Professions: The Case of Home Economics,” The Family in America, (August 1987). | | ↑5 | Cf. Isaiah 58:6,7; 2Corinthians 12:14; 1Timothy 5:4. Especially, 1 Timothy 5:8: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” | | ↑6 | Titus 2:5 in the Revised Standard Version. | | ↑7 | ”Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no-one will malign the word of God” (Titus 2:3-5). | | ↑8 | Proverbs 22:6. | | ↑9 | ”Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4, NIV). | | ↑10 | ”But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2Timothy 3:14,15, NIV). | | ↑11 | Deuteronomy 11:18-21; Joshua 4:21-24; and Exodus 12:26-28. Also Deuteronomy 6:6-8: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads” (NIV). | | ↑12 | ”And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth” (Malachi 2:15, KJV). | | ↑13 | See the Apostle Paul’s discussion of this subject in 1Corinthians 7. | | ↑14 | Dorothy Patterson, Where’s Mom: The High Calling of Wife and Mother in Biblical Perspective. |
The internet is a balkanization of the populace: Everybody finds those they want to listen to. It is exceedingly difficult to teach somebody whose principal input in his life is through the internet. With a flesh-and-blood pastor, you at least can see his sins, his wife, and his children. Generally, with a pastor, you can’t escape his bad smells, but on the internet, everything and everyone is perfect.
The most difficult thing you do in ministry is to call your own congregation to repentance. It is easy to talk about the sins of people outside the church, but exceedingly costly to do so to those within the church. Your job is on the line. A godly church will love you for that. But there are a lot of bad congregations—those congregations that like their ears tickled. We should love our pastors when they make us angry with their helpfulness.
Yet, if pastors will preach to their congregations, their congregations will lead the world. It is not until we are challenged to submit to Scripture ourselves that we will be salt and light in the world. If there is going to be a Biblical church, the most important thing to do is to keep its discipline vivified. But we’d much rather spend our time fighting people who are opposed to Christianity. NETTR protects the “constituents,” and casts stones at the world.
Mentioned in the episode…
From Melville’s Moby Dick, chapter 8, “The Pulpit”: “What could be more full of meaning?- for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.”
Fundamentalism and American Culture by George Marsden
C.S. Lewis, from The Last Battle: “By mixing a little truth with it, they had made their lie far stronger.”
Robert Owen: “All the world is queer, save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.”
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
This episode addresses conversions to Roman Catholicism, particularly among pastors and elders within the various reformed churches. The argument made is that such conversions aren’t to Rome’s doctrine, but Rome’s culture—and particularly sacramentalism.
Sources:Eugene Quay, “Justifiable Abortion — Medical and Legal Foundations” (pts. 1 and 2),” The Georgetown Law Journal; Winter 1960 – Spring 1961, Vol. 40, Nos. 2 and 3.
Quay-Justifiable Abortion-I
Quay-Justifiable Abortion-II
Bio of Effie Quay.James Buchanan, The Doctrine of JustificationBuchanan-Justification
Decrees of Council of Trent.
Excerpts from Calvin’s Institutes concerning infant communion:
CALVIN: Furthermore, they object that there is no more reason to administer baptism to infants than the Lord’s Supper, which is not permitted to them. As if Scripture did not mark a wide difference in every respect! This permission was indeed commonly given in the ancient church, as is clear from Cyprian and Augustine, but the custom has deservedly fallen into disuse. For if we consider the peculiar character of baptism, surely it is an entrance and a sort of initiation into the church, through which we are numbered among God’s people: a sign of our spiritual regeneration, through which we are reborn as children of God. On the other hand, the Supper is given to older persons who, having passed tender infancy, can now take solid food.
This distinction is very clearly shown in Scripture. For with respect to baptism, the Lord there sets no definite age. But he does not similarly hold forth the Supper for all to partake of, but only for those who are capable of discerning the body and blood of the Lord, of examining their own conscience, of proclaiming the Lord’s death, and of considering its power.
Do we wish anything plainer than the apostle’s teaching when he exhorts each man to prove and search himself, then to eat of this bread and drink of this cup? A self-examination ought, therefore, to come first, and it is vain to expect this of infants. Again: “He who eats unworthily eats and drinks condemnation for himself, not discerning the body of the Lord”. If only those who know how to distinguish rightly the holiness of Christ’s body are able to participate worthily, why should we offer poison instead of life-giving food to our tender children? What is that command of the Lord: “Do this in remembrance of me”? What is that other command which the apostle derives from it: “As often as you eat this bread, you will proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes”? What remembrance of this thing, I ask, shall we require of infants when they have never grasped it? What preaching of the cross of Christ, the force and benefit of which their minds have not yet comprehended? None of these things is prescribed in baptism. Accordingly, there is a very great difference between these two signs, as we have noted in like signs also under the Old Testament. Circumcision, which is known to correspond to our baptism, had been appointed for infants. But the Passover, the place of which has been taken by the Supper, did not admit all guests indiscriminately, but was duly eaten only by those who were old enough to be able to inquire into its meaning. If these men had a particle of sound brain left, would they be blind to a thing so clear and obvious?
It troubles me to burden my readers with a heap of trifles. Nevertheless, it behooves us to make short work of the specious reasons which Servetus, not the least among the Anabaptists — indeed, the great glory of that tribe — girding himself for conflict, decided to bring forward…
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[Servetus] objects, that Christ’s symbols were instituted for remembrance, in order that everyone should remember that he was buried with Christ. I reply that what he has contrived out of his own head needs no refutation; indeed, what he applies to baptism rightly refers to the Sacred Supper, as Paul’s words show: “that each one examine himself”; there is nowhere any such thing said of baptism. From this we conclude that those who, because of their youth, are not yet capable of examination may rightly be baptized…
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He objects that they must be fed spiritual food if they are new men. The answer is easy: by baptism they are admitted into Christ’s flock, and the symbol of their adoption suffices them until as adults they are able to bear solid food. Therefore, we should wait for the time of examination, which God expressly requires in the Sacred Supper.
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Afterward, he objects that Christ calls all his people to the Sacred Supper. Yet it is clear enough that he admits none but those who are already prepared to celebrate the remembrance of his death. From this it follows that infants, whom he vouchsafed to embrace, remain in their distinct and proper rank until they grow up, and yet are not strangers. He objects that it is monstrous for a man, after being born, not to eat. I answer: souls are fed in another way than by the outward eating of the Supper; therefore, to infants Christ is nonetheless food, though they abstain from the symbol. But the case is different in baptism, by which only the door into the church is opened to them…
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He claims further that all Christians are brothers, but that, to us, children are not of that number so long as we keep them away from the Supper. But I return to that principle that only those who are members of Christ are heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven; then Christ’s embrace was the true token of adoption, by which infants are joined in common with adults, and that abstaining from the Supper for a time does not prevent them from belonging to the body of the church. Indeed, the thief converted on the cross did not fail to become a brother of the pious, although he never came to the Supper….
But it is no wonder that those reprobate spirits, as if agitated by a frenzy, drag in the crassest absurdities in defense of their errors. For God justly avenges their pride and obstinacy by such irrationality. I trust I have made plain how weakly Servetus has supported his little Anabaptist brothers. (Institutes; IV.16.30-31)
Safe Pasture Podcast: feeding the Good Shepherd’s flock.
Intro and outro music is J. S. Bach’s, Sheep May Safely Graze (BWV 208):
Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Where a Shepherd guards them well
By still waters ere he feeds them,
To the fold he gently leads them,
Where securely they may dwell
Safe Pasture is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
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Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
love, love, love
[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]
Love is one of the buzz words of our day. It’s been that way for a few generations now. Think of the Beatles; ‘all you need is love’ right? Even Disney’s first film, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’, was a culture-shifting redefinition of love as romantic infatuation. Now in the crazed aftermath of the Sexual Revolution, love means little more than unfettered sexual desire. Love is what you want to do in bed. Doesn’t matter what or with whom. Love is love.
Given how much scripture speaks of love, it’s essential for Christians today to understand what love really is and what love really isn’t. We’re all so incredibly steeped in our culture’s understanding of love that our understanding of love is warped, damaged, soiled. What we need is a good bath in the cleansing teaching of scripture. What does it mean in 1 John 4.16 that ‘God is love’? Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded us that the phrase ‘God is love’ tells us more about love than it does about God. But what is love? What does it even mean to love God or our neighbour? Enter Bullinger and his tenth sermon.
Right away Bullinger defines love much as he defined faith: a gift from God.
I call love a gift given to man from heaven. This gift makes man love God with all his heart – before and above all things – and his neighbour as himself…. Truly the love of God, with which he loved us, is the foundation and cause of our love, with which we love him; both of these together produce of the love of our neighbour.
God is the origin of our love. We don’t produce love for God, God gives us love for himself. God is the source of our love for himself, and God is the source of our love for our neighbour. We love because of God.
Now why a sermon on love? Why here, between his sermons on the Apostle’s Creed and his sermons on the Ten Commandments? Aside from the obvious truth that love for God is at the absolute centre of our Christianity, Bullinger is also introducing God’s law…by preaching on our love for God and our love for our neighbour. He speaks of a ‘double charity’ that ‘cannot be divided or severed’. Love of God and love of our neighbour go together…inseparably. It is this ‘double charity’ that explains why there are two tables of God’s law, the first table dealing with our love of God, and the second table dealing with our love of our neighbour.
This is really important. Most of us don’t think of ‘love’ and ‘law’ as going together. That’s a deep fault of our age. Numerous generic-Christian writers over the last generation (at least) have undermined the connection between love for God and God’s law. Even a number of Reformed pastors in our own day have sought to de-emphasise the need for Christians to connect God’s law to their love for God. Bullinger is writing to believers; these sermons are not primarily evangelistic. That means he’s writing to people who already profess to love God. He’s going to use the law of God as an instruction of what it does mean for a believer to love God. There’s a distinction at play here: using the law evangelistically shows a man his sin and his need for repentance; using the law evangelically shows a man what love for God looks like in the life of a believer. For unbelievers, the law comes first and points us to our need for God’s forgiveness. For believers, love comes first and produces our conformity to the law of Christ. This is just 1 John 4.7-21 and John 14.23-24 (and 15.9-17). For believers, love for God produces love for God’s law.
Now what is this love for God, and what does it look like in a believer?
We’re attached to God as the only, chief, and eternal goodness; in him we delight ourselves and are well pleased; we frame ourselves to his will and pleasure, having a continual regard and desire for him, the one whom we love. With love we love God most heartily.
What a statement. ‘With love we love God most heartily.’ We delight in God. We stick closely to him in our desires. We wrap our lives around what he wants and what pleases him. We are continually concerned about him. Too often I’m tempted to think of love for God as an intellectual matter. Love for God is thinking deep thoughts about him. Bullinger thinks love is something far deeper. Love for God is delighting in God. Soul-consuming enjoyment of who God is and what he does. ‘Let nothing in all the world be dearer to us than God,’ urges Bullinger.
This, he goes on to point out, is why scripture emphasises the various versions of ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.’ Loving God means we love him with our whole being, with all of us. Everything that makes us human. We love God wholly. We love God completely, and we also love God uniquely. Our love for God is monogamous: reserved for him alone.
But love for God doesn’t remain alone; love for God produces love for our neighbour. Bullinger defines this love: ‘We must love our neighbour simply, without any hidden or deceitful motives, with the very same love with which we love ourselves or with which Christ has loved us.’ He explains further that there are four parts to this love. 1) Love for our neighbours must be sincere, 2) it should be of the same quality of love with which we love ourselves, 3) it means we love with the measure of Christ’s love for us, and 4) we must actually love our neighbours in practice, even sacrificially.
Bullinger closes the sermon with the reminder that love is the essence of the law. He quotes the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.4-7, Romans 12.10,13-16, and Romans 13.8-10 with this point: love is the fulfilment of the law. The final passage Bullinger quotes is Philippians 2.1-11, Christ’s humility for our sakes.
So what is love? Love is being like Christ. What does it mean to love God? To consider God and delight in him above all else. What does it mean to love our neighbour? To consider our neighbour’s good above our own? How do we do these things? What do they look like in daily life? That’s why it’s time to look at the Ten Commandments.
Next, on laws, the law of nature, and the laws of men
Around 1980, people around the world began speaking of “human flourishing.” In 2000, the frequency of the phrase’s use in media flourished exponentially. Be suspicious of new words and phrases taking the world by storm. As Chesterton said, before you take a fence down you must determine why it was erected in the first place. New words and phrases often arise to replace and relegate truths that are no longer deemed to be kind or helpful.
We mention Tim Keller’s statement about “human flourishing.”We also mention Tim Keller’s response to Covenant Theological Seminary students’ questioning whether he preaches against homosexuality.Andrew mentions a section of The Screwtape Letters.***
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
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Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great ConversationIntro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
Within the Church, these commandments of God are most embarrassing. If few today preach through the Ten Commandments, almost no one preaches these commandments given by God in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall. The closest pastors and their people get to acknowledging their existence is the occasional lame reference to “human beings” having a duty to be “creation keepers.”
This is a reprehensible equivocation of God’s commands to be “fruitful,” “multiply,” “fill” the earth, “subdue” the earth, and “rule” over all creation.
What’s missing is obvious: man alone was created by God in His Own Image and Likeness. Man is not one among many animals. That’s Scientism’s Evolutionism, and Christians have always recognized that lie’s usefulness to men intent on embracing their inner ape as they slide back down to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Redwoods are not persons. They should not have standing in any court of law, nor should cats and dogs be pushed in baby strollers.
Every Christian knows animals were given us by God to rule; and more explicitly, to kill and eat. Yes, our dear brothers and sisters in Christ only avoid meat because of health reasons. But we can be hopeful their health reasons don’t preclude a simple reproduction of this command of God, Who said to Noah:
Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. (Genesis 9:3)
To the Christian, Western societies’ present consensus concerning the relationship between man and nature—that wilderness devoid of man is the supreme good—is directly contrary to the Order of Creation God established. It is commonly said and believed by unbelievers that nature is innocent, and thus the goal almost universally agreed upon by unbelievers is that man’s evil influence upon nature should, as much as possible, be removed. Even down to European movements calling for depopulating the earth.
Actually, this doesn’t make sense when we consider that the Enlightenment brought upon the Western world the universal denial of the Fall of man and consequent corruption of Original Sin. If all the great minds agree Adam did not Fall and Original Sin is that horrid and wicked doctrine Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson agreed it was, why is Nature good and Man bad?
My library has a 1962 volume by George Huntston Williams titled, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought: The Biblical Experience of the Desert in the History of Christianity & the Paradise Theme. It’s not available in any e-text format, but here is a lecture which was a precursor to the book and available online. Presented in 1959 (and therefore in the public domain),1 it is the Presidential Address given by Williams to the American Society of Church History on Dec. 29, 1958 in Washington, D.C. A few years after giving this lecture, Williams incorporated the text as Part IV of Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought published three years later, in 1962.
Found on JSTOR, this lecture had many of the problems which attend JSTOR texts, but I spent some time correcting and formating the work. Why make it available here?
A professor at Harvard Divinity School, Williams was Unitarian, and thus quite naturally a dissenter from all orthodoxies, political and religious. He is best known for his history of anabaptists and other fringe movements at the time of the Reformation titled The Radical Reformation.
The text of Williams’s address is reproduced here because of the help it provides us in coming to terms and growing in our understanding of, the present infatuation of the Western world with Nature’s wilderness, and the parallel denigration and humiliation of Man, God’s crown of all Creation.
We must think Biblically about our time, and what Scripture reveals about the sins we in the Western world have given ourselves to these past fifty years. Most abominable among them are our wholesale slaughter of our little ones and our drowning ourselves in sodomy and lesbianism.
Why are we doing this?
Here is the explanation of God’s Word:
Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed unto the ages. Amen.
For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions… (Romans 1:24-26)
When we worship Nature—wilderness, plants, and animals—rather than the Creator God Who made them for us, turning away from Him to worship what He made, He Himself turns us over to the lusts of our hearts. To impurity. To the dishonoring of our bodies. To lies.
Nature worship bears hideous fruit, physically and morally. God has ordained it so.
We and our children have not chosen LGBTQism, but God has smeared it all over us. It is His decision, not ours. His choice, not ours. And the fact that we glory in it is also his judgment on us.
He has given us over to shamelessness.
William’s speech/article also provides much wisdom pertaining to the current millenarianism which is at the foundation of the recent Christian Nationalism resurgence. Readers will note we have been here before, and that shocking recognition might be helpful in avoiding the errors being repeated today.
So now, I do hope you will take the time to read this helpful talk. I’ve highlit in bold those parts I found particularly interesting or helpful. Other emphases are original.
Finally, I regret to inform readers I hadn’t the inclination to keep and hyperlink the footnotes. Those who wish to find the footnotes may find them at the JSTOR link to the original article in Church History below.
The Wilderness and Paradise in the History of the Church
George Huntston Williams
Church History Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1959), pp. 3-24 (22 pages)
Published By: Cambridge University Press
THE WILDERNESS AND PARADISE IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH*
By GEORGE HUNTSTON WILLIAMS, Harvard Divinity School
*Under this title are comprehended four lectures, of which selected passages were read as the Presidential Address during the meetings of the American Society of Church History on Dec. 29, 1958 in Washington, D.C. The whole is to be published separately by Harpers;
Part IV follows the Introduction below.
INTRODUCTION
In his now classic “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” read before the American Historical Association in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner quoted from A New Guide for Emigrants to the West (second edition; Boston, 1837), written by the pioneer Baptist missionary and founder of seminaries, John Mason Peck, who died just a century ago. Peck had distinguished three types of Westerners: the pioneers, the settlers, and “the men of capital and enterprise.” Turner found this typology useful and adapted it in his succession of studies that have helped to shape our understanding of American history.
William Warren Sweet applied Turner’s frontier concept as a basic category in the interpretation of Christianity in America in a series of studies of religion on the frontier, a specialized aspect of which he presented a quarter of a century ago in his Presidential Address before the American Society of Church History. Sweet, too, mentioned Peck, in passing; for the founder of Rock Spring Seminary (1827), which was a forerunner of Shurtleff College in Alton, Illinois, was an important figure in the history of the Baptists and a representative builder of the Middle West.
In the present address on the significance of the wilderness concept in church history it is appropriate to allude once again, by way of introduction, to John Mason Peck. A certain Presbyterian minister, who had come recently into Illinois, later recalled the following incident. Making his way over the lonely prairies, interspersed here and there with patches of timber, he was arrested by the sound of an axe, and upon observing a woodman nearby, called to him with the question, “What are you doing here, stranger?”
“I am building a theological seminary,” was the reply.
“What, in these barrens?”
“Yes,” resounded the woodman, “I am planting the seed.” The planter in the wilderness was John M. Peck.
A seminary is a seed-bed or garden for the nurture of the clergy.
There are three millennia of biblical and ecclesiastical history behind the impulse to plant a seminary in the barrens, a garden in the wilderness, a paradise in the desert. It is indeed so basic a concept in Christian history that the wilderness motif might be said to exceed in significance the frontier as a category in the interpretation of not only American history but of church history in general; for like the frontier, the wilderness is not only geographical but psychological. It can be a state of mind as well as a state of nature. It can betoken alternatively either a state of bewilderment or a place of protective refuge and disciplined contemplation, as well as literally the wilds.
When the emigrants from the eastern seaboard of America moved into the West, they passed through a real wilderness haunted by wolves and savages, but the millennial tutelage of Scripture had charged that wilderness with epic significance and theological meaning. The wilderness had become, in fact, a complex symbol of significance both for the corporate and the mystical expressions of the Christian life.
The precariousness of the garden (Eden, Paradise, the Vineyard of the Lord) that can during a moral shift or deficiency in the changing seasons of the spirit be blasted by the breath of God and turned into a desert and at the same time the miraculous convertability of the wilderness into a refuge and a realm of purification has made of the paradise-wilderness motif a powerful religio-psychological motivation and scriptural resource in the never-ending to-and-fro of Christian history; in many reforming or restitutional movements; in many heretical, sectarian, and monastic formations; and in many mystical, educational, and missionary formulations and impulses.
The wilderness state or bewilderment is, for example, almost a technical theological term in certain traditions. It is one of the most useful images supplied by Scripture to designate the recurrent fact that even in the life of the redeemed there are periods or phases of partial failure, depression, uncertainty, and even defection. The children of Israel had been saved from bondage to this world, slavery in Egypt, by their miraculous passage through the Red Sea; they wandered in a wilderness for forty years before reaching the Promised Land; and many of them died murmuring against God and Moses and the new Commandments. Even Jesus after his baptism in the waters of Jordan faced a comparable period of forty days in the wilderness, tempted by Satan. It is expressly recorded that the very Spirit which had appeared as a dove at his baptism led him into that wilderness. Throughout the history of Christianity the parallel of the forty years and the forty days after the redemptive event of symbolic or exemplary baptism in the Red Sea and the Jordan River has been held up for typological contemplation as to the meaning of our temptations or aimless wanderings, our drynesses and murmurings, that seem to be the chronic blemishes of the Christian life.
The quest for the wilderness as a place of refuge prepared for the true Church persecuted by the world—the quest again for that wilderness which may through spiritual and moral subjugation even more than physical conquest, tilling, and seeding become a garden or Eden of the Lord—this is a basic impulse in the history of many branches and institutions of Christianity.
The account which follows is not, of course, a retracing of the pilgrimage of God’s people through history or even the idea of pilgrimage and wandering, except indirectly. It is not an account of successive interpretations of the Fall from the Garden, although it will touch upon this. Nor is it a pursuit of a specialized aspect of millennialism, although the eschatological mood is prominent. It is rather a sketch of successive, representative types of interpretation of the desert and the garden as expressions both of the grace and the wrath of God, of his protective and his punitive providence.
Although allegorization and typology, tendentious misappropriation and outright misconception of the original meaning of the wilderness in Scriptures are part of the account, the most interesting feature is the fact that successive Christian transcripts and permutations of the garden and wilderness texts have, with impressive frequency and inner cunning, despite all their variety and imprecision, faithfully reproduced the fascinatingly ambivalent character of the desert motif in the Old Testament itself.
Of almost equal interest is the fact that the wilderness texts of the Bible have become variously combined in the long course of Christian history, until at length certain conflations have become, as it were, stable compounds in the building up of increasingly complex exegetical syntheses with their own peculiar affinities, motion, and vitality more or less independent of the scriptural matrix from which they were derived.
Since the Bible was looked upon as a unit, I have, instead of considering the New Testament material as part of the early Christian elaboration of the Hebraic themes, brought the principal motifs of both the Old and the New Testament together in one movement. The symphony with its four movements, its motifs and variations on a theme, has indeed suggested the basic structure of the following composition as an artistic whole. For it is the main movements of the whole of the history of God’s people that I hope to evoke in tracing the two motifs of wilderness and garden through i) the Bible, ii) the ancient and the medieval Church, iii) the Reformation and modern times, and in iv) American Christianity, with the underlying expectation that we shall the better be able to understand ourselves as a Church with its schisms and dissensions and also our Christian or would-be Christian lives with all their darkness and temptations.
When Baptist missionary John Mason Peck prepared the foreword of his Guide to the West, he quoted *Isaiah 66:8. In exhilarated confidence that a new nation was indeed being “born at once.”* Another prophecy from the same book, Isaiah 51:3, may be appropriately taken as the motto of the following composition because of its perennial influence in the history of the Church:
For the Lord will comfort you; he will comfort all her waste places, And make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord….
With this haunting prophecy, we turn to the biblical world of Isaiah and to his forerunners and successors, in the interpretation of the wilderness and the garden.*
*A synopsis of the series as a whole is here inserted. The footnotes are numbered consecutively through the series. Ed
- WILDERNESS AND DESERT; GARDEN AND PARADISE IN THE BIBLE
- The Desert, the Deeps, and Death in the Old Testament
- The Essenes: A Coherent Wilderness Theology of Wandering, Warfare, and Water
- The Wilderness Theology of a Fourth Exodus as Recorded in the New Testament
- WILDERNESS AND PARADISE IN THE BAPTISMAL THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH OF THE MARTYRS, IN MONASTICISM, AND MYSTICISM
- Early Baptismal Theology
- The Flight to the Desert: The Provisional Paradise of the Monks
- The Wilderness in Mystical Theology and in the Formation of Heretical Conventicles in the Middle Ages
III. FLEEING TO AND PLANTING IN THE WILDERNESS IN THE REFORMATION PERIOD AND MODERN TIMES
- THE ENCLOSED GARDEN IN THE WILDERNESS OF THE NEW WORLD
In retrospect the epic gathering of a mighty Christian nation made up of peoples fleeing in successive generations from the bondage of the Old World across the Atlantic Ocean to a land of promise and of liberty has been seen as a providential repetition, in majestic, continental proportions, of the exodus of God’s ancient elect from bondage to Egypt. To be an American has been for successive immigrant generations to know a new birth of freedom. In fact, first citizenship papers have been for countless yearning thousands the outward sign of an invisible change of allegiance, a sense of belonging within the covenant of a new people of destiny. This sense of being a new people who had sloughed off the accents and the attributes of the Old World was perpetuated within these families unto the second and even the third generation. But if America has been for them the community of rebirth, the old world churches brought over with them represented the community, so to speak, of birth, their native land. In them, they found weekly solace from their being buffeted about in a new world whose ways and words, though fascinating, were not immediately understood; and during the Sunday sermon or mass their homesick hearts were drawn not only upwards to the Jerusalem above, but also backwards and across to the villages and hills of their homeland whence came also their inner strength. The immigrant church, to speak collectively, was the conservative, ethnico-cultural community of birth. No broad interpretation of American culture and American denominationalism can be complete without a full documentation of this epic reversal of, or at least continuous strain upon, the respective roles of church and commonwealth in the unfolding of American society.
But the interpretation of the crossing of the Atlantic and the trek of the pioneers from the eastern seaboard settlements into the opening west, in terms of the biblical exodus, has in point of fact been largely a retrospective reflection. It was not the wilderness of Sinai that our earliest forefathers had mostly in mind, but rather much more commonly the eschatologically oriented wilderness of Revelation 12:[1-]6 and the mystically saturated imagery of the wilderness in Canticles and in the allied texts in the pre-exilic prophets.
Thus the fourth section of our survey is entitled the Garden Enclosed, in the Wilderness. The heading would in fact adequately serve to cover an account of the divergent developments of the Garden motif, both in Latin American and in the Anglo-Germanic element within what has emerged as the United States of America.
I am, however, unprepared to pursue the former development, but it is surely noteworthy at the outset of any such presentation that the Catholic Christopher Columbus reported to his sovereigns that he had almost certainly discovered the terrestrial Paradise, while the Calvin- ist John Cotton of Boston, expounding Canticles, thought of the new plantations of the Lord coming up out of the wilderness of the New World, as a Garden Enclosed, “a Paradise, as if this were the garden of Eden.”
We cannot tarry with Columbus except to note that he knew from Genesis 2:8 that the Lord God had planted a garden eastward in Eden and basing his further calculations on Pierre d’Ailly’s Imago Mundi, he was prepared to find the Terrestrial Paradise at the first point of the Far East where the sun rose on the day of creation near the stem-prominence of the supposedly pear-shaped earth. To his royal patrons he wrote:]
I have already described my ideas concerning this hemisphere form, and I have no doubt, that if I could pass below the equinoctial line … I should find the earthly paradise, whither no one can go but by God’s permission; but this land which your Highnesses have now sent me to explore, is very extensive, and I think there are many other countries in the south, of which the world has never had any knowledge. I do not suppose that the earthly paradise is in the form of a rugged mountain, as the descriptions of it have made it appear, but that it is on the summit of the spot, which I have described. … I think also, that the water I have described may proceed from it, though it be far off, and that stopping at the place which I have just left, it forms this lake. There are great indications of this being the terrestrial paradise, for its site coincides with the opinion of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned ….
With this glimpse into the mood of the explorer of milder climes we return to the sterner mood of the Bay Colony, where the wilderness theme appears in almost every imprint from the colonial period.
- Choice Grain in the Wilderness of New England
John Eliot of Roxbury, Apostle to the Indians, will at once make us familiar with the northern mood. In his refutation of the charge in England that the Puritans were new fangled, he puns: The “Novangles are not New Fangles but No Fangles (in respect to worship);” and he goes on to say that they have come purposely into the barren wilderness in just their present location on the Bay, neither further north where furs are plentiful, nor to the south where the warm sun makes both for gold and tobacco:
Assuredly [he goes on] the better part of our plantations did undertake the enterprise with a suffering minde . . . to go into a wilderness where nothing appeareth but hard labour, wants, and wilderness-temptations (stumble not countrymen, at the repetition of that word, wilderness-temptations), of which it is written that they are trying times and places, Deuteronomy 8. There must be more then [sic] golden hopes to bear up the godly wise in such an undertaking, but when the injoyment of Christ in his pure Ordinances is better to the soul than all worldly comforts, then these things are but light afflictions.
Yankee frugality is not only a consequence of the climate but a biblical interpretation of the proper dress and deportment of the elect in the wilderness state.
The work from which we have quoted appears in a larger publication on the Indians as Judah scattered westward. The title-page quotes Canticles 8:8 on the little sister without breasts in application to the admittedly still immature spiritual state of the bewildered descendants of Judah; but Eliot was confident that their speech, which he had mastered the better to proclaim the Gospel among them, was akin Hebrew, which he knew well and thought of not only as the Ursprache and the divine language but also as the universal tongue of the future of mankind.
Thomas Shepard in nearby Cambridge was likewise concerned for the evangelization of the Indians, and the sympathizing editor in England introduced Shepard’s The Clear Sunshine of the Gospell, Breaking forth upon the Indians in New England (London, 1648) with these words:
. . . there can be no reason given why God should fence us, and suffer other places to lye wast, that we [white Englishmen] should bee his Garden, and other places a Wilderness, that he should feed us with the bread of Heaven, and suffer others to starve.
He then uses Paul’s argument (Romans 11:14) about the conversion of the Gentiles with a new twist:
Let these poor Indians stand up incentives to us, as the Apostle set up the Gentiles a provocation to the Iews: who knows but God gave life to New England to quicken [the] Old. . .?
Another Puritan, Roger Williams, likewise conspicuously concerned for the Indians, was the American counterpart of the English Seeker John Jackson, already quoted.
In his A Key into the Language of America (London, 1643) Williams offered not only a dictionary of Indian words and phrases but also valuable observations on life in the wilderness and reflections on its theological meaning. The orderly “Mould or forme of Government” among the aborigines and their relatively high sexual and family morality despite their nakedness prompted him to place a poem on their lips:
We weare no Cloaths, have many Gods, And yet our sinnes are lesse: You are Barbarians, Pagans wild, Your Land’s the Wilderness.
Observing the fruitfulness of the American wilderness, Williams turns to rebuke his fellow-European:
The Wildernesse remembers this [God’s command], The wild and howling land Answers the toyling labour of, The wildest Indians hand. But man [in Christian Europe] forgets his Maker, who, Framed him in Righteousnesse. A paradise in Paradise, now worse Then Indian wildernesse.
No pantheist but a mystical Calvinist with a deep sense of God’s sovereignty as creator of the universe, Williams read the book of the wilderness with its emblems much as he read Scripture typologically, as though it were a vast palimpsest unrolled before him. On one level of legibility he perceives: “As the same Sun shines on the Wildernesse that doth on a Garden so the same faithfull and all sufficient God, can comfort, feede and safely guide even through a desolate howling Wilderness.” Or again: “How sweetly doe all the severall sorts of Heavens Birds, in all Coasts of the World, preach unto Men the prayse of their Makers Wisedome, Power, and Goodness, who feedes them and their young ones Summer and Winter… ?” But on the more obscure level he discerned the lineaments of the fallen world: “The Wildernesse is a cleere resemblance of the world, where greedie and furious men persecute and devoure the harmlesse and innocent as the wilde beasts pursue and devoure the Hinds and Roes.” Thus the ambiguity of the desert in the Old Testament reasserts itself in Williams’ understanding of the wilderness of the New World.
Driven from Congregational Salem into a Providentially prepared wilderness, Williams turned quickly from a three-months experiment with believers’ baptism in Providence into a mature Seekerism, despairing of the rival pretensions of mutually exclusive sects. He interpreted Revelation 6:19 [sic], from which the “white horsemen” of the earlier chapters (understood of the apostles of Christ) are absent, as indicative of the “routing of the Church and Ministry of Christ Jesus, put to flight, and returned into the Wildernesse of desolation.”125 He was convinced that
there were no churches since those founded by the apostles and evangelists, nor could there be any, nor any pastors ordained, nor seals administered but by such, and that the Church was to want these all the time she continued in the Wilderness.
Unlike the Quakers, Williams recognized both a “nurturing” and a “generating” ministry. The latter he knew was possible only when the ministers were truly sent, in other words, apostles; and he beheld no apostles at work in his world; but unlike George Fox he looked for the coming of truly apostolic men. In the meantime against Fox he contended that
… there is a time of the coming out of the Babylonian Apostacy & Wilderness: there is a time of many Flocks pretending to be Christs and saying [Matt. 24:26]: Loe here he is &c. and a Command of Christ Jesus, goe not into the Wilderness, goe not into the private Chambers: There is a time when Christ Jesus his doves and loves cry out to him, 0 thou whome my Soule loveth, tell me where thou feedest, where thou makest thy Flock to rest at noon….
Against the godly commonwealth of the Bay Colony, Williams averred that the Puritans there “make the [enclosed] garden and the wilderness (as often I have intimated)—I say, the garden and the wilderness, the church and the world all one.” He continues:
The unknowing zeale of Constantine and other Emperours, did more hurt to Christ Jesus his Crowne and Kingdome, then the raging fury of the most bloody Neroes. In the persecutions of the later, Christians were sweet and fragrant, like spice pounded and beaten in morters: But tho good Emperours, persecuting some erroneous persons, Arrius, &c. an advancing the professours of some Truths of Christ (for there was no small number of Truths lost in those times) and maintaining by the materiall Sword, I say by this meanes Christianity was eclipsed and the Professors of it fell asleep, Cant. 5. Babel or confusion in, and by degrees the Gardens of the Churches of Saints were turned into the wildernesse of whole Nations, untill the whole World became Christian or Christendome, Revel. 12 & 13.
Sir Henry Vane, governor of Massachusetts Bay and leader of the Long Parliament, sympathetic with Antinomians and Seekers in Old and New England, completely interiorized the Kingdom of God as a state of conscience; but like Williams he understood the wilderness as a real place outside the mind where the eschatological combat is to be fought out “between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent”:
The Kingdom of God is within you and is the dominion of God in the conscience and spirit of the mind …. This Kingdom of Christ is capable of subsisting and being managed inwardly in the minds of His people, in hidden state concealed from the world …. Those that are in this Kingdom, and in whom the power of it is, are fitted to fly with the Church into the wilderness, and to continue in such a solitary, dispersed, desolate condition till God call them out of it. They have wells and springs opened to them in the wilderness, whence they draw the waters of salvation, without being in bondage to the life of sense.
The principal opponent of Williams was one with whom Antinomians and Seekers knew they had much in common, John Cotton. It is here the place to return to him and to other, more typical New England Puritans who, unlike Eliot, Shepard, and Williams, were not much interested in the evangelization of the Indians in the wilderness. But in the conception of the garden and the wilderness Williams and Cotton will be seen, as in the following quotation from Cotton, to be virtually interchangeable:
. . . under the Christian Emperors, Constantine and the rest opened the doors of the Church so wide, that all the garden of God was become a wilderness by an inundation of carnall people, Christian in name, but Pagans in heart, that were let in; and then that which was once a garden enclosed, was now made a wildernesse. …
In his Exposition of Canticles, as already indicated, Cotton dealt extensively with the church of the wilderness (3:6, 8:5 ff.), though without express reference to the American situation:
. . . All the world is a wildernesse, or at least a wilde field; onely, the Church is Gods garden or orchard, in these three respects, First, as the garden of Paradise was the habitation of Adam in the estate of innocence, so is the Church of all those who are renewed into innocency.
Secondly, as in the garden were all manner of pleasant and wholesome hearts and trees growing, so in the Church are all manner of usefull and savoury spirits.
Thirdly, as a man walketh in his garden to refresh himselfe; so doth Christ walke in his Church, yea calleth his friends thither to walke with him.
At home in the medieval monastic-sectarian tradition, Cotton rejoiced in the wilderness state as conducive to greater spiritual perspicuity. In introducing the work of a fellow New Englander on their Congregational Way to those of the Reformed Churches in Britain and on the Continent, Cotton wrote confidently:
Let no one despise this as the inelegant production of exiled and abandoned brethren, as long as it can be said of them, as Jehoshaphat (II Kings 3:12) once said of Elisha, who was living temporarily in the wilderness of Edom: “The word of the Lord is with him.” John, the beloved disciple of Christ, writes that he himself was carried away into the wilderness that he might see more clearly not only the judgment of the great whore but also the coming down from heaven of the chaste bride, the New Jerusalem, (Revelation 17:11, 21:2).
The book which Cotton thus introduced was The Answer to [the Dutch divine] Apollonius by the Ipswich pastor John Norton, designated for the task. In this work another feature of the New England wilderness theme was programmatically expressed, over against the Anglican right and the Anabaptist left. At issue with the Baptists, though otherwise Calvinistic, was believers’ baptism. Norton used the practice of the wilderness church of old Israel as a precedent for that of the New, and contended that the offspring of covenanted parents were already by virtue of their birth members of Christ’s Church. The uncircumcised Israelites were called “the congregation (ekklesia) in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38). Hence, “the church may be deprived of baptism for a time and yet remain a [true] church.”132
Against the de jure dizino episcopalian right Norton was, of course, adamant, but he deplored the bitter disagreements on polity among those who could broadly regard themselves as Reformed, and went so far as to hold that the
discord of brothers about the polity of the Gospel holds Christ away from his dominion, keeps the woman [the true Church] in the wilderness, and the [Anglican-Papal] harlot on the throne.
The provisional, though protective character of the wilderness State based upon Revelation is clearly reflected in a speech on the wharf, in England, preserved by Edward Johnson, which may well have been his own on departing:
I am now prest for the service of our Lord Christ, to rebuild the most glorious Edifice of Mount Sion in a Wilderness [Cf. Isaiah 61:4] and as John Baptist, I must cry, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths strait, for behold hee is comming againe, hee is comming to destroy Antichrist, and give the whore double to drinke the very dregs of his wrath [Revelation 18:6].
And William Stoughton (1631-1701) in an election sermon in Boston in 1668-69 stamped a phrase which has remained indelible in the memory of his descendants to this day: “God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into the wilderness.”
By the end of the colonial and the beginning of the provincial history of Massachusetts, Cotton Mather, still filled with hope for the holy experiment and yet depressed by the vagaries which even the Puritans were not spared, reflected in his extensive writing ambiguity of the meaning of the desert and wilderness in the Old Testament and the New. In one mood he holds that the North American wilderness was ordained by providence as a refuge and protection of the Reformed Church. In the other he thinks of the wilderness as the empire of Antichrist, filled with frightful hazards and the demonic minions of Satan.
In the latter frame of mind, in The Wonders of the Invisible World (Boston, 1693), a discourse based on Revelation 12:12, he wrote:
The first Planters of these Colonies were a Chosen Generation of men, who were first so Pure, as to disrelish many things which they thought wanted Reformation elsewhere; and yet withal so peaceable, that they Embraced a Voluntary Exile in a Squalid, horrid, American Desart, rather than to Live in Contentions with their Brethren. . . . The New- Englanders are a People of God settled in those, which were once the Devil’s Territories; and it may easily be supposed that the Devil was Exceddingly disturbed, when he perceived such a people here accomplishing the Promise of old made unto our Blessed Jesus, That He should have the Utmost parts of the Earth for His possession. . . . The Devil thus Irritated, immediately try’d all sorts of Methods to overturn this poor Plantation and so much of the Church, as was Fled into this Wilderness [Revelation 12], immediately found, The Serpent cast out of his Mouth a Flood for the carrying of it away.
Witchcraft in Salem was clearly the outcropping of the demonic. Here we find very much alive the Old Testament feeling for the desert as the haunt of death and the demonic. Being interested in the sciences of his day, Mather charged Satan and his devils with holding up the invention of much wholesome scientific aids and comforts, as spectacles, the printing press, and the telescope.138 In the American Wilderness he felt surrounded by devils and also the red savages who were in the service of the French-Catholic Antichrist.
The Wilderness thro’ which we are passing to the Promised Land [he continues] is all over fill’d with Fiery flying serpents …. All our way to Heaven, lies by the Dens of Lions, and the Mounts of Leopards [Canticles 4:8]; there are incredible Droves of Devils in our way.
In The Devil Discovered (Boston, 1693), he noted that it was precisely “when he was alone in the Wilderness” that the Devil “fell upon our Lord.” And more fully in Magnalia Christi Americana or The Ecclesiastical History of New England (London, 1702), he said:
It is written concerning our Lord Jesus Christ that he was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil; and the people of the Jesus Christ, led into the wilderness of New England, have not only met with continual temptation of the devil there; the wilderness having always had serpents in it; but also they have had in almost every new lustre of years, a new assault of extraordinary temptation upon them; a more than common hour and power of darkness.
But besides the demon-infested howling desert, Cotton Mather shared and significantly propagated the idea that in the wilderness of North America, James I had as the unwitting instrument of Providence given in letters patent “all that part of America, lying . . . from forty degrees . . . to the forty-eighth degree . . . throughout all firm lands from sea to sea” as “the spot of earth, which the God of heaven spied out for the seat of such evangelical, and ecclesiastical and very remarkable transactions, as require to be made an history; here ’twas that our blessed Jesus intended a resting place, must I say? or only a hiding place for those reformed Churches, which have given him a little accomplishment of his eternal Father’s promise unto him; to be, we hope, yet further accomplished, of having the utmost of the earth for his possession?” Mather had at this point already declared his intention of writing the history to date “of a New-English Israel” and now goes on to be eschatologically specific, however modestly, namely, “an history of some feeble attempts made in American hemisphere to anticipate the state of the New-Jerusalem far as the unavoidable vanity of human affairs and influence of Satan upon them would allow . . .”
Perhaps the most sober and authentically scriptural balance in interpreting the negative and positive sense of the desert was struck by John Higginson in his “Attestation” printed as a foreword to Magnalia, wherein he presents the ten reasons why his colleague Cotton Mather had undertaken the Magnalia; and four of the reasons admirably summarize the theological meaning the wilderness held New Englanders as they looked back on their heroic period:
Sixthly, That the present generation may remember the way wherein the Lord hath led his people in this wilderness, for so many years past unto this day; [according to Deuteronomy 8:2 …]. All considering persons cannot but observe, that our wilderness-condition hath been full of humbling, trying, distressing providences.
Eighthly, and whereas it may be truly said, (as Jeremiah 2:3, 21) that when this people began to follow the Lord unto this wilderness, they were holiness to the Lord, and he planted them as a noble vine; yet if in process of time, when they are greatly increased and multiplied, they should so far degenerate, as to forget the religious design of their fathers, and forsak the holy ways of God . . . then this Book may be a witness against them….
Ninthly, that the little daughter [without breasts, Canticles] New-England in America, may bow down herself to her mother [the bride] England, in Europe, presenting this memorial unto her; assuring her that though by some of her angry brethren, she was forced to make a local secession; yet not a separation, but hath always retained a dutiful respect to the Church of God in England; and giving some account to her, how graciously the Lord has dealt with herself in “a remote wilderness.”. . .
Lastly, That this present history may stand as a monument, in relation to future times, of a fuller and better reformation of the Church of God, than it hath yet appeared in the world. For by this Essay it may be seen, that a farther practical reformation than that which began at the first coming out of the darkness of Popery, was aimed at, and endeavoured by a great number of voluntary exiles, that came into a wilderness for that very end, that hence they might be free from human additions and inventions in the worship of God, and might produce the positive part of divine institutions, according to the word of God … .
Higginson and Mather awaited further reformation preparatory to the final building up of Zion.
Jonathan Edwards was likewise bent upon reformation, but like his contemporary, John Wesley, he largely interiorized and individualized the meaning of wilderness, and for him the promised land was heaven and not a realizable godly commonwealth. The revival which he preached was the ordained means of coming out of the wilderness of the world. In his sermon, “The True Christian’s Life, A Journey Towards Heaven,”’43 Edwards appropriately used Hebrews (11:13 f.) which, as has been indicated, anciently represented the stages of the exodus as the rungs of a ladder:
The land that we have to travel through is a wilderness; there are many mountains, rockes, and rough places that we must go over in the way; and there is a necessity that we should lay out our strength ….
What better end can you propose to your journey than to obtain heaven? Here you are placed in this world, in this wilderness, and have your choice given you, that you may travel which way you please. And there is one way which leads to heaven ….
If we spend our lives so as to [be] only a journeying towards heaven, this will be the way to have death, that is the end of the journey, an entrance into heaven, not terrible but comfortable. … Is it terrible for him [the traveller] to think that he is almost got to his journey’s end? . . . Were the children of Israel sorry, after forty years travel in the Wilderness, when they had almost got to Canaan?
With the Treaty of Quebec in 1763 and the subsequent generous concessions made to the Catholics by the British in the north, the fear of Catholicism was suddenly intensified.. [sic]
But as the break with Britain approached, some of the language used of Rome was transferred to the Anglican Tories. Escape from bondage to Pharaoh became a stock allusion in the sermons preached annually before the uniformed militia on Lexington green in commemoration of the decisive action of April 19, 1776. In 1777 [sic; the sermon was actually preached on January 17, 1776]] the Patriot preacher Samuel Sherwood (1730-1783) delivered on a public occasion his The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness: An Address on the Times, in which he enlarged on the persecuted Waldenses and their Protestant successors and of three colleges in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, in his The Little Stone and the Great Image averred that the wilderness of Revelation 12:6 was America, providing sanctuary for the Huguenots from France, the Scots, the English Independents, and other godly Reformed refugees from the scarlet woman and the red dragon. And in the same year the music press of Oliver Ditson sang the anti-Anglican Republican lines:
Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring
A Church without a bishop, a State without a king.
At this point our account blends into many standard treatments of the Christian factors in the rise of American nationality and of the secularization of the doctrine of election as “manifest destiny.” But there are two specialized permutations of the wilderness theme that can be mentioned before returning to the seed-plot in the wilderness, with which our story began. I refer to the Mormon trek and the haunting sense of the wilderness in a strikingly large number of Negro spirituals.
- Isaiah and Canticles in the Desert of Joseph Smith before the Mormon Exodus to Utah
The trek of the Mormons from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois under severe persecution to Utah at once suggests the epic of Exodus and is obviously the closest American parallel to the flight of the Boers to escape British control. Surprisingly, however, the language of Exodus is not at all prominent in the extant documents. This can be only partly explained by the fact that Joseph Smith’s own Book of Mormon and his Commandments had been interposed between the Bible and the daily experience of the Mormons on the frontier. In any event it is in the works of Smith himself that the wilderness motif in Mormonism can be best examined at its source.
Mormon Restorationism stresses the recovery of not only the apostolic church but also the Aaronic (lower) and the Melchizedek (higher) priesthoods. This took place in two stages in 1829, a year before the printing of The Book of Mormon. Smith declared that he went into the woods along the Susquehanna River near the New York-Pennsylvania boundary to pray and inquire of the Lord respecting baptism for the remission of sins. John the Baptist descended in a cloud from heaven ordaining him and his associate Oliver Cowdery to the Aaronic priesthood with the power to baptize. Accordingly, on May 15 Joseph and Oliver immersed each other in turn “by being buried in the liquid grave.” The power of ordination, however, was still understood to be wanting. The restoration of the Melchizedek priesthood was authorized by a second oracle:
A voice of the Lord in the wilderness of Fayette, Seneca county, declaring the three witnesses to bear record of the book. The voice of Michael on the banks of the Susquehanna, detecting the devil when he appeared as an angel of light. The voice of Peter, James, and John in the wilderness between Harmony, Susquehanna county, and Colesville, Broome county, on the Susquehanna river, declaring themselves as possessing the keys of the kingdom, and of the dispensation of the fullness of times.
With the baptismal and apostolic powers of the two priesthoods restored Smith and his collaborator proceeded to organize their strictly immersionist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, April 6, 1830. A new Israel had begun to gather in the wilderness, moving westward under the compulsion of both persecution and a phantom promise.
In his Commandment146 at the dedication of the Temple in Kirtland, Ohio, March 27, 1836, he declared:
[Remember all thy Church] that thy Church may [rise up and]147 come forth out of the Wilderness (Canticles 6:10] of darkness, and shine forth fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners [Canticles 6:43.]
That [She] be adorned as a bride [Revelation 21:2] for that day when thou shalt unvail the heavens, and cause the mountains to flow down at thy presence, and the valleys to be exalted, the rough places made smooth [Isaiah 40:3]; and the glory may fill the earth.
The allusion to the army terrible with banners in combination with other scriptural passages suggests John Bunyan’s House in the Forest of Lebanon.
In the Book of Mormon149 it is written:
For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the Garden of the Lord.
The wilderness tabernacle suggested the Mormon term for their local meetings (- parishes), namely, “stakes,” in dependence on Isaiah 33:20 and 54:2: “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out, hold not back, lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.” Zion was thus an overarching concept. an invisible canopy above a people gathering from all sides. Yet Zion could be thought of as quite localized in Jackson County, Missouri, for example, which had been spied out and identified by Joseph Smith and his men as its eventual location.
Driven to Utah, interpreters of the trek looked back upon their experience as providential. Commenting on Zion in the wilderness in Section 97 of Smith’s Doctrines and Covenants, the commentators appealed to Revelation 12:6 in accounting for the way in which the Mormon Church had escaped, among other disasters, the scourge of the Civil War by going into the Rocky Mountain wilderness prepared by God.
Turning from the Mormons to the Negroes, we take up another peculiarly American permutation of the wilderness theme.151
- Yo Wanna Fin’ Jesus, Go in de Wilderness
As in the Bible and most of the traditions (with the almost unique exception of Wesley), so in the Negro spirituals the wilderness has both a positive and a negative sense. On the negative side are those spirituals of Methodist lineage like “Ain’t I glad I got out of the wilderness,” “Done foun’ my lost sheep … Go to de wilderness, seek an’ fin’,” and “In his name we come out ‘d’ wilderness,” wherein the experience of spiritual and moral struggle is portrayed. But by far the more distinctive meaning (even when the associated tune is derived from a Methodist hymn with the negative sense of the term) is that which has as its background the slave assemblies in the forest. The aboriginal secret meetings brought over from Africa and stealthily perpetuated were gradually given an increasingly Christian reinforcement and coloration by what the slaves overheard in sermon and hymn about the Bride (Canticles) or the Woman in the Wilderness (Revelation). Their early morning “valley” or “wilderness” assemblies were sometimes magnanimously countenanced by the white masters during a revival, but were more often furtively attended while the masters were sleeping. There was usually a tub of water allegedly to drown the sound, actually carrying over a forgotten African jungle appurtenance, possibly also interpreted as the pool of water in the wilderness in so many of the desert passages in the Bible. In the following spiritual the imagery of the Bride, the Woman, and the Devil of the Jordanian temptation scene seem to be intertwined. In other words the positive and negative senses of the wilderness experience are combined:
Ef ye want to see Jesus, Go in de wilderness, . . Leanin’ on de Lord.
Oh, brother, how d’ye feel, when ye come out de wilderness, Leanin’
on de Lord? … I heard de deb’l howlin’, when I come out de wilderness
I gib de deb’l a battle, when I come out de wilderness.
The quest for Jesus in the wilderness for secret solace and revival and fellowship appears frequently: “Jesus a waitin’ to meet you in de wilderness,” “I seek my Lord in de wilderness for I am goin’ home,” etc.
Because the wilderness meeting was at once the Bride, the Woman, and, by extension, Mary the Mother of Jesus, the slaves of St. Helena Island had a tradition that the much-sought Jesus was actually born in the secret meetings in the woods, and they tiptoed in the early morning in order not to disturb the Babe of Bethlehem.
In some spirituals Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the Woman of the Wilderness are combined as “Weeping Mary,” symbol of the Negro Christians, their church of the wilderness outside the white man’s church. In one spiritual she rocks her child all night in “a weary lan'” Another spiritual addresses the more or less secret Negro Christian fellowship:
Run, Mary, Run, Mary, run, Oh, run, Mary, run, I know de oder worl’ ‘m not like dis. Fire in de east, an’ fire in de west, I know de oder worl’ ‘m not like dis, Bound to burn de wilderness, I know de oder worl’ ‘m not like dis. Jordan’s riber is a riber to cross, I know de oder worl’ ‘m not like dis, Stretch your rod an’ come across, I know de oder worl’ ‘m not like dis.
The allusion here to the burning of the wilderness is not entirely clear from purely scriptural sources. It reappears in “What Yo’ Gwine to do When Yo’ Lamp Burn Down?” and fire “burn down de wilderness.”
From wilderness assembly and its big city equivalent “the praise house” several negro denominational movements have sprung.
From wilderness assembly and its big city equivalent “the praise house” several negro denominational movements have sprung. From the haunting spirituals of the slaves and the oracles and commandments of the seer of Palmyra, New York, we turn back to that major cultural expression of our theme, the building of the seminary in the wilderness with which our long survey began.
- The Seminary in the Wilderness
Back at the beginning of Dartmouth, Eleazer Wheelock had appealed to the wilderness motif in choosing for the college seal Vox Clantantis in Deserto [a voice crying in the wilderness]. The eschatological conviction that a seminary, as the seed bed of proclaimers of the gospel, was the God-ordained means of building up the waste places of Zion (the collective term for the churches of the Congregational Way) was everywhere stressed.
Dr. Wheelock, like the earlier John Eliot of Roxbury, had been convinced that God manifested his displeasure against New Englanders for their failure to bring the gospel to the Indians. Hence his great interest in founding a missionary school for them. In moving north from his first work in Lebanon to Hanover on the Connecticut River, Wheelock “derived support from the example of the prophet Elisha (II Kings 6:1-7) who founded a college, or school of the prophets in the wilderness of Jordan.”
A poem written in his lifetime by a pupil of Wheelock alluded to the college as the garden of the Lord, a provisional paradise in the desert:
Thus we behold, in pathless forests sprung,
A fruitful tree, with golden apples hung,
Inclos’d around with shades and gloomy wastes,
Expos’d to beating rains, and stormy blasts,
So Dartmouth seated on her desert plain,
Try’d, disappointed, and oppress’d with pain,
Look’d back, and long’d for her old seat again.
In the founding and interpreting of Dartmouth the missionary motif and the recovery of the apple of paradise through the study of the golden apples of the classical tradition are here all brought together in the seminary in the wilderness. In 1811, Wheelock’s biographers could write of him and his missionary school, now a leading college:
How would the good Doctor, like aged Simon, with the infant Redeemer in his arms, have rejoiced to see our day, when the tongue of the dumb sings for joy, and the wilderness blossoms as the rose. Perhaps God designed him as the morning star, to be the harbinger of this resplendent light.
The rock smitten by the hand of faith watered the camp, and sustained the church of God in her travels through the wilderness.
The wilderness motif, as interpreted by all New Englanders, was at once the experience of punitive testing (Exodus) and the providentially prepared environment in which the true but hidden church (Revelation 12) could gather strength for a world mission to the pagans near and far. Thus the establishment of a seminary, a seed-plot of preachers and missionaries, in the wilderness or desert after a “long drought,” sustained by copious “showers of grace,” the revivals, was a mark of “the grand era of missions” at home and abroad, setting off the present from “all former ages.” President Timothy Dwight of Yale, for example, preaching in 1812, spoke of all the colleges in the New World as seminaries for the training of evangelical preachers, defining their evangel as the whole design of both the Old and the New Testaments, and he pictured the revival as a shower upon the desert:
The Gospel is the rain and sunshine of heaven upon the moral world. Wherever its beams are shed, and its showers fall, the wilderness blossoms as the rose, and the desert as the garden of God: while the world beside is an Arabian waste, where no fountains flow, and no verdure springs, and where life itself fades, languishes and expires.
Into “the wilderness of Zion,” he declared, preachers were coming like angels from heaven, preaching another gospel-Unitarians, Universalists, Methodists, Freewill Baptists, all thinly veiled behind his characterizations, while all about were multitudes who did not even pretend to any other conviction than French infidelity. It was the clear implication of his sermon that every man preparing to “enter the desk” would have to be adequately fitted intellectually and morally to challenge the angels of both heresy and infidelity. Hence the urgent need, expressed also by Lyman Beecher in A Plea for the West (1835), for many more liberal arts colleges and seminaries. Approaching the close of his sermon Dwight reminded his largely clerical congregation:
Every Minister is here constituted by Christ the shepherd of his flock, “to watch as one that must give an account”; to feed them with the bread of life; and to conduct them through this wilderness to regions of everlasting rest!
EPILOGUE
We need not carry the theme further. Connecticut-born John Mason Peck with whom we began in the barrens of Illinois, in 1827, chopping in the wilderness to build Rock Spring Seminary, was filled with the same convictions as his forerunners, Increase Mather of Harvard, Eleazar Wheelock of Dartmouth and Timothy Dwight of Yale.
To conclude, we may paraphrase Frederick Jackson Turner: Up almost to our own day, many major and minor movements in Christian history have been in a substantial degree the history of the interpretation of the biblical and post-biblical meanings of wilderness and paradise in the experience of God’s ongoing Israel.
One might, to be sure, ask at this point whether the biblical theology of the desert and the accumulative interpretations thereof actually induced the movements or whether, to explain their inner experience, the mystics simply resorted to the imaginative language of scripture; and whether to justify mass migrations and sectarian secessions, their leaders did not simply appeal to plausible scriptural sanctions.
The motives of the children of Adam, even when they are Christians, perhaps especially when they are Christians, are mixed; but I would not have recounted this long story, were I not convinced that theological ideas move history and that behind these movements, even when occasionally destructive or futile, we must seek to descry the Lord of hosts who may be either punishing or protecting us, as also the biblical prophets themselves perceived when they observed how the desert can through faith and the showers of the spirit blossom as the rose, and conversely, how even the enclosed gardens with their shrine and sanctuary can be blasted by the wrath of God.
The Christian, and perhaps especially in our time the Christian scholar,166 lives in an enclosed garden, a kind of provisional paradise sustained by the grace mediated through the academic fellowship of memory and hope. Disciplined by his professional obligation and opportunity to come face to face with the many before him in the vast communio sanctorum of the centuries, he should feel strengthened to join his more activist Christian colleagues with renewing devotion, in the never ending task of holding back the moral and spiritual wilderness on the frontier of which man precariously maintains his hold upon the life that God created and called good.
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References| ↑1 | Unless the copyright was renewed by 1987. |
Gender is man’s perversion of sex.
Gender is a social construct. Gender is plastic. Gender is a continuum of choices forced upon ever younger children caught in a power struggle between government teachers, government courts, and the father and mother to whom God presented this child, His blessing.
Yesterday, news from Switzerland announced the Swiss government’s kidnapping of a child from his father and mother to enforce government employees’ judgment the child’s body should be mutilated. It all started with the government’s puberty blockers. The father and mother were opposed to the government mutilating their child, and they lost.
Their child was thirteen when the government began their mutilation of his body with chemicals called “puberty-blockers.”
The rubric by which government authorities justify stealing children from parents and mutilating their bodies is a condition they refer to as “gender dysphoria.”
“Dysphoria” is defined as a general state of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, or restlessness. “Dysphoria” is the opposite of “euphoria,” so “gender dysphoria” is the label placed on a child or adult who is unhappy or restless or unsettled with his or her… what?
Well, since it’s called “gender dysphoria,” it must be the child is unhappy or unsettled with his gender. On the other hand, gender is plastic, so why is this a sickness or medical condition needing diagnosis and healthcare authorities prescribing and carrying out bodily mutilations? Let the child choose where on the gender continuum to stand. Anywhere is fine, and be done with it.
“I’m a man. I’m a woman. I’m a manwoman. I’m a womanman.”
Throw in “I’m a furry” for good measure. Why stop at sex when we can throw in species as well? If we’re going to help children defy God’s decree that each one of us is either male or female, why not help children also defy God’s decree that each one of us is made in His Image and likeness. Animals aren’t made in His Image and Likeness, so why not carry our rebellion forward?
Pretty soon, medical ghouls will be diagnosing “species dysphoria” and stealing children from their father and mother in order to carry out castrations and mastectomies followed by tail grafts obtained from cats and dogs.
This is true. At their lockers in the hallway between classes, a friend’s child recently was bitten by a furry. One wonders whether she was tested for rabies?
What does Jesus say?
He who created from the beginning made them male and female. (Matthew 19:4)
From Creation, God made us either male or female, either man or woman.
Then He named our race “Adam”:
He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Adam [Man] in the day when they were created. (Genesis 5:2.)
From the beginning, God created our race two sexes—Adam or Eve, male or female, man or woman; and this bifurcation continues down to this very moment. During the coming 60 seconds, 260 children will be born around the world, and every one of those little ones will, by God, be conceived either a boy or girl; male or female. One or the other, from the first moment of his life—the moment of his conception.
Each of us was created by God male or female. There was never a single instant in our existence when we were neither man nor woman; and even less, something halfway between. God decreed our sex at the moment of our conception.
Still today, there are fathers and mothers who, seeking the romanticism of the moment, prefer to wait for the big news. The doctor’s announcement at the end of the mother’s labor, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” Even though they’re first finding out at the moment of birth, the father and mother know their little one’s sex had been determined and known by God for nine months already.
How does God do it?
The mother’s egg has an X chromosome while the father’s sperm has either an X or Y chromosome. If the mother’s egg is fertilized by the father’s sperm with an X chromosome, the baby is a girl. If the mother’s egg is fertilized by the father’s sperm with a Y chromosome, the baby is a boy. From the moment of conception, the very beginning.
Being ideological soldiers in Western society’s war against our Creator’s male and female though, scientists breathlessly report every latest study which purports to prove that sex is fluid, not fixed:
Medical researchers have made a new discovery about how a baby’s sex is determined: it’s not just about the X-Y chromosomes, but involves a ‘regulator’ that increases or decreases the activity of genes which decide if we become male or female.
The final phrase is the one to note: “if we become male or female.”
Here they speak of the baby who has already been conceived male or female. This little child has either an X and a Y chromosome, or two X chromosomes, and this was so from his or her moment of fertilization. But they deny this truth, saying this little boy or girl is not male or female. “We” only “become male or female” as the weeks and months go by and we develop in our mother’s womb.
Big lies are sold with partial truths, and it’s so with this “new discovery” being announced by “medical researchers.” Moving below the headline and abstract, the reader learns what has been “discovered” is the influence segments of DNA referred to as “enhancers” have on the gene SRY acting on the gene SOX9, and that proper levels of these enhancers lead to the normal development of testes in the boy whereas improper levels lead to the abnormal development of that boy’s testes.
However, if there is some disruption to SOX9 activity and only low levels are present, a testis will not develop resulting in a baby with a disorder of sex development.
Lead author of the study, Professor Andrew Sinclair, said that 90 percent of human DNA is made up of so called ‘junk DNA or dark matter’ which contains no genes but does carry important regulators that increase or decrease gene activity.
“We identified XX patients who would normally have ovaries and be female but carried extra copies of these enhancers, (high levels of SOX9) and instead developed testes. In addition, we found XY patients who [would normally have testes and be male but] had lost these SOX9 enhancers, (low levels of SOX9) and developed ovaries instead of testes.”1
An old movie had a title that’s always stuck in my mind: “Sex, Lies, and Videotape.” Remove “videotape,” and we have a perfect title for the documentary of our age: “Sex Lies.”
As a child coming of age under my father’s godly authority, this was one of his more frequent warnings:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9; KJV.)
Dad wasn’t warning me not to trust others. He was warning me not to trust myself. Regularly he repeated Scripture’s declaration concerning everyman, that our hearts are far more deceitful than we can imagine, and we should never forget this as we judge ourselves—our actions and our words. We must view ourselves with profound suspicion.
Contrary to what most believe, our hearts aren’t pretty or good, and our mouths tell lies. If men took this Biblical revelation seriously, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” guiding the market would be a matter of awe and there would be no argument Whose hand it is. As George Herbert writes:
Surely if each one saw another’s heart,
There would be no commerce,
No sale or bargain passe: all would disperse,
And live apart. 2
“Cretans are always liars,” says the Apostle Paul. Then he doubles down, adding, “This testimony is true” (Titus 1:12-13). If we’re offended at Scripture summing up the character of residents of the island of Crete this way, we should recall the Psalmist’s statement:
All men are liars.3
Children are liars. Fathers and mothers are liars. Preachers are liars. We know these things.
So living among liars, where is truth? Where is our safe place?
God does not lie. He inspired every word of Scripture, so this is pure truth: “He who created from the beginning made them male and female.”
When government’s enablers and enforcers of sexual rebellion including public school teachers, scientists, corrupt judges, and medical ghouls sow rebellion against God’s sexual assignment given your son or daughter at the moment of conception, be on guard and get to work!
In fact, anticipate this threat to the soul of your sons and daughters. From the womb, teach them songs and read them Scripture and show them how to obey their sex given them by the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.
Pray to Him for help and work diligently to help your sons and daughters to learn and obey the wonderful sex God has made them. Male or female.
Teach them gender is man’s lie.
Teach them sex is God’s truth and there is no deeper truth about them than their manhood or womanhood. This truth can never be separated from their personhood. No matter what they do to mutilate their body, when they stand before God to face His judgment on that Last Day, they will face Him the man or woman He created them from the very beginning. And if they have rebelled against it, they will answer to Him for this terrible sin.
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References| ↑1 | University of Melbourne. “Geneticists make new discovery about how a baby’s sex is determined.” ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181215141333.htm (accessed August 24, 2024). | | ↑2 | George Herbert, “Giddinesse,” in The Temple. | | ↑3 | Psalm 116:11. |
Apple sent me an email asking me to rate my experience yesterday with their Indy Apple Store, so I guess I should honor their request.
Three days ago, the trackpad on my ’23 Macbook Pro 14″ cracked. It had been sitting next to me and when I picked it up, there was this crack from left to right across the trackpad. Nothing dropped on it, and no damage to my laptop anywhere.
This is my twentieth to thirtieth Mac laptop over my lifetime. This current one is nine months old, so warranty should cover the repair.
I initiate a chat with Apple CS and it’s mind-numbing. She tells me I have two choices: either I can send it in and it will take 7-10 days to repair or I can go to the closest Genius Bar and they might be able to repair it. She says nothing about the repair being covered by warranty. She just keeps asking me if I was using the laptop when it cracked, which I’d already said I wasn’t. Then if I dropped anything on it, which I’d already told her I didn’t. Again and again, I said the laptop wasn’t damaged in any way and the crack appeared spontaneously while the laptop was sitting still beside me. In other words, she kept insinuating that I was lying to her.
Explaining I work on my laptop and can’t give it up for 7-10 days, I also explained that the closest Apple Store is an hour and a half away, so it’s a three hour trip. That explained, I asked if there was a trackpad for the M3 MacBook Pro at the store and how long would the repair take?
She said she couldn’t give me that information. The part might be there and it might not, but I’d have to set up an appointment at the Genius Bar, then physically have them look at my trackpad before they’d tell me if they had the part.
I offered to send her a picture of the crack and reminded her she knew everything about me and my trackpad from her records, but she wasn’t interested in any pictures of anything. She just kept saying that she couldn’t tell me whether or not the store had the part and couldn’t put me in touch with the store to ask them. Appointment and three hours driving to find out was my only option.
I was furious, but finally settled on taking the three hours to drive to the store and ask. She set up my appointment.
Showed up there yesterday, a little early. Apple’s “genius” came over and looked at my laptop, then said he’d be gone for a few minutes and left. Ten minutes later, he comes back out and sits down next to me before telling me they can fix the laptop for me two ways, from which I can choose. Either they will take the laptop and send it in for repairs or they will order the part and I can come back up when it arrives and they’ll fix it in store.
I was furious once more, explaining to him that this was precisely what I had tried to avoid. I said I had spent half an hour on Apple’s CS chat the day before trying to get them to find out if his store had the part, but they had refused to find out, saying only I’d have to go there myself to find out. I explained I’d asked Apple’s CS chat woman if it couldn’t be found out by her or me calling the store?
My genius sitting next to me responded, “No, we’re not allowed to give out that information.” Then he added, “No one is allowed to give out that information.” He was very firm on this point. Very firm and repeatedly firm.
I said to him, “This is ridiculous. It’s an easy repair and could have been done right now if you had the part, but instead, I have to drive three hours and sit here just for you to tell me you don’t have the part and I’ll have to drive three more hours to come back.
He said I’d also have to pay $180 for the repair.
I said, “No, this computer is under warranty and I will not pay one penny for it to be repaired. You will repair it for me free. You see this laptop has absolutely no damage anywhere. Apple likely has some bad tolerances inside and I wouldn’t be surprised if, as time goes on, you find yourselves having to replace a number of 14″ MacBook Pro M3 ’23s in the coming months and years.
I had one of your laptops catch fire while I was using it, so I know the drill. I’ve bought and used 20-30 of your laptops through the years. I’ve used your bad screens and bad keyboards, so I think what you’re looking at here is another Apple production or design flaw.”
He responded, “That may be, and if that’s what it is, Apple will make good on it and offer everyone who owns that computer a repair program.”
“Yes, I know that’s what Apple will do, but it will be years from now, and no help to me. Right now, I have a new and undamaged computer and you’re demanding I pay you $180 to fix its trackpad.”
He said, “Well, your trackpad is cracked, and we don’t cover cracked trackpads under our warranty.”
“But there’s NO DAMAGE,” I said loudly. “It cracked SPONTANEOUSLY and I WASN’T EVEN USING IT when it happened.”
“Yes, I know,” he responded.
We finally settled on me not having it fixed at all. He promised me the crack wouldn’t get any worse, so it seemed to us both that leaving it cracked was my best option.
It’s my observation that Apple has recently replaced Customer Service agents and Apple Store geniuses with humanoids running on AI. Both the chat lady and the genius man were incapable of hearing and responding in any way to anything. All they could do was stare at their screens and read their their script.
Truthfully, both struck me as AI bots, and I have concluded that this is Apple today. It is the perfectly heartless and soulless machine, and it’s running on AI which has been set on the “Supercilious Affect” mode.
Over almost forty years, I’ve had to deal with Apple about defects maybe five times, and this one was so very awful and unhelpful and devoid of humanity that I find myself relieved at how old I am and how few years I’ll have to keep putting up with Tim Cook and his conceited groupies.
Guy Kawasaki used to evangelize the market, but Apple employees now only evangelize each other.
“Aren’t we great?”
“Aren’t you great?”
“You know, everyone knows how great we are. You can see it in their eyes when they walk in here!”
“You’re FABULOUS, and so am I!”
A little anecdote saved for the end.
While I was waiting for Apple’s Genius to show up, a young mother walked in and sat down across the Genius Bar table from me. She had a stroller with a cute little year-old baby who was munching on something similar to Cheerios the mother regularly dropped on her stroller tray. In between snacks for the baby, the mother was working on her computer.
No eye contact until we both heard those fateful noises of a toddler puking. Looking down, the little one had projectile vomited—all over herself, the front of the stroller, and a puddle about two square feet on the floor that was thick and contained solids as well as a whole lot of congealed liquid.
It was a mess anywhere, but to have such squalor in the middle of an Apple Genius Bar was a violation of Apple policy and presentation on the level of a homeless man coming in and peeing in the corner.
I was off my stool and looking for towels to help clean it up. Went over to a female genius and explained a young mother’s baby had just vomited all over the floor, and could she please get me some paper towels so I could start cleaning it up?
The genius stared at me. It took her a few seconds to process what I’d just said to her. Finally, she said, “Give me a few moments,” and turned back to talking to some customer.
It was clear she wasn’t able to help with the towels, so I found one of the managers–this one also a woman—and explained a baby had vomited all over the floor and could she please get me some towels to clean it up? I had to repeat myself before the specter of horror registered with her. Then, slowly, she started walking over to the “secret door granting entry to the bowels of an Apple Store.”
I waited outside the door for a couple minutes, then went back to the mother and said towels would be coming soon.
The mother was working on cleaning up her little one and the stroller. She said “She’s never thrown up before,” which being the grandpa to thirty, I had trouble believing. Lucky mom. Until now.
It was between five and ten minutes before that lady manager arrived with a small handful of paper towels, none of them wet, and nothing else. Squeamishly or daintily or with revulsion—take your pick—she proferred her little towlet pile in my direction while gazing down with horror at the mess on her Apple Store floor.She didn’t get down on her knees to clean it up, nor had or did any of her geniuses. I got down and cleaned it up.
The manager didn’t thank me. The mother did.
When it was all cleaned up and the slow and unhelpful Apple bots had vanished, I smiled at the mother and said, “Well, today was the best day of your life, wasn’t it? Your little one projectile vomited onto the floor of an Apple Store and Apple doesn’t do babies.” She smiled back, and then my Genius bot arrived to read his script to me…
Pastor Tim and Andrew reflect on one of the significant reset points in our year: the beginning of the new school year. The free-ranging discussion includes the following topics:* How do you send your children off in the morning? * The utility of school uniforms * How to remove some decisions from your day because they drain your battery * Avoid parenting books that guilt-trip you into conformity to the “perfect” system * Avoid comparing yourself to others in a competitive mode * Child-rearing fads * As your children age, everything becomes more serious * Be conscientious about the friends of your children * Who do your children look up to and want approval from? * What are your priorities as a parent?
***Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
(Nineteenth in a series; 07/31/2024 views/listens of 11,000)
First, a word about the significance of this article. What Wheaton College president, Phil Ryken, and his trustees have done over the course of this past year is to distribute and celebrate a document of 122 pages and 421 footnotes denouncing Phil’s predecessor, former Wheaton President J. Oliver Buswell Jr., as racist. The document, released September 14, 2023, and written by Ryken’s faculty and staff, purports to show that President Buswell kept Blacks off Wheaton’s campus because he was a racist segregationist. After issuing their denunciation, they removed Buswell’s name from Wheaton’s former “Buswell Library” and campus signage.
Ryken’s employees had two years to produce their document. Several archivists were paid to assist, handpicking primary and secondary sources from campus archives. What all these employees couldn’t grasp, apparently, is the campus intrigue behind what they term Wheaton’s “ad hoc” segregationist admissions policy. No, the story had to be dumbed down. Too many details would jeopardize their work marshalling enough moral indignation sufficient to justify their intended public shaming of President Buswell.
As we’ve demonstrated in the prior 18 articles in this series, J. Oliver Buswell Jr. was no racist. What we turn to documenting now is the maelstrom of political conspiracy and insubordination President Buswell had to cope with during the time when the Task Force declares Wheaton’s president himself was simply enforcing his own racist segregationist commitments.
Younger siblings quickly learn the blame game, and use it well. When scholars use it, those looking on should find it repulsive, and turn away.
Churchmen and the work of reformWheaton College’s former (1926-1940) president, J. Oliver Buswell Jr., was deeply involved in the work of church reform. This work as a churchman was a fundamental reason Wheaton’s Trustees disliked and fired him.
The Task Force Report acknowledges Wheaton’s Trustees were originally attracted to Buswell because he was an “outspoken fundamentalist” who held to orthodox Biblical doctrine.1 As time went on, though, correspondence and minutes surrounding Wheaton Trustees’ conflict with President Buswell document their growing distaste for Buswell’s labors for the reform of Christ’s Church.
Working to expose and oppose false doctrine in their own Presbyterian Church in the United States of America from the late 1920s through the middle of the 1930s (see this earlier article), Princeton’s J. Gresham Machen, Wheaton’s J. Oliver Buswell, and their fellow church reformers had unity of heart and mind. This unity continued through the PCUSA’s 1935-36 discipline and defrocking of a number of these men, concluding with the 1936 defrocking of J. Gresham Machen.
Divisions in the new denominationImmediately, Machen, Buswell, and fellow former PCUSA pastors began organizing a new denomination named the Presbyterian Church of America.2 But tragically, this new work quickly decayed into fierce infighting among the men, requiring Machen and Buswell together to give themselves to the work of peacemaking among their fellow reformers. A proud and querulous group, within the first year of their new denomination, the denomination split.
At first, Buswell and Machen’s peacemaking looked hopeful. Their comradeship is documented in the correspondence that flowed between them. Air Mail and Special Delivery letters were punctuated by Western Union telegrams, all so frequent that one writer summarizes their joint work:
An extremely close relationship was maintained between Dr. Machen and Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, president of Wheaton College. Throughout the last year of Machen’s life (1936), the two men corresponded almost continually, often confiding in one another, with each frequently requesting counsel of the other. Both men had been put on trial by their respective presbyteries, and their bond was strong. Machen often spoke at Wheaton College, and a large number of the students at Westminster Seminary came from Wheaton, with Buswell’s encouragement.3
In their private correspondence, these two reformers demonstrated a shared commitment to find a unified way forward which their schismatic brothers would be likely to accept. Even a brief comparison of the doctrinal conflicts in their former denomination with those in their new denomination painfully reveals that, with the prestige of a new organization at stake, the scandal of pride and its fruit of envy, jealousy, and pettiness brought shame down on the heads of their compatriots—a shame which, among conservative American Presbyterians, remains to this day.
Reading the articles, minutes, and correspondence documenting this conflict highlights the stark contrast between the subjects fought over back in the former denomination and those fought over in the new denomination:
Former Presbyterian Church in the United States of America:
• Denial of inspiration and authority of Scripture
• Denial of miracles
• Denial of Virgin Birth
• Denial of Divinity of Jesus Christ
• Denial of Resurrection of Jesus Christ
• Denial of Substitutionary Atonement
New Presbyterian Church of America:
• Should Bibles contain study notes
• Bickering over amillennialism, premillennialism, postmillennialism
• Disagreements over imputation
• Disagreements over apologetics
• Disagreements over beverage consumption of alcohol
• And in the end, the final battle and split was over whether to cooperate in missions work with fellow reformers/congregations who didn’t immediately join their new denomination
Readers may have noted the most recent piece in this series was published back on May 14, and there’s been nothing more until now. An explanation is in order.
Tragic death and tragic divisionThe deeper I’ve gone into the gigabytes of primary source material on my laptop from this 1936/37 conflict, the more disheartened I’ve become. Surveying the present state of all the teeny-tiny Protestant and Reformed denominations (Presbyterian and otherwise) whose doctrinal commitments are limited to carefully curated museum exhibits displaying the prophetic leadership of past centuries’ church fathers (which equally, but unintentionally, also display our present silence concerning those areas of wickedness which define our own time), I’ve been wondering what might have been had our fathers a century ago done the hard work of dying to their pride? What might have been if, after they were expelled by the PCUSA, they had maintained their unity?
Repeatedly, I’ve thought of the similar tragedy of the division among the 16th century reformers under Martin Luther and John Calvin. Why did God not overrule both divisions? Why did Calvin and Luther not succeed in finding a middle way concerning our Lord’s presence in the Lord’s supper? Why were Buswell and Machen unable to make peace between the two factions lined up behind them?
Should our heroic reformers five centuries and one century ago bear some of the blame?
In any event, a few months prior to the Presbyterian conflict’s critical moment, J. Gresham Machen suddenly died of pneumonia. It was January and he was on a speaking engagement out in glacial North Dakota.
The schism came to a head during the new denomination’s May 1937 General Assembly. God called Machen home, and a couple months later the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America made shipwreck of their unity.
Fighting on two frontsFor our purposes, it is important to understand the pressures the work of reform of the liberal PCUSA, then keeping the peace within the Presbyterian Church of America, brought to bear upon President Buswell. Keep in mind he was already bearing the weight of peacekeeping within his trustees, administration, and campus of Wheaton College. President Buswell had fires to put out, both in his work at the college and his work in his denomination, and these two rivers of pressure were interrelated in ways that have been left hidden or uncommented upon by Wheaton’s historians.
Defending two fronts is more than twice as difficult as defending one, especially when both fronts’ enemies coordinate their strategies. Such was the case in the growing hostilities and eventual ouster of President Buswell by Wheaton’s Board of Trustees.
During the years leading up to the expulsion of Buswell and Machen by the PCUSA, President Buswell’s right hand man back at Wheaton College was Registrar and Vice President Enock Dyrness who, along with Dean of Students Wallace Emerson and Vice President of Business Affairs George V. Kirk, constituted Buswell’s Executive Administrative Council.
The name Dyrness should be prominent in any history of the Buswell years at Wheaton, but also any history of the schism of 1937 during the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America. In fact, Enock Dyrness was the third man in the conflict over Black admissions which also included President Buswell and Wheaton Trustee Hugo Wurdack.
Trustee Hugo Wurdack and Vice President Enock DyrnessConsider the correspondence. President Buswell was working to unify his Board of Trustees behind adopting a policy that Black applicants would be admitted to Wheaton. The key correspondence in this insider battle was letters and memos which flowed between Buswell and Wheaton Trustee Hugo Wurdack of St. Louis. Wurdack presented an obstacle to Buswell’s proposed official policy that Blacks would be accepted, and the sensitivity of Buswell’s correspondence with Wurdack is painfully apparent.
At the end of that correspondence, something unusual happened which passed by the Historical Review Task Force Report without comment. This is the final letter concerning this matter sent from Buswell to Wurdack, and note his enclosed memo:
Chief executives with experience answering to a board while leading employees and constituents of an organization are sensitive to the relationships between members of their administration and members of their board. To put it another way, no one is in a better position to undercut his boss than the vice president who cultivates a relationship with his boss’s board members.
The memo above documents President Buswell’s vulnerability to the influence brought to bear on his board by his Vice President Enock Dyrness; and specifically, Dyrness’s influence on Trustee Wurdack. Keep in mind this summary statement by Buswell:
Mr. Wurdack is the only one connected with the College who has ever objected to our having colored students in any definite way… I do not know of anyone else who has committed himself on this point.
Concerning opening up admissions to Black applicants, between Trustee Wurdack and Vice President Dyrness, President Buswell steps carefully:
I am enclosing a copy of a memorandum to Profesor Dyrness which I am now dictating, but which I will not send to him until I have had time to hear from you again, just in case I might have misunderstood your thought.
I am afraid you did not note the last paragraph of my letter. What you advise me to do is precisely what I said I intended to do. I am therefore taking the liberty of quoting that paragraph again.
“Now there is a considerable amount of pressure being brought to bear upon me from certain quarters….”
Then, in his draft memo, note how Buswell phrases his proposed policy change to Dyrness: “I suggest that we admit colored students hereafter.” Dyrness is Buswell’s vice president and this is the most sensitive and conflicted matter he faces in his leadership of Wheaton College, but he is reduced to writing his subordinate “I suggest” this policy change.
Both his letter to Wurdack and his draft memo to Dyrness demonstrate that, between the two men, President Buswell was walking on thin ice. Administrators answer to their executive officer—not the trustees on his board—but those who have held executive office know what is on display above is too often the realpolitik of chief executives’ leadership.
Wheaton trustees and administrators undermine their presidentDig deeper and we find Wheaton’s top administrators under President Buswell were chronically disloyal and insubordinate.
Emeritus Professor of History at Seattle Pacific University, Michael Hamilton did his PhD work at Notre Dame under George Marsden and Nathan Hatch. Wheaton College was the subject of his 1994 dissertation, The fundamentalist Harvard: Wheaton College and the continuing vitality of American evangelicalism, 1919-1965. Longtime member of the Board of Advisors at Wheaton’s Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, Hamilton thoroughly documents the disloyalties President Buswell suffered from his subordinates:
Buswell faced significant internal opposition from his executive administrative council—Wallace Emerson, the dean of students; Enock Dyrness, the vice president in academic administration; and George V. Kirk, the vice president of business affairs. …his three lieutenants routinely united to oppose his policies and plans. They frequently tried to derail his proposed new faculty hires, especially those who subscribed to Reformed theology. They resisted his plan to start a seminary at Wheaton.
Nor did they limit their opposition to straightforward policy disagreements. All three of them would take their complaints to individual trustees with whom they had personal relationships.
Emerson, Dyrness, and Kirk [were] nursing their grievances in the company of each other and the executive committee of the trustees, which gave them a full and sympathetic hearing for several months. During the time the trustees and the administrators were swapping complaints about Buswell, neither took any meaningful action to resolve the problems. As Buswell later bitterly protested to the trustees, “It must be remembered that many accusations made against me in secret were never discussed with me, and further that I never failed to comply with any request the board made clear to me.”
It is hard to tell from the historical record exactly how the most powerful member of the board, lawyer Herman Fischer, felt about Buswell. On the one hand, he professed to have some reservations about firing him. During the summer of 1939 he admitted that Emerson, Dyrness, and Kirk had forced Buswell to labor “under greater difficulties and more resistance than we have realized.”4
Franklin DyrnessEnock Dyrness had a brother named Franklin Dyrness.
Around two decades ago, I received a small batch of files from one of my fellow presbyters in Great Lakes Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America. Rev. Seth Dyrness knew of my keen interest in J. Oliver Buswell and the circumstances surrounding his departure from the presidency of Wheaton College. Enock Dyrness was Seth Dyrness’s uncle, but now we bring to the fore Seth’s father and Enock’s brother, the Rev. Franklin Dyrness.
The files Seth passed on to me contained correspondence of his father, Franklin, detailing aspects of the founding and first years of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, Westminster Theological Seminary, and the Presbyterian Church of America. Why is Franklin Dyrness a key character in this history of President Buswell’s last years at Wheaton?
The following excerpts from the minutes of the first three General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church of America provide the background to the schism which took place during the Third General Assembly, in June of 1937; and specifically, Franklin Dyrness’s leadership leading up to that schism.
First, this excerpt from the minutes of the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America held June of 1936:
The moderator was asked to appoint a committee on Foreign Missions to be composed of six members with the moderator as an ex officio member, making seven in all, which committee shall take under its consideration the foreign missions interests of the Presbyterian Church of America and make suggestions to local congregations as to their foreign missions giving and to the next Assembly as to a permanent foreign missions program.
It was moved that the moderator appoint a committee of five to prepare for the incorporation of a board of foreign missions and for the incorporation of a board of home missions and church extension.
The matter was ordered referred to the committee on Home Missions and Church Extension.
Then this from the minutes of the Second General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America held five months later, in November of 1936:
The report of the Committee on Foreign Missions was presented by the Chairman, the Rev. F. S. Dyrness.
It was moved and carried that the report be received and filed, and that the recommendations be adopted.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN MISSIONS
Before His ascension our Blessed Lord came to His disciples and spake unto them, saying, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”
Further in view of the existence of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, your committee would suggest that nothing be done by this Assembly relative to the establishment of an official Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church of America, but that instead a committee on foreign missions, of five members, be appointed to report to the next General Assembly and to make at that time any recommendations it might deem advisable.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America recognizes the right and freedom of every individual church member and every local church to support with its gifts any particular orthodox missionary enterprise, but at the same time it takes a special pleasure in commending the program and work of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions to the Church at large, and in suggesting that this work receive the sympathetic co-operation of local churches and church members, in so far as that may be possible.
It was moved and carried that a committee of five members be elected to report to the next Assembly in the matter of foreign missions. The following persons were nominated: Ministers: Dyrness, Woodbridge, Marston, Rankin, Pitcher, McIntire, W. T. Strong, Sloat, and
Elders: J. S. Wurtz, T. L. Hodge, and Harry Frazer. [emphases added]
Then the following excerpts from the minutes of the Third General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America held June of 1937. Keep in mind that, five months earlier, the Second General Assembly had stated it took “special pleasure in commending the program and work of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions to the Church at large….”
History repeats itselfRead on and note something drastic has changed, causing a complete reversal of the attitude and support of the Presbyterian Church of America for the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions:
The Report of thc Committee on Foreign Missions was presented through the Chairman of the Committee [Franklin S. Dyrness], and is recorded in the appropriate place below….
REPORT OF THE FOREIGN MISSIONS COMMITTEE
The report of the Foreign Missions Committee to the Third General Assembly, Presbyterian Church of America, consists of the following two resolutions whose adoption we urge upon the Assembly:I
WHEREAS your committee feels that the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions as it is now constituted is out of accord with the provisions of its charter and not consistent with the fundamental principles of Presbyterian Church government which are held by the Presbyterian Church of America, as evidenced by the fact that the practice of certain members of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, including the President and Vice-President, in matters of church government is that of Independency rather than Presbyterianism, which practice was virtually endorsed by the majority on the Independent Board when, at its meeting May 31, 1937, said majority refused to insist that its members bring their practice into accord with the principles of true Presbyterian Church government, or else resign from said Board; and as further evidenced by the resignation from the Board of the following members: Mrs. J. B. Griggs, Miss Marguerite Montgomery, Mrs. A. L. Berry, Miss Mary W. Stewart, the Rev. Paul Woolley, the Rev. Ned B. Stonehouse, the Rev. Edwin H. Rian, and Murray F. Thompson, whose resignation reads as follows:
In view of the decision of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions refusing to condemn independency in church government and to uphold its charter provisions favoring Presbyterian church government, we believe that the usefulness of the Independent Board as an agency to promote the object for which it was founded, the conduct of truly Presbyterian Foreign Missions, is at an end.
We therefore present our resignations from the Board effective immediately…
The General Secretary of the Board, the Rev. Charles J. Woodbridge, has resigned for the same reasons.
THEREFORE be it resolved that this General Assembly does not find itself able any longer to recommend the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions as an agency for the propagation of the Gospel as set forth in the Westminster Standards.
In a mere five months, the Presbyterian Church of America went from “commending the program and work of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions” to adopting the motion, “be it resolved that this General Assembly does not find itself able any longer to recommend the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions….”
Why did the men of the new Presbyterian Church of America’s Foreign Missions Committee who had been delegated the task of founding the new denomination’s own Board of Foreign Missions call for the Assembly to denounce the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions?
Because, as they claimed above, the formerly commended missions agency was in favor of “Independency rather than Presbyterianism.”
As a reminder, this was precisely the same charge against Buswell, Machen, and their fellow reformers leading to their ouster from their former denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Here is a June 1, 1935, Associated Press newspaper account detailing the final actions of that denomination’s General Assembly in confirming the defrocking of J. Gresham Machen:
REFUSED TO QUIT INDEPENDENT BOARD__________________[By the Associated Press]Syracuse, N.Y., June 1 — The one hundred and forty-eighth assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ordered disciplinary action today against a New York city acting elder for his participation on the Independent Board of Foreign Missions, a fundamentalist group. The assembly instructed the Synod of New York to instigate action against James E. Bennett, New York lawyer, for his refusal to resign from the independent organization. Previously the Presbytery of New York had refused to act.
Formed by Dr. MachenFormation of the independent board in 1924 by the Rev. Dr. J. Gresham Machen, of Philadelphia, rivaling the officially recognized group, precipitated a fight between fundamentalists and modernists. Dr. Machen and several associates already have been tried on charges of refusing to resign from the board, decisions in which are expected to be handed down by the judicial committee either tomorrow or Wednesday.
There were many issues contributing to the division of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, culminating in the defrocking of Machen in June of 1935. There were just as many issues contributing to the division of the new Presbyterian Church of America two years later, in May of 1937. Nevertheless, the formal acts of both General Assemblies were their condemnations of the same organization—the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions—whose independency posed a threat to their own organizations.
Putting a fine point on it, the former denomination’s hostility is reported concerning their denomination’s troublemakers, that they “refused to quit” the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions; and then, the new denomination’s hostility is stated in terms of “the practice of certain members” of the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions being “that of Independency rather than Presbyterianism.” The men of Westminster Theological Seminary weighed heavily on the side of the condemnation of what was termed “the practice of certain members.”
Let us remind the reader that the man disciplined by the former denomination for his support of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions was J. Gresham Machen, but he had died between the old and the new denominations’ General Assemblies, and thus was not present for his new denomination’s discipline of his former colleagues for their continued support of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t so much the independency of the mission itself which was the source of the conflict as it was the commitment of its board to allow several of its members to continue in independency, but this is a distinction without a difference.
Uncharitable judgmentsSpeaking personally, I have some direct knowledge of similar things and am sympathetic to the men here under attack by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America. Although 35 of their fellow pastors and 17 elders from their former denomination immediately joined in chartering the new Presbyterian Church of America, after one denomination turns away from God and His Truth, it’s not uncommon for a specific congregation to shy away from quickly joining another denomination. I recall the night our session of Grace Presbyterian Church in Wisconsin discussed the transfer of our church after our vote to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA), taking up the matter of which denomination should be next?
By then we had whittled it down to either the Christian Reformed Church or the Presbyterian Church in America, and one wise elder commented, “Well, if we go into the PCA, we’ll probably get twenty more years before it goes bad.”
He wasn’t being cynical. He was prescient. The year was 1991, and it was only twenty-six years later that, having transferred into the PCA, we watched the PCA’s Covenant Theological Seminary and Missouri Presbytery cavorting in support of Revoice and the gay Christian movement.
But leave that behind. We are not discussing present, but past, Presbyterian General Assemblies, and there are a couple things left to be said about the 1937 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America’s schismatic repudiation of their former fellow reformers for refusing to disassociate from the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions.
Blind leading the blindFirst, J. Gresham Machen had been elected moderator of the previous (Second) General Assembly, and had requested his friend J. Oliver Buswell to stand for moderator of the next (Third) General Assembly—which Buswell did, and was elected.
Second, as the sitting Moderator, Buswell suffered the indignity of having to join a protest against that Assembly; and specifically, a protest against his Assembly’s condemnation of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Here are a few excerpts from that Protest:
The undersigned hereby respectfully protest the action of the Third General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America in rejecting the minority report of the Committee on Foreign Missions and adopting the report of the Committee, for the following reasons:
- The action of the Assembly in adopting the majority report included a condemnation and a judgment upon the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, a body which has no organic nor ecclesiastical relationship to the Presbyterian Church of America.
- The declaration concerning the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions is in effect an attack upon a Christian institution which has been used gloriously of the Lord in the great battle in defence of the faith. The Independent Board should have the best wishes of all the members of the Presbyterian Church of America rather than the official condemnation of the General Assembly…
It was ungrateful for the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America in less than a year after its organization not only to turn its back upon the Independent Board but definitely to attack the Independent Board’s integrity.
Signed—
J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., etc.
Then the minutes record:
It was moved and carried that the Moderator appoint a committee to prepare an answer to the protest.
Then, a few sentences later, this:
The Moderator announced the following as members of the Committee to answer the Protest. The Revs. Dyrness, Woolley, and Elder M. F. Thompson.
The timelinePrecisely when did this happen?
Between June of 1936 and June of 1937.
Back then to Michael Hamilton’s dissertation, who writes:
At least as early as 1936, Buswell faced significant internal opposition from his executive administrative council—Wallace Emerson, the dean of students; Enock Dyrness, the vice president in academic administration; and George V. Kirk, the vice president of business affairs. For the remainder of the Buswell presidency, his three lieutenants routinely united to oppose his policies and plans.5
At Wheaton College under his tenure as President and at the Third General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America under his term as Moderator, the Dyrness brothers opposed J. Oliver Buswell Jr.
From this point on, Wheaton’s trustees take an increasingly hostile posture towards President Buswell, with a particular focus on his work as a Presbyterian churchman.
Two years after Franklin Dyrness is successful in getting the Presbyterian Church of America’s Third General Assembly to condemn the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, leading that Assembly’s sitting moderator, J. Oliver Buswell, to protest the action, President Buswell is finally successful in resolving the battle over Black admissions at Wheaton, sending a memo to Franklin’s brother, Wheaton Registrar Enock Dyrness, “I suggest that we admit colored students hereafter.”
Six months after the memo declaring Wheaton admissions open to Blacks, Enock Dyrness was finally successful in his joint efforts with his fellow members of President Buswell’s Administrative Cabinet to undermine Buswell among Wheaton’s Trustees.
On January 20, 1940, Wheaton’s Board of Trustees fired J. Oliver Buswell Jr.
Now that the reader has finished the history President Phil Ryken and his Trustees’ Historical Review Task Force avoided in their Report, it’s a little more clear why this history wasn’t acceptable for public consumption. Think how much easier it is to call a man “racist” than to explain the difficulties that man faced as he worked to integrate his campus.
Anyhow, who cares about the church? Wheaton isn’t a church—it’s a college! What does President Buswell’s work as a churchman have to do with his work in higher education? Forget the Dyrness brothers. Stop changing the point.
Everyone important agrees: Buswell was racist.
(Nineteenth in a series; views/listens over 11k)
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References| ↑1 | Historical Review Task Force Report, p. 45. | | ↑2 | Due to a legal challenge by their former denomination, a couple years later the name was changed to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. | | ↑3 | Brad K. Gsell, “The Relationship Between Dr. J. Gresham Machen and Those Who Were to Become Bible Presbyterians”; Redeeming the Time, v. 6, no. 2 (Spring 2014). | | ↑4 | Michael Hamilton, “The fundamentalist Harvard: Wheaton College and the continuing vitality of American evangelicalism, 1919-1965” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 1994) 73-78. | | ↑5 | Ibid., 73. |
We have failed to teach our children and our culture the creation mandates: “God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth'” (Gen. 1:28).
We need to restore the faith that believes God’s commands, particularly His creation mandates regarding fruitfulness, are for all ages, for man’s good, and His glory.
***Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
In this episode, Pastor Tim Bayly is joined by his son, Joseph (Senior Pastor at Christ Church in Cincinnati), and son-in-law, Lucas Weeks (College and Administrative Pastor at Trinity Reformed Church in Bloomington, IN) to discuss parenting.
We often think that our parenting is a failure if we have to resort to authority. That attitude is foolishness and an abandonment of God’s rules for parenting. Our fears and modern psychologists have trained us to believe that authority is antithetical to having your child’s heart. We must be reminded that if we intend to hold on to our children, obedience to God is the only way.
No one would deny that mothers and fathers have duties regarding their children, but many are willing to dispute that children have duties regarding their parents. Parents ought to serve and love their children, but also children ought to serve and love their parents.
***Mentioned in the show:
First, the podcast starts out talking about this book:
Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peersby Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté
Second, we mention this book:
Shepherding a Child’s Heartby Ted Tripp
Third, I read from this book:
The Thing (the chapter I read from is titled, “The Drift from Domesticity”)
by G. K. Chesterton
Joseph mentioned:
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to TechnologyBy Neil Postman
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
In wildness is the preservation of the world. -Henry David Thoreau
My grandson has been assigned a senior thesis on the related motifs of wilderness and gardens. Loved by many of us, these two geographies are some of the least examined subjects in Scripture. The absence of careful, Biblical consideration of these themes is particularly noteworthy given our secular society’s fevered concern with “Nature’s” wellbeing.
Heated political conflicts today concern issues raised by the almost-universal consensus of the degreed class, that our present approach to this world is best described as Man vs. Nature, and this must be reversed. Man’s rape of the earth has to be stopped. Nature must be restored to her virginal purity. Man’s rule over Nature is over.
Flashpoints of national and international politics concern control of the world’s natural resources, protection of species, shutting down the use of fossil fuels in the name of “climate change,” protection of the “wilds,” and much parading of that nebulous moral virtue called “sustainability.”
Since they consider man (gender inclusive) the evil aggressor who has been oppressing Nature, one might expect our ruling classes to rejoice that he is in drastic decline. Despite his pride of position as the world’s most valuable natural resource, humanity is suffering such a widespread drop in fertility that demographers regularly issue dire warnings of population decline cataclysmic in its present and future impact on the world’s political economy and social contracts. The Lancet warns:
[R]esearchers estimate that by 2050, 155 of 204 (76%) countries and territories will be below the replacement level of fertility [increasing] to 198 of 204 (97%) by 2100. [These forecasts] underscore the enormous challenges to economic growth in many middle- and high-income countries with a dwindling workforce and the growing burden on health and social security systems of an aging population.
Gardens are man’s creation but wilderness is its own creation. Gardens serve man but wilderness serves herself. The only service man provides wilderness is guarding herself from himself. Wilderness doesn’t exist to serve man. Man exists to serve wilderness.
Which raises all sorts of questions. When the guardians of our wilderness decide to issue wilderness “permits” allowing man to canoe, hike, and camp on her, for whose good is this done? The wilderness herself, or the few men being allowed into her territory? Maybe the actual beneficiaries are the men who make their living off guarding the wilderness, taking money for permits to visit her? In other words, who speaks for the wilderness and how do we know she is thankful for his paternalistic approach to her?
We could imagine a conversation between tree huggers, the DNR, park wardens, and Wilderness going something like:
My dear wilderness, I am not trying to deny your autonomy. You certainly may do as you wish just as long as you assure us you won’t allow invasive species into your waters, suffer the wolves to destroy the moose, and permit any fires to consume you. Whether or not they are started by lightning.
If these things threaten your wellbeing, we’ll have no choice but to help you. We know when your virginity is pure and when it is being trampled, whether by nature or by man. Trampling is trampling, and in our great wisdom and understanding, we will decide how best to protect you. Please trust our goodwill. We’re only interested in returning you to your pristine original state.
Yes, of course. And what was that pristine original state?
We read its history in Scripture, which begins, “In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). After recounting God’s creation of both Nature and man, a few sentences later we read that God commanded man:
Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (Genesis 1:28)
This is quite embarrassing for us to read in the midst of our pagan society today. We will have no talk of “multiplying” our numbers. We will not “fill” or “subdue the earth.” No, we will not “rule” over “every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Our age has restored the decadent idolatry pervasive across the Roman Empire in the time of the Apostle Paul who described it: “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Romans 1:15).
Man is forbidden to rule or subdue the earth and her creatures today. This is the terrible sin we are all in agreement we must leave behind. We must repent of our centuries of ancestors who obeyed God’s command. They were terribly wrong and it is our highest moral calling to repent of such chauvinistic speciesism.
“Highest moral calling?
Absolutely. Having lived in Germany for a number of months last year, I can say with confidence that nothing does a better job of parading a German household’s moral rectitude than placing a full sheet of paper next to the countless kitchen trash receptacles explaining each category of waste and what color container it must be placed in. Placing it in the wrong color of container is verboten!
Other than crossing the street against the light, it’s my observation nothing is more necessary for one’s reputation for righteousness than the religious observance of Germany’s recycling sacrament. Pity this poor tenant out in the back yard trying to figure out which of the five or sex containers in their own fenced in section of the yard is gray, yellow, green, or brown. Standing there opening each in turn, trying to ascertain the specific contents of each and where what I was holding should go, the lady of the house came out her back door and asked me if she could help?
She was so kind. I was so flummoxed. I explained that I was color blind and couldn’t tell where to put any of my multiple parcels of trash because I didn’t know what color any of the recycling containers were. Oh my, well of course she would help me. That one is brown, that one green, that one grey, that one yellow, and so forth. But of course, I was so embarrassed that as soon as she pointed out which was which, I forgot which was which, so we resolved the situation by my allowing her to place my foul packets into the right-colored containers, then saying goodbye and my crawling back into our front door, promising myself I would never take any trash out of our apartment again.
Germany doesn’t need religion. She has recycling and it serves her sense of moral duty and good citizenship as well as Americans taking their old lady Birkenstock fabric bags to the farmers’ market and the checkout at Whole Foods.
It’s often been said that when one throws out the big laws, what’s left is not the absence of any laws, but the multiplication of petty laws. Environmental laws and rules are ground zero of the exponential growth of petty laws today, and all of us never feel as self-righteous as during our scrupulous observance of them.
Are they all bad? No. There are some which are niggling goods, but they provide us virtue cred out of all proportion to those very small goods we would recite. We all deny it but we all know it.
Yet we’ve been whupped and, with regard to man and nature, we live in submission syndrome, looking for places and ways to confess our sins and parade our repentance. We have a rescued dog. We refuse to touch single-use plastic bags (which, by the way, have never been single-use). We take our dog to the dog park. We carry our own non-disposable straws. We’re concerned about the threat crypos and AI pose to the environment due to their insane consumption of energy. We buy our dogs bling in animal jewelry stores. We sign neighborhood covenants promising we’ll grow our tomatoes in raised bed gardens using only neem oil. We go on walks with our “partners,” taking turns pushing our dog in his baby carriage.
The list could be multiplied, but honest women and men know God’s laws against sodomy, lesbianism, divorce, fornication, child sacrifice (abortion), greed, and envy, as well as His commands to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and rule the earth have been thrown out and we now live under a tyranny of the endless petty rules which have replaced them.
And again, the center of those petty rules is keeping Nature untrammeled, pristine. Returning Nature to something approximating self-government (necessarily aided by our superior wisdom.)
Wilderness is in vogue, now.
Gardens have become outrageous.
Yet God placed man in the world He created, then commanded him to be fruitful, multiply, and fill that world with his descendants. “Fill it!” He Himself said.
God did not command Adam, Eve, and their descendants to be creation-keepers, but creation subduers and rulers.
Why man over nature and not nature over man? Why turn the wilderness into a garden and not the garden into a wilderness?
Because man alone among all God’s creation was created by God in His Own Image and Likeness. Which is to say God created man the top of the heap and commanded him to subdue and rule everything and everywhere under him.
Until the past century, most everyone understood and agreed that man was the crown of God’s creation, but now we have turned from God, worshipping the creatures and demanding that His image-bearers spend their days paying their respects to the cult of Nature and wilderness.
God has given us over.
God created Adam the representative head of our race. Adam is our father. We see this in the Fall descending on us, not when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, but when Adam ate that fruit. “In Adam’s Fall, we sinned all.”
Romans puts it clearly: “through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19).
This male responsibility is fundamental to God’s Order of Creation and continues to this day. The unique weight of male responsibility is not separable from our race God named adam (Hebrew) or man. Headship is intrinsic to manhood, and was so from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall. In the state of perfection.
We know this because that male headship is what brought the Fall, Original Sin, and death to us all, both male and female. Eve is the mother of all the living, but it was her husband, Adam, who brought death to all the living. It was her husband, Adam, who brought death to herself.
In our age of sexual anarchy, this is the Gospel truth we must preach and confess before the world. Our Lord has commanded us to be the world’s salt, and what is more salty today; what is more tasty and a better preservative today than the first man’s responsibility for the woman, Eve, and every last one of her children down to this very day.
If faithful Christian confession, living, and preaching can be recognized by what kind of attack it elicits, the authority of man over the race of adam is the most virile, pungent, scandalous, hated, shameful, righteous, zealous, faithful, obedient, take-up-our-cross Gospel witness any son and daughter of our Heavenly Father can give:
For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:19)
The “one man’s disobedience” refers to the first man, Adam. “The obedience of the One” refers to that Man who is the second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ.
How would we ever remove manhood from the Gospel? Or better, why would we ever remove manhood from the Gospel?
Neuter Adam and Jesus; deny their manhood is central to the Gospel; declare to the world that Adam and Christ could just as easily have been female as male—or even androgynous; and good on you for confirming the world in its sexual anarchy.
Eviscerate manhood of its fatherhood over us all. Deny its responsibility. Curse its authority.
What you will be left with is a world in which the Gospel isn’t needed and has no power to save. Neuter Adam and there is no Fall because God placed the responsibility on the male of the race. Neuter Jesus and there is no Redemption because only God’s Son can save us.
Do we want to strengthen our mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives? Do we want to restore Eve to the center of life and love as God made her? To the work God created for her and her for?
There is no path to that love and beauty other than loving, living, and preaching God’s archetypal Fatherhood over all His Creation, Jesus’ archetypal Sonship over all the redeemed, and the glory of man in living out that fatherhood and sonship by bearing the responsibility and authority God decreed for him.
Woman and her babies will never be safe until man stops abandoning her to the world’s depraved rebellion. Will we renew our commitment to that very old duty of sanctifying and protecting our brides just as Christ does His Bride, the Church?
Manhood is the salt we have rendered tasteless today; the light we have hidden. Our love of God the Father and God the Son doesn’t exist without the resurrection of these duties assigned every man by his Creator, back at the very Beginning.
Christian, do not deny or shrug off the responsibility for your wife and household God has decreed when, from your beginning, He made you male. Nothing is harder, today. But nothing is more loving to your wife, the beautiful mother of your precious sons and daughters.
My friend Paul Quay (S.J.) taught at Loyola University in Chicago, and he introduced me to his friend, Herbert Ratner M.D., through a subscription to Ratner’s journal, Child and Family Quarterly. Ratner’s life and work are notable in many ways (vaccination, informed consent, La Leche League, etc.), and I encourage readers to find out more about this man and his wife, Dorothy. Fellow med school students, Herbert and Dorothy married and Dorothy gave up her medical practice for motherhood. Over the decades, the Ratners had a profound influence on many couples, opening their home Friday nights for younger couples to come over for help and encouragement in their marriages, fatherhood, and motherhood.
The following essay by Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor of Holy Living and Holy Dying fame first came to my attention when Dr. Ratner ran it in his journal. Having mentioned it publicly a number of times, today I decided to clean up the text and publish it as a help to mothers struggling with the heavy demands motherhood requires; and specifically, the demands they face nursing their little ones.
Some of the essay is tough slogging, but be patient. There are nuggets of gold even in the most orotund of these paragraphs. At least the essay starts out with a bang. Read on and may you be strengthened in the godly work God has blessed you by.
Our Lord sees our faithful service when others don’t, and He is pleased to save you through this holy calling: “But women will be saved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint” (1Timothy 2:15).
Of nursing children, in imitation of the blessed Virgin-motherby Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)
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Upon these propositions I shall infer, by way of instance, that it is a duty that women should nurse their own children. For first, it is taught to women by that instinct which nature hath implanted in them. For, as Phavorinus (fn) the philosopher discoursed, it is but to be half a mother to bring forth children, and not to nourish them; and it is some kind of abortion, or an exposing of the infant, which in the reputation of all wise nations is infamous and uncharitable. And if the name of mother be an appellative of affection and endearments, why should the mother be willing to divide it with a stranger? The earth is the mother of us all, not only because we were made of her red clay, but chiefly that she daily gives us food from her bowels and breasts; and plants and beasts give nourishment to their offsprings, after their production, with greater tenderness than they bare them in their wombs: and yet women give nourishment to the embryo, which whether it be deformed or perfect they know not, and cannot love what they never saw; and yet when they do see it, when they have rejoiced that a child is born and forgotten the sorrows of production, they, who then can first begin to love it, if they begin to divorce the infant from the mother, the object from the affection, cut off the opportunities and occasions of their charitv or piety.
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For why hath nature given to women two exuberant fontinels, which, “like two roes that are twins, feed among the lilies (Canticles 4:5)” and drop milk like dew from Hermon, and hath invited that nourishment from the secret recesses where the infant dwelt at first up to the breast where naturally now the child is cradled in the entertainments of love and maternal embraces (fn)”; but that nature, having removed the babe, and carried its meat after it, intends that it should be preserved by the matter and ingredients of its constitution, and have the same diet prepared with a more mature and proportionable digestion? If nature intended them not for nourishment, I am sure it less intended them for pride and wantonness; they are needless excrescences and vices of nature, unless employed in nature’s work and proper intendment. And if it be a matter of consideration of what blood children are derived, we may also consider that the derivation continues after the birth; and therefore, abating the sensuality, the nurse is as much the mother as she that brought it forth; and so much the more, as there is a longer communication of constituent nourishment (for so are the first emanations) in this than in the other; so that here is first the instinct or prime intendment of nature.
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Secondly: And that this instinct may also become humane and reasonable, we see it by experience in many places that foster-children are dearer to the nurse than to the mother, as receiving and ministering respectively perpetual prettinesses of love, and fondness, and trouble, and need, and invitations, and all the instruments of endearment; besides a vicinity of dispositions and relative tempers by the communication of blood and spirits from the nurse to the suckling, which makes use the more natural and nature more accustomed. And therefore the affections which these exposed or derelict children bear to their mothers have no grounds of nature or assiduity, but civility and opinion (fn); and that little of love which is abated from the foster-parents upon public report that they are not natural, that little is transferred to mothers upon the same opinion, and no more. Hence come those unnatural aversions, those unrelenting dispositions, those carelessnesses and incurious deportments towards their children, which are such ill-sown seeds from whence may arise up a bitterness of disposition and mutual provocation. The affection which children bear to their nurses was highly remarked in the instance of Scipio Asiaticus, who rejected the importunity of his brother Africanus in behalf of the ten captains who were condemned for offering violence to the vestals, but pardoned them at the request of his foster-sister: and being asked why he did more for his nurse’s daughter than for his own mother’s son, gave this answer, “I esteem her rather to be my mother that brought me up than her that bare me and forsook me.” And I have read the observation, that many tyrants have killed their mothers, but never any did violence to his nurse; as if they were desirous to suck the blood of their mother raw, which she refused to give to them digested into milk. And the bastard-brother of the Gracchi, returning from his victories in Asia to Rome, presented His mother with a jewel of silver, and his nurse with a girdle of gold, upon the same account. Sometimes children are exchanged, and artificial bastardies introduced into a family, and the right heir supplanted. It happened so to Artabanus, king of Epirus. His child was changed at nurse, and the son of a mean knight succeeded in the kingdom; the event of which was this: the nurse too late discovered the treason; a bloody war was commenced; both the pretenders slain in battle; and the kingdom itself was usurped by Alexander, the brother to Olympias, the wife of Philip the Macedonian. At the best, though there happen no such extravagant and rare accidents, yet it is not likely a stranger should love the child better than the mother; and if the mother’s care could suffer it to be exposed, a stranger’s care may suffer it to be neglected. For how shall a hireling endure the inconveniences, the tediousnesses, and unhandsomenesses of a nursery, when she, whose natural affection might have made it pleasant, out of wantonness or softness hath declined the burden? But the sad accidents which, by too frequent observation, are daily seen happening to nurse-children, give great probation that this intendment of nature, designing mothers to be the nurses, that their affection might secure and increase their care, and the care best provide for their babes, is most reasonable and proportionable to the discourses of humanity.
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But as this instinct was made reasonable, so in this also the reason is in order to grace and spiritual effects; and therefore is among those things which God hath separated from the common instincts of nature, and made properly to be laws by the mixtures of justice and charity. For it is part of that education which mothers as a duty owe to their children, that they do in all circumstances, and with all their powers which God to that purpose gave them, promote their capacities and improve their faculties (fn). Now in this also, as the temper of the body is considerable in order to the inclinations of the soul, so is the nurse in order to the temper of the body; and a lamb sucking a goat, or a kid sucking an ewe, change their fleece and hair respectively, say naturalists. For if the soul of man were put into the body of a mole it could not see nor speak, because it is not fitted with an instrument apt and organical to the faculty; and when the soul hath its proper instruments, its music is pleasant or harsh, according to the sweetness or the unevenness of the string it touches: for David himself could not have charmed Saul’s melancholic spirit with the strings of his bow or the wood of his spear. And just so are the actions or dispositions of the soul angry or pleasant, lustful or cold, querulous or passionate, according as the body is disposed by the various intermixtures of natural qualities. And as the carelessness of nurses hath sometimes returned children to their parents crooked, consumptive, half starved, and unclean, from the impurities of nature; so their society and their nourishment together have disposed them to peevishness, to lust, to drunkenness, to pride, to low and base demeanours, to stubbornness. And as a man would have been unwilling to have had a child by Harpaste, Seneca’s wife’s fool; so he would in all reason be as unwilling to have had her to be the nurse: for very often mothers by the birth do not transmit their imperfections, yet it seldom happens but the nurse does: which is the more considerable, because nurses are commonly persons of no great rank, certainly lower than the mother and by consequence liker to return their children with the lower and more servile conditions; and commonly those vainer people teach them to be peevish and proud, to lie, or at least seldom give them any first principles contrariant to the nurse’s vice. And therefore it concerns the parent’s
care, in order to a virtuous life of the child, to secure its first seasonings; because whatever it sucks in first it swallows and believes infinitely, and practises easily, and continues longest. And this is more proper for a mother’s care (fn); while the nurse thinks that giving the child suck and keeping its body clean is all her duty, but the mother cannot think herself so easily discharged. And this consideration is material in all cases, be the choice of the nurse never so prudent and curious; and it is not easily apprehended to be the portion of her care to give it spiritual milk, and therefore it intrenches very much upon impiety and positive relinquishing the education of their children when mothers expose the spirit of the child either to its own weaker inclinations, or the wicked principles of an ungodly nurse, or the carelessness of any less obliged person. -
And then let me add, that a child sucks the nurse’s milk, and digests her conditions, if they be never so bad, but seldom gets any good. For virtue being superaddition to nature, and perfections not radical in the body, but contradictions to and meliorations of natural indispositions, does not easily convey itself by ministrations of food, as vice does; which in most instances is nothing but mere nature grown to custom, and not mended by grace : so that it is probable enough such natural distemperatures may pass in the rivulets of milk, like evil spirits in a white garment, when virtues are of harder purchase, and dwell so low in the heart that they but rarely pass through the fountains of generation. And therefore let no mother venture her child upon a stranger, whose heart she less knows than her own. And because few of those nicer women think better of others than themselves (since out of self love they neglect their own bowels), it is but an act of improvidence to let my child derive imperfections from one of whom I have not so good an opinion as of myself.
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And if those many blessings and holy prayers which the child needs, or his askings or sicknesses or the mother’s fears or joys, respectively do occasion, should not be cast into this account; yet those principles which, in all cases wherein the neglect is vicious, are the causes of the exposing of the child, are extremely against the piety and charity of Christian religion, which prescribes severity and austere deportment, and the labours of love, and exemplar tenderness of affections, and piety to children, which are the most natural and nearest relations the parents have. That religion which commands us to visit and to tend sick strangers, and wash the feet of the poor, and dress their ulcers, and sends us upon charitable embassies into unclean prisons, and bids us lay down our lives for one another, is not pleased with a niceness and sensual curiosity (that I may not name the wantonnesses of lusts) which denies suck to our own children. “What is more humane and affectionate than Christianity? and what is less natural and charitable than to deny the expresses of a mother’s affection? which certainly to good women is the greatest trouble in the world and the greatest violence to their desires if they should not express and minister.
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And it would be considered whether those mothers who have neglected their first duties of piety and charity, can expect so prompt and easy returns of duty and piety from their children, whose best foundation is love, and that love strongest which is most natural, and that most natural which is conveyed by the first ministries and impresses of nourishment and education. And if love descends more strongly than it ascends, and commonly falls from the parents upon the children in cataracts, and returns back again up to the parents but in gentle dews; if the child’s affection keeps the same proportions towards such unkind mothers, it will be as little as atoms in the sun, and never express itself but when the mother needs it not; that is, in the sunshine of a clear fortune.
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This then is amongst those instincts which are natural, heightened first by reason, and then exalted by grace into the obligation of a law ; and being amongst the sanctions of nature, its prevarication is a crime very near those sins which divines, in detestation of their malignity, call sins against nature, and is never to be excused but in cases of necessity (fn) or greater charity; as when the mother cannot be a nurse by reason of natural disability, or is afflicted with a disease which might be transmitted in the milk; or in case of the public necessities of a kingdom, for the securing of succession in the royal family. And yet concerning this last, Lycurgus made a law that the noblest amongst the Spartan women, though their kings’ wives, should at least nurse their eldest son, and the plebeians should nurse all theirs; and Plutarch reports that the second son of king Themistes inherited the kingdom in Sparta only because he was nursed with his mother’s milk, and the eldest was therefore rejected because a stranger was his nurse. And that queens have suckled and nursed their own children is no very unusual kindness in the simplicity and hearty affections of elder ages, as is to be seen in Herodotus and other historians. I shall only remark one instance out of the Spanish chronicles, which Henry Stephens, in his apology for Herodotus, reports to have heard from thence related by a noble personage, Monsieur Marillac: that a Spanish lady, married into France, nursed her child with so great a tenderness and jealousy, that having understood the little prince once to have sucked a stranger, she was unquiet till she had forced him to vomit it up again. In other cases the crime lies at their door who enforce neglect upon the other, and is heightened in proportion to the motive of the omission; as if wantonness or pride be the parent of the crime, the issue, besides its natural deformity, hath the excrescences of pride or lust to make it more ugly.
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To such mothers I propound the example of the holy Virgin: who had the honour to be visited by an angel, yet after the example of the saints in the Old testament, she gave to the holy Jesus drink from those bottles which Himself had filled for His own drinking; and her paps were as surely blessed for giving Him suck as her womb for bearing Him: and reads a lecture of piety and charity, which if we deny to our children, there is then in the world left no argument or relation great enough to kindle it from a cinder to a flame. God gives dry breasts, for a curse to some, for an affliction to others; but those that invite it to them by voluntary arts, “love not blessing, therefore shall it be far from them.” And I remember that it was said concerning Annius Minutius the censor, that he thought it a prodigy, and extremely ominous to Rome, that a Roman lady refused to nurse her child, and yet gave suck to a puppy, that her milk might with more safety be dried up with artificial applications. Let none therefore divide the interests of their own children; for she that appeared before Solomon and would have the child divided was not the true mother, and was the more culpable of the two.
The Prayer
O holy and eternal God, Father of the creatures, and King of all the world, who hast imprinted in all the sons of Thy creation principles and abilities to serve the end of their own preservation, and to men hast superadded reason, making those first propensities of nature to be reasonable in order to society and a conversation in communities and bodies politic, and hast, by several laws and revelations, directed our reasons to nearer applications to Thee, and performance of Thy great end, the glory of our Lord and Father; teach me strictly to observe the order of creation and the designs of the creatures, that in my order I may do that service which every creature does in its proper capacity. Lord, let me be as constant in the ways of religion, as the sun in his course; as ready to follow the intimations of Thy Spirit, as little birds are to obey the directions of Thy providence and the conduct of Thy hand. And let me never by evil customs, or vain company, or false persuasions, extinguish those principles of morality and right reason, which Thou hast imprinted in my understanding in my creation and education, and which Thou hast ennobled by the superadditions of Christian institution; that I may live according to the rules of nature in such things which she teaches, modestly, temperately, and affectionately, in all the parts of my natural and political relations; and that I, proceeding from nature to grace, may henceforth go on from grace to glory, the crown of all obedience, prudent and holy walking, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Jeremy Taylor, The Whole Works of The Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor in Ten Volumes; Volume II: The Life of Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; Part I, Section III; “Considerations upon the birth of our blessed Saviour Jesus;” Discourse I.; “Of nursing children, in imitation of the blessed Virgin-mother.” London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850.)
The Protestant church in America today is inundated by women who preach, teach, and exercise authority over men, and the men who enable this sexual rebellion. The rebellion is so broadly practiced and accepted that the church’s motto has become, “She is there, and she is not silent.”
In the more conservative Protestant churches, we are pharisaical in our practice of this rebellion. We keep women out of the pulpit Sunday mornings and only ordain them to church office as deacons, but then we deny the meaning of sex everywhere else. Parachurch campus ministries, mission organizations, publishers, conferences, schools and colleges, professional associations, Sunday school and midweek Bible classes, small groups, Sunday evening services, retreats; throughout our Christian businesses and organizations and in church anytime other than Sunday morning corporate worship, women teach and exercise authority over men.
Our good reader hasn’t noticed?
We have female authorities over publications, female authorities over Christian publishing houses, female national directors in missions, female campus directors in campus parachurch organizations, female administrators over seminaries, female chairs of departments in Christian colleges; and of course the mandatory female preachers and speakers at our religious celebrities’ conferences. These women all exercise authority over men. The practice has become banal. Nobody thinks anything of it.
We pay lip service to God’s Creation Order and commands, but then strip obedience down to almost nothing. Where is our Biblical commitment to confessing Christian faith concerning male authority, our Christian commitment to man being the glory of God and woman being the glory of man, our obedience of God’s command that woman not teach or exercise authority over man?
We scrupulously avoid confessing to our world of sexual anarchy that “it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve,” that “it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression,” and that “women will be saved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint (1Timothy 2:13-15).”
This is the order God created when He made Adam and Eve. This is the order He decreed by His creation, binding all men to to His Creation Mandate back at the foundation of man’s history still in the state of perfection in the Garden of Eden.
Before the Fall.
We make a show of agreeing with Him, then relegate His order and commands to applying only to Christians; then, even among Christians, only at church and home; then at church and home, only to the pulpit Sunday morning during worship and at home only when the husband can’t remember he’s to be a servant leader, so he uses his “male headship” to enforce what we have come to refer to as the husband’s “tie-breaking authority.”
Our confession of male authority and our obedience of God’s command that we not allow woman to exercise authority over man are the sort of slow and shambling, partial obedience that is no obedience at all. It’s reminiscent of King Saul who, after God commanded him to wipe the Amalekites out, obeyed partially while reporting otherwise. We pick up the story after the battle when the prophet Samuel entered King Saul’s encampment where the warriors were celebrating their victory:
Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed are you of the LORD! I have carried out the command of the LORD.”
But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?”
Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen, to sacrifice to the LORD your God; but the rest we have utterly destroyed.”
Then Samuel said to Saul, “Wait, and let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night.”
And he said to him, “Speak!”
Samuel said, “Is it not true, though you were little in your own eyes, you were made the head of the tribes of Israel? And the LORD anointed you king over Israel, and the LORD sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are exterminated.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the LORD, but rushed upon the spoil and did what was evil in the sight of the LORD?”
Then Saul said to Samuel, “I did obey the voice of the LORD, and went on the mission on which the LORD sent me, and have brought back Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took some of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the LORD your God at Gilgal.”
Samuel said, “Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king.” (1Samuel 15:13-23)
What is a half-hearted mixture of obedience and disobedience? What is our reduction of male authority to male preachers Sunday mornings and husbands who practice servant leadership and tie-breaking authority—and of course, neither of these two limitations are applicable anywhere other than the private life of Christians?
God names such obedience “rebellion” and “insubordination.”
Some might want to respond:
But brother, it’s so much more effective to use women combatants today. When we put women forward, it shows we’re egalitarian. It proves we’re not sexist. Look how much more effective we’ve been using a former lesbian to preach to men about the sin of LGBTQism. Who can deny the success of using women for our dirty work!
Women are pretty. Women are nice. Women are tactful. Women are so much more presentable. Lesbianism is so much more accessible than sodomy as an entry point to loving gays and bis and those sorts of people. Can’t you see that? I mean, hello!
Yes, we all see that. But it’s wrong.
Not it’s not. It’s smart. She’s not a pastor.
So the Apostle Paul was only forbidding women from being pastors when he commanded, “I do not allow women to teach or exercise authority over men?”
She is teaching men—what the Apostle Paul said must not be allowed.
She demands submission from the men listening to her; she demands they obey the Scriptural commands against the LGBTQ abominations.
Change the medium and you change the message. Women speak womenspeak to women and men, with the result that men are forced to speak womenspeak to men, also. Our itching ears demand feminine tone and rhetoric from effeminate pastors, today, and legacy seminaries make their living providing such men to the churches who are their consumers.
Years ago, I was talking with a man who had recently repented and put his faith in Jesus Christ, and he was describing his background to me. In our nation of broken vows, marriages, homes, and children, it was typically sad.
He went on to say how thankful he was for his strong Christian mother and grandmother. Then, at one point in his story, he cried while recounting the memory of his father leaving his mother and children. For his community, it was the common story. His grandpa, married to his strong grandmother, was weak.
I don’t remember if it was then or during some later conversation that I said to him, “You know, your mother and grandmother get something out of weak and absent husbands. A pattern like this can’t repeat itself generation after generation without the women bearing a large part of the responsibility. This is not all about bad men.”
Brothers and sisters, if we are to reclaim true manhood, we must honor God’s commands in the main—not just the exception. We must honor God’s Order of Creation willingly, wholeheartedly, zealously, knowing that enforcing it as the Apostle Paul did when he declared women are not to teach or exercise authority over men will result in the sanctification of our wives and daughters; but also our mothers and sisters in Christ; then too, our neighbors and relatives who are intense rebels against everything God has commanded, and most particularly His commands concerning His male and female.
This is the light we must shine. This is the salt which must have its saltiness restored. This is the truth at the center of any true Christian confession of faith, today.
We can keep stripping God’s Order of Creation of all its authority and power as long as we want, but what will we do in the end? Dissimulations and equivocations added to bald-faced lies don’t add up to truth or obedience.
They add up to God naming us insubordinate rebels, and turning away from us.
Living his high school and college years in New York City, Dad used the expression “Sabbath goyim” (Shabbos goyim). It’s gone sour recently, sometimes being used now in an anti-Semitic way to refer to Gentiles said to have a submission syndrome towards Jews. But as Dad used it, the meaning was a Gentile hired to do work on the Sabbath that was forbidden to Jews. Light the stove, push the elevator buttons, turn on the lights and air conditioning, etc. We’re told Colin Powell, Mario Cuomo, Elvis Presley, and Mikhail Gorbachev are among those who helped their Jewish neighbors in this way.
A similar thing is common among “English” neighbors of Amish: in integrated neighborhoods, Amish ask non-Amish to let them use their phones, give them rides, and keep ice cream in their freezers.
Sabbath goyim has been rolling around my mind in connection with women who expose false doctrine and false shepherds, and the men who love them for it. The men, pastors and elders, are the Jews and Amish, with the women exposing and condemning false shepherds their Sabbath goyim. Pastors today don’t want to condemn famous religious celebrities and other false shepherds, but we’re very happy when women do this work for us, and we link to their work.
Take, for instance, the current excitement of conservative Christians (including many pastors and elders) on social media praising Megan Basham of The Daily Wire and (formerly) World Magazine. Among male church leaders, she’s all the rage. Recently, she published a book titled, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (Broadside Books→FlemingRevell→HarperCollins→News Corp). Currently sitting at #50 in Amazon’s book rank, she has a ton of sales.
Of course, Basham isn’t calling these male pastors out for their egotistical marketing, sales, and hauls of many millions of dollars.
It’s their liberalism and false doctrine she opposes. Her sights are set on men. On male pastors who have clawed their way to the top of the heap. She’s after male “shepherds” and writes blistering condemnations of pastors such as Andy Stanley and Rick Warren.
The conservative Roman Catholic magazine, First Things, ran an excerpt of Basham’s book under the title, “The Plot to Queer Evangelical Churches.”1 Here’s part of Basham’s condemnation of Warren and Stanley:
The Bible’s standard for marriage and sexuality are no longer issues (Pastor Rick Warren) speaks about with conviction and …he will engage in verbal gymnastics to avoid addressing them at all.
While evangelical leaders have danced around the issue, a veritable army of trained wolves has been sneaking in among the sheep. …Faithful American Christians could soon be facing—if we’re not already—thousands of Andy Stanleys….
Many pastors, [have] been successfully shamed into barely mentioning homosexuality, transgenderism, or the rest of the LGBTQ array… These shepherds should recall the warning of John Calvin: “Ambiguity is the fortress of heretics.” Well, the heretics are here. They are all around us, and their numbers are growing. …For too many pastors, concern for showing compassion to the lost means they’re not protecting the sheep from false teaching. They are, in fact, starving the sheep to appease goats. John 10:12–13 has a word for them: “The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.”
Shepherds who aren’t teaching their sheep to understand in depth what the Bible teaches about sexuality and why God has prohibited homosexuality are creating sitting ducks for …wolves.
We see Basham is prophetic in her warnings and condemnations of false shepherds.
Basham has come up with nothing new in her condemnations. Lots of pastors and elders have seen the problem, and occasionally, some of them have expressed hesitancy over the agenda of these homosexualists. But none of these pastors and elders ever takes the final step Ms. Basham takes, of warning the sheep of the betrayal of their shepherds.
Why not?
Because we live in the time of Deborah. In Judges, we read that the prophetess Deborah gave a word from the Lord to Barak, commanding him to attack and destroy the army and commander of the Canaanites, Sisera, who was the enemy of the Sons of Israel. The historical account from Judges:
Now (Deborah) sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali, and said to him, “Behold, the LORD, the God of Israel, has commanded, ‘Go and march to Mount Tabor, and take with you ten thousand men from the sons of Naphtali and from the sons of Zebulun. I will draw out to you Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his many troops to the river Kishon, and I will give him into your hand.'”
Then Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.”
Stop right there.
There’s not a reformed man in American today who doesn’t understand Barak’s quivering, sashaying, malakoi (effeminate) response. Show this to your pastor. He’ll understand it. Show it to Toby Sumpter, Al Mohler, Doug Wilson, the late Tim Keller, Russell Moore, and Lig Duncan. Show it to Tim Bayly—all of us understand it.
If we’re talking about what “plays in Peoria,” women do better at prophesying against the false shepherds than men. We’re happy to let them.
Have you noticed who are the souls who are exposing the false shepherds, today?
Women. Megan Basham, Dee Parsons and Deb Martin, Julie Roys, Rosario Butterfield, and so on. Modern-day Deborahs.
Sadly, none of them rebuke men for their cowardice as Deborah did:
(Deborah) said, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the honor shall not be yours on the journey that you are about to take, for the LORD will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman” (Judges 4).
“The hands of a woman.”
Pastors today are cowards. We want women to be our Sabbath goyim. Women like Julie Roys, Rosaria Butterfield, and Megan Basham do our dirty work. They prophesy. They preach. They are Jael, nailing Sisera’s head to the ground.
Meanwhile, Mohler, Moore, Sumpter, Wilson, and Duncan look on, waiting to take over after the Sabbath goyim finish their work.
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References| ↑1 | First Things running this excerpt is precious since, ten years ago, this magazine was the frontrunner in queering the church, holding a book party for Eve Tushnet on the occasion of the publication of her homosexual manifesto, Gay and Catholic. Her book was one of the first of the genre proclaiming it good and right to be gay and Christian as long as one didn’t, shall we say, “do it.” |
History changes very quickly. Read the book of Esther. We’ve witnessed numerous surprising and sobering changes in the past two weeks.
The performance of President Biden during the debate makes us question who allowed for (or orchestrated) such a sad spectacle. What if an assassin’s bullet had killed former President Trump? What effect will this event have on his soul?
Mentioned in the episode: Donald Trump was being interviewed, and asked what he thought about death—whether he was worried about it—he responded: “No. I’m fatalistic and I protect myself as well as anybody can. I prepare for things. But ultimately we all end up going. No. I don’t believe in reincarnation, heaven, or hell—but we go someplace. Do you know, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out where.” (Chicago Tribune, March 12, 1989, page 10, Section 5)
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
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Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
A 2021 speech and follow up interview by Tucker Carlson with Pres. Trump’s VP candidate Sen. J. D. Vance has enraged Democratic women. Jennifer Aniston, Whoopi Goldberg, Ella Emhoff, Elizabeth Warren, and a bunch of Swifties are losing it over some of the things Vance said in this interview:
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6358784788112
Why such fury?
Because Sen. Vance stated some plain truth that is not to be uttered in America today: namely, that the decision not to have children and replacing them with cats (famously, Taylor Swift has no children and three felines) is a demonstration of incivility at one’s core, and that such women and their men should not be chosen for civil leadership. Refusing to build the future through having children is the most fundamental act of disinvestment in a nation, and raising such selfish individuals into positions of leadership is delusional.
Among responsible citizens of a truly civil society, those Vance described who refuse to bear the weight of responsibility raising the next generation disqualifies them from leading the present generation.
As Vance put it in the Fox interview:
We’re effectively run in this country—via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs—by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?
If Sen. Vance were a comedian, everyone would be laughing. What he said is true and everyone knows it—especially the women who are now livid. He used the expression “childless cat ladies” because it’s a trope. We all know and love one or another childless cat lady, but the reasonable among us are not foolish enough to want them leading our civil union into the future.
Chasten and Pete Buttigief holding their adoptive newborns.
During this interview, Sen. Vance mentioned a number of names typifying his concern. One was Pres. Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, who is married and mother to several stepchildren. Another he mentioned was Pres. Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, who at the time of the interview was childless, but has since adopted two children with the man he calls his “husband.”
Taking Vance’s words in context, the names he mentioned were not intended to communicate each of them had “cats,” was “childless,” and was a “lady.” Secy. Buttigieg plays the woman, but he’s a man.
To the larger point, though, let us ask whether Sen. J. D. Vance is right? Specifically, are the commitments and character of the sort of woman and man put forward by the Democratic Party as candidates who serve as poster girls and boys for the planks of their Democratic Party good or toxic to our civil union here in the United States of America?
Take abortion, for instance: these poster girls and boys of the Democratic Party are shameless in their promotion and defense of this bloody religious rite we should all make a habit of referring to as “child sacrifice.” With an abortion lifetime prevalence rate among women that holding steady at 25% for years now, along with a lifetime self managed abortion rate among women that is estimated to be 5%, even if we refuse to include babies killed in the womb by the use of hormonal birth control methods, over the course of their childbearing years thirty percent of American women kill at least one of their children.
But this figure is not controlled for party affiliation. Taking into account the degree to which the Democratic Party’s fundamental plank promoting abortion is fiercely protected and promoted by their female supporters, it’s probable among Democratic voters who are women, over 50% of them have killed at least one of their children. And to return to Sen. Vance’s point, it is safe to assume the prevalence of abortion among female politicians affiliated with the Democratic Party is even higher.
Knowing a very conservative estimate of the percentage of female Democratic pols who have killed one of their children is 50%, it is necessary to consider what kind of a civil ruler a woman so selfish that she has killed one of her children will be? Certainly every Christian will conclude such women should never lead anyone or anything.
Is it monstrous or even lacking compassion to say this?
No, it is necessary to say this. Sanity requires us to conclude that those who have murdered their own descendants should not be given faithful mothers and fathers’ descendants to govern. It was King Solomon who judged that the woman who wants to kill the baby should have that baby taken from her.
Similarly the Democratic Party platform promotes sodomy and lesbianism—both of which are the rejection of the necessity of our next generation being raised in the lifelong monogamous union of man and woman as husband and wife, then father and mother. If they decide to have children, sodomites and lesbians refuse to allow those children to be taught, disciplined, and loved by both sexes, male and female. These couples rob their children of the beautiful diversity of half our race.
Again, this destructive self-centeredness in defiance of nature’s bestowal of children on male and female together should disqualify such sexual narcissists from promotion into positions of civic leadership. The mutual decision of two women or two men to deny their children a father or mother is a level of selfishness that all previous generations of fathers and mothers would have thought only lunatics were capable of, but this lunacy is the central commitment of that half of our nation which votes Democratic.
Such people should be disqualified from running for any office at any level of government, but our nation has gone mad.
We could continue to deconstruct the Democratic Party’s platform into its particularities which cohere at the point of insane self-centeredness they demand be referred to as “liberty,” “freedom,” and “civil rights,” but those reading here are unlikely to need much more convincing.
Nailing it down, yesterday the Pew Research Center put out a report on American attitudes and trends of childlessness. Confirming what reasonably observant citizens already know, childlessness today is simply generational selfishness, and that selfishness is exploding in popularity meaning it will become harder and harder to find men willing to consider the wellbeing of future generations as they lead our towns, cities, states, and nation. They will be in ever shorter supply because such men (and women) are in drastic decline.
First, Pew documents the explosive growth of childlessness within our population, reporting that, over the course of the past five years, the percent of childless Americans who declare themselves unlikely to have children in the future has risen ten percent. In 2018 it was 37% and in 2023 it was 47%.
But secondly, and of greater importance for our purposes, is the question why? To the heart of the very thing Sen. J. D. Vance was condemning, Pew reports:
Reasons for not having children—or being unlikely to ever have them—differ between the older and younger groups. The top response for those ages 50 and older is that it just didn’t happen. Meanwhile, those in the younger group are most likely to say they just don’t want to have kids. Women younger than 50 are especially likely to say they just don’t want to have children (64% vs. 50% of men in this group).
Majorities in both groups say not having kids has made it easier for them to afford the things they want, have time for hobbies and interests, and save for the future. In the younger group, about six-in-ten also say not having kids has made it easier for them to be successful in their job or career and to have an active social life.
Increasingly, the younger generations among conservatives have chosen to be informed by social, rather than corporate, media, and we suppose there is some merit to their choice. Corporate media publishes the lies of the leftists who make up the vast majority of the Ruling Class, whereas social media can be a more friendly and comforting place for Christians and other conservatives. But something to keep in mind is that both purveyors of leftist corporate and conservative ghettos of the social media are partisan to their core, and feeding from partisans is inimical to true Christian discernment and witness. Yes, corporate media is almost never sympathetic to God’s authority, doctrine, and Moral Law, and one can find a substantial body of consumers of social media who are sympathetic to the same.
Yet a herd is a herd, and trying to extricate oneself from the herd as they stampede is risky business. Be truthful. Stampeding is the fundamental nature of social media.
Right this second, hordes of the corporate media are frothing at the m0uth over V. P. candidate J. D. Vance’s warning that, as he put it, childless cat ladies ought not to be allowed to direct this nation into the future they refuse to invest in themselves. But sadly, even social media conservatives are having doubts about Vance because of their perception that he’s insensitive to women, the childless, gays, and animal lovers. “This guy should shut up already. He might lose us the election!”
Well yes, he might. But who’s to blame—J. D. Vance or Christians who have refused to publicly confess, teach, and preach the very truths this brave man spoke out there in public. As a politician. As a Roman Catholic politician.
We Protestants, Reformed and otherwise, have long ago stopped making disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ by teaching them to obey everything He commanded. Nowhere is this more obvious than our Lord’s command given the entire race of man at the very beginning:
Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (Genesis 1:28)
Sen. Vance is Roman Catholic and he’s left to be pilloried by the childless cat ladies and their men by Christians who are not Roman Catholic.
Our Lord gave us His command to make disciples of all nations right after He declared:
Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
If our Lord’s Father has given Him “all authority… in heaven and on earth”; and if our Lord has commanded us to teach them to observe all He has commanded us; and if from the very beginning in the state of perfection in the Garden of Eden He commanded all men everywhere for all time to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” what’s up with us?
Why are we not teaching all men and women to obey His command? Or more to the point, why are we ourselves not witnessing to, teaching, and obeying this His command ourselves?
When it is only the Roman Catholics who bear witness to God’s command of fruitfulness, we should not be surprised to watch Sen. J. D. Vance hanging from a tree, blowing in the wind with a mob of shrews screaming at him.
Here are some convictions following the events of the past two weeks; but then, especially, Secret Service Director Cheatle’s hearing before the House Oversight Committee today.
First, Dir. Cheatle should not have the privilege of resigning. She should be fired every bit as publicly as her failure has been. Our nation needs to see very public discipline. We pay these feds and Dir. Cheatle’s firing is the only action that is commensurate to her failure.
Second, the more serious failure is that of Secretary Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security. He should resign or be fired. Let him take his pick.
Contrary to his subordinate, Dir. Cheatle who said the “buck stops with me,” it does not. Her Secret Service domain is under Homeland Security and we all know the impossibility of the massive failures surrounding the shooting of Pres. Trump go much deeper than what happened that day in Butler County PA.
Yet Secy. Mayorkas has announced he is in charge of the investigation and he is now appointing and announcing the women and men he’s chosen for his Investigation Committee.
The guy doesn’t get it. His administrative leadership at the top of a heap which includes the Secret Service is precisely what needs to be investigated. For him to choose the women and men who will investigate himself is a conflict of interest that should shock the nation.
Sadly, to this point it hasn’t.
In the end, one way or another, Dir. Cheatle will be gone. But she is the small fish and her removal must be only the beginning. Secy. Mayorkas cannot remain. The buck stops with him.
It may be the only way to reform the Secret Service is to remove it from under the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe we should call for its return to the Department of Treasury where it lived from 1865 to 2003.
Come to think of it, I would be very pleased if our nation would call for the shutting down of the entire Department of Homeland Security. We already have the Department of Defense to defend our homeland. Ridding ourselves of Homeland Security would be an excellent step toward ridding ourselves of the malicious and hidden deep state apparatus exercising monstrous political control over the very taxpayers who pay them.
One longtime worker in the investigation field who knows law enforcement men wrote to object to my previous post, and this on two levels: he claimed men don’t leave the Secret Service because of its feminization, but because of things like time demands and being away from home. He went on to claim that Scripture does not bar women from exercising authority over men, and that this is only a private rule for the Christian in his home and church. As he put it, “We are directed by God to have man over woman in the marriage and only men can be in leadership positions in the church. The rest………….no.”
First, he claimed that men who declined the White House detail did not do so because of the Secret Service being led by a woman and having to work next to women, but because of the heavy time and family burdens resultant from protecting the president there in Washington D.C. rather than watching over counterfeiting and human trafficking out in the hinterlands.
Of course, he’s right about these burdens being a large part of why Secret Service agents decline the White House detail, and certainly these are the only reasons they give for declining.
But as any of us know who have watched the aggressive corruption of all work forces by the diversity and feminism destroyers enfording their sinful ideologies, having to put up with it while hiding your opposition is a demoralizing work environment. Our congregation had a Navy Captain who’d held very significant responsibility and authority both here and in Europe, and he picked up and left when the Navy mainstreamed women. He was quiet and didn’t say anything, but privately I knew his convictions and how acutely he grieved the betrayal of the men giving themselves to the defense of their country by their superior officers clawing their way up the ladder of promotion through placing female sailors everywhere, including submarines.
Sailors, soldiers, warriors, and law enforcement officers will never speak freely about how they are abused by the mainstreaming of the female sex in training and combat. And the worst of them will actually defend this sexual revolution. We had such unprincipled men of no conviction on our PCA General Assembly Ad Interim Committee on Women in the Military, and they were merely careerists. It was obvious to all.
Real men have always been loathe to fight women, and in the workplace, even to disagree with them. So no, there has never been a rising up of soldiers against women admirals, generals, or all their human resource apparatus enforcing feminist mainstreaming of the female sex across the Armed Forces and law enforcement. But get the common soldier and cop talking privately, and…
Then there’s the matter of the mission of the Secret Service. I’ve talked to many men in law enforcement and the military through the years and what they say privately is that enforcing women’s participation sabotages their mission. Officially, they have to lie about it, but unofficially, they speak the truth. And as I pointed out earlier, that truth was on full display after President Trump was shot in the inability of the two women to fill the space between any shooter and the body of the president. It was the one thing necessary as they stood the President up and walked/carried him down the stairs, and the women were incapable of doing the job properly as the men did it.
They were too small.
Now I know there are jobs that the Secret Service needs to use women for, and we’re all in favor of female Secret Service agents being hired and trained for those jobs. Infiltrating a crowd. Entering a woman’s restroom. Investigating human trafficking. Guarding the wife of the President when it requires intimate private presence.
However, this is not what the affirmative action bullies are promoting and enforcing when Director of Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle announced she will ensure 30% recruits being women by 2030. What she is planning and implementing is the sacrifice of the mission of the Secret Service to the Ruling Class ideology they call “diversity.” To put it bluntly, she is more concerned about carrying out her sexual revolution than protecting Presidents and their families. When she has to make a choice between tall and strong men and short and weak women covering President Trump’s body from bullets, she makes sure there one-third of them are short and weak.
Consider God’s command:
A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 22:5)
There is no clothing more distinctively male than the uniform, badge, holster, and gun of the soldier or policeman. Yet the people of God today take this abomination in stride, priding themselves on being modern and progressive, eschewing that infinitely trotted out bogeyman, “sexism.”
As I’ve said, the whole enterprise should be repulsive. What God names an abomination to him should be repulsive to His sons and daughters, but we deeply embedded in Sodom and Gomorrah, we shrug and carry on.
Now, on to the brother’s second claim, that “we are directed by God to have man over woman in the marriage and only men can be in leadership positions in the church. The rest………….no.”
Anyone who says that the Order of Creation applies only to the privacy of Christian homes and churches is entirely ignorant both of Scripture and of all those centuries of church fathers and mothers before us. Until complementarians came along with their halfway covenant, no one ever had proposed that God’s creation of Adam first, then Eve; and God’s command applying that order by forbidding women from exercising authority over man was for Christians, only; and for the privacy of the home and church, only.
No one ever held that across church history, and any of them who heard us today claiming this was the Biblical doctrine of sexuality would find such a lie incomprehensible and wonder what sort of decadent empire we were imprisoned in that we had to repeat such bald-faced lies about God’s Word and truth.
Explaining the nature and purpose of God’s prohibition of women wearing men’s clothing which I quoted above, from Deuteronomy 22:5, John Calvin writes:
This decree also commends modesty in general, and in it God anticipates the danger, lest women should harden themselves into forgetfulness of modesty, or men should degenerate into effeminacy unworthy of their nature. Garments are not in themselves of so much importance; but as it is disgraceful for men to become effeminate, and also for women to affect manliness in their dress and gestures, propriety and modesty are prescribed, not only for decency’s sake, but lest one kind of liberty should at length lead to something worse. The words of the heathen poet (Juvenal) are very true: “What shame can she, who wears a helmet, show, Her sex deserting?”
Did we need anything more on the subject, read God’s description of the curses he visited upon His people in punishment for their sin:
O My people! Their oppressors are children, and women rule over them.
O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray and confuse the direction of your paths. (Isaiah 3:12)
For decades the church has been headlong in her pursuit of cultural inoffensiveness or acceptance, and nowhere have the wicked we live among been more insistent about our acquiescence to their many rebellions than God creating man male and female, from the beginning; and God’s Order of Creation being man first, then woman.
We ought not pretend that our acquiescence is a virtue.
It’s the opposite. It’s a vice and it’s shameful.
Last night, we all watched what we feared and suspected was coming. The hateful, murderous words President Donald Trump has suffered from our godless elite since before his 2016 election were finally successful in producing a shooter to take him out.
But God intervened.
God saved the life of President Trump. Not the FBI. Not the Secret Service. They failed.
Here we all have been presented another warning that placing women over men is as fundamental a rebellion against God’s Order of Creation as possible. From the beginning God made man male and female, and from the beginning He made Adam first, then Eve.
We have pursued and now live in the midst of the most radical societal revolution man has ever seen. All over the world, nations are following America in putting women guards into prisons, women law enforcement officers into squad cars, women mayors in city halls, women governors in state houses, women prime ministers in No. 10 Downing Street; women are the presidents of our colleges and universities, the trustees on our boards, the lawyers and judges in our courts, and women now make up 55% of the student body at law and medical schools.
Today, we’re so habituated to rebellion against God’s commands concerning sexuality that we simply take it in stride when pigtails and ponytails peek out behind the hats of NFL refs. It’s repulsive, but we Christians pride ourselves on not having noticed.
Did we notice the sexual revolution at the heart of the Secret Service on repeated display last night during the video of President Trump being shot? Elon Musk called attention to it, but in a glancing way.
A friend recently quit his job as a longtime Secret Service agent. When he was finally called up to serve on the White House detail, he declined. He never talked about it except to say that something like three-quarters of his fellow agents called up to the White House at the same time did as he did.
Why?
Well, he didn’t tell me, but let me take a guess.
Like our Armed Forces, the Secret Service has turned from the defense of life to being a vehicle for the enforcement of our Ruling Class’s sexual rebellion. What matters to them is not the defense of our nation, nor the defense of our national leaders—particularly our present and former Presidents and their families.
Their mission has now become enforcing “diversity” through the promotion of women warriors.
A woman is the authority over all the men of the Secret Service, and she herself has declared her goal for the Secret Service is “diversity”; and more specifically, she declared that, by the year 2030, she intends to have women comprise thirty percent of her recruits:
CBS News Report reveals what Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has been focused on: diversity hires pic.twitter.com/IoKnY4uj6M
— Matt Batzel (@MattBatzel) July 14, 2024
Why bring this up now?
Because as soon as President Trump hit the deck behind the podium last night, he was surrounded and escorted off the platform by six or so Secret Service agents. When there is a shooter, it is their duty to cover President Trump’s body with their own.
Four of the Secret Service agents could and did do that. The men.
Two of the Secret Service agents could not do that, and didn’t. The women.
One of the women tried to do it.
Look again at the picture at the top. What do you see?
The two Secret Service women are undoubtedly willing and possess the commitment and courage to protect the body and life of President Trump, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too small.
The heads of these two women agents don’t reach the armpits of the President, whereas the male Secret Service agents were fully able to cover his body, protecting him.
If the reader watches the video again, after another second or two the woman Secret Service agent on the right rises up a few inches as she tries to shelter the President. She rises up on her tiptoes as she moves in front of him, but she isn’t tall enough to shelter him with her body.
For Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to enforce a quota of thirty percent of women recruits because of her commitment to a sexual ideology that denies God’s creation of her, lifegiver and mother, is a fundamental betrayal of the mission and duty of the Secret Service.
The whole world has observed that our present Commander in Chief is incapable of leading, and now the whole world has seen that the men we depend on to guard his life are women.
Certainly there will be calls for the replacement of Director Cheatle, as there should be. But this is merely fiddling with the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Director Cheatle is only enforcing the ideology insanity that got her this position in the first place. What must be done to solve our crisis is to repent of our demanding our women to be men and our men to be women.
Since repentance is difficult and humbling, let us recall the words of Jeremiah the prophet describing the fall of another Babylon many centuries ago:
The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting. They stay in the strongholds. Their strength is exhausted. They are becoming like women.
Their dwelling places are set on fire, the bars of her gates are broken. (Jeremiah 51:30)
It is never too late to confess our sins, humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God. Both individually and corporately, we must join in this repentance before God now. This is true Christian nationalism.
We have seen endless repetitions of our handwriting on the wall.
Here is a speech titled, “The Christian Nationalism We Need,” given July 8 by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) to the National Conservative Conference in D.C. Sen. Hawley is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. My own thoughts on the speech follow.
Sen. Hawley gives much accurate diagnosis and a number of good recommendations for policy directions. A shout-out to him for his appeal for a family wage. The speech is filled with good populist sentiments and covers the subject of what’s long been wrong with the Republican Party, and doing a good job of it. Sen. Hawley did less well in his rose-colored simplifications of the motivations and inspirations of our Founding Fathers, some of which are contradicted by the historical facts.
Turning to the heart of his speech, his frequent talk of “love” as what makes our nation “Christian,” combined with his call for “Christian civil religion,” turn out to lack any hard-edged definition and to be quite naive. Nazi Germany was a Christian civil religion. Face it squarely. Rwanda was permeated by Christian civil religion when they hacked each other to death with machetes. Our founding fathers claimed a Christian civil religion while they excluded Africans from the liberty and equality they claimed from God. The list is quite long.
Contrary to Sen. Hawley, Augustine was not founding Christian nationalism when he wrote City of God, and it was not a book recommending some heartwarming but undefined “mutual love.” As with the ashes of the Roman Empire which Augustine was addressing, so today the real question we face as a nation is whether we will repent from our wickedness and turn to God, or whether we will put our hope in politicians who preach nostrums claiming Christian faith is love of nation, family, and God while leaving behind the Gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s Moral Law. Sen. Hawley claimed the Christian faith unites our nation, and that establishing his own brand of “Christian civil religion” will unite us more and better, but he’s wrong. The Lordship of Jesus Christ which is the Kingdom of God always divides men between those who humble themselves under the authority of God and plead with Him for mercy, and those who absolutely refuse to do so.
In other words, the God Who exists—the Only God Who exists—is the Lord Jesus Christ to Whom all authority in Heaven and Earth belongs, and it is His authority Sen. Hawley left unmentioned. I’m sure he thinks it’s right to sell political reform under the rubric of “mutual love,” and also to leave God’s commandments against child-murder and sodomitic marriage out of the picture. Yes, I understand how enticing it is for politicians with national aspirations to try to sell visions of love and unity and home and family and faith and freedom—all held together by “god.” After all, such goods are there in America’s DNA right next to apple pie, and any successful populist rhetoric within our borders demands them.
This speech had much good in it, and I am thankful for it. But only as long as American Christian civil religion is not allowed to displace true Christianity from the hearts of men and women, boys and girls, who are not known for some undefined “mutual love,” but for their real love of God, and the City of God, the Church.
But this was not the religion Jesus Christ called men to be baptized into, nor the religion Augustine opened up in his “City of God.” Make no mistake about this. After we all agree to repeat together, “In God we trust,” we then have to agree which god we’re all talking about and whether or not He Himself has any authority binding on us and our rulers. The Only True God said, Himself, that His disciples were to make “disciples of all men” by baptizing them and “teaching them to obey everything (He) commanded.”
As Jacque Ellul warned in his forgotten work, The False Presence of the Kingdom, every time the Christian Church lends herself to the use of the state in building state and national unity, inevitably the Church is compromised and corrupted. The Christian Church is not useful for man’s earthly aspirations, whether personal or political. The Church is not an agent of political utility. It was founded by God for man’s salvation, now and eternally. From sin. From death and Hell.
And while it’s true, as Augustine repeatedly pointed out in “City of God,” that men and women of God who have repented and believed in the only Lord, Jesus Christ, are the best citizens, we refuse to be co-opted by earthly authorities or seduced by the City of Man. We have only one Lord, and He is Jesus Christ.
He came not to have man crown Him his king, but to crown Himself man’s Savior.
Here are five planks to be published broadly by Christian Nationalist Party members. As the Christian Nationalist Party seeks to establish the reign of God and codification of His law at the center of our nation and states’ governmental authority, let it state the fundamentals of that rule and law established by God at Creation:
First, we call for the renewed criminalization of contraception and birth control. God’s Creation Mandate to man1 is to “be fruitful and multiply,” and this was the basis of the universal condemnation of birth control across Christendom until well into the last century. Christendom’s former criminalization of all forms of pregnancy prevention must be restored.
Second, we call for the repeal of all laws which place man and animal on a level, whether implicitly or explicitly. God’s Creation Mandate is that man alone was created in His Image and likeness, and thus God brought animals to man to be named, commanding him to take dominion, to “rule over” them. Any assessment of environmental impacts must start with the good of man, and proceed from there to other living beings.
Third, we call for the criminalization of sodomy and sodomite marriage. God’s Creation Mandate is that sex is permitted only within heterosexual marriage, and thus this sin is an abomination before God. Jesus reiterated this when He Himself said, “He Who created from the beginning made them male and female.”
Fourth, we call for the removal of the female sex from holding and exercising civil authority over men. God’s Creation Order and Mandate is Adam first, then Eve. Reiterating this Creaton Mandate, the Apostolic command was given that woman is not to be allowed to exercise authority over man.
Fifth, we call for the repeal of all no-fault divorce laws. God’s Creation Mandate is that marriage is one-man and one-woman, and life-long. We call for the criminalization of all betrayals of marriage as God established it in the state of perfection which is universally binding on man for all time.
Announcing such a simple Biblical platform for the Christian Nationalist Party will make it clear to all men that Christian Nationalists do not seek the political establishment of any church or denomination, but merely the return of man and nations’ obedience to God’s Creation Mandates which He Himself applied to all men in all places across all time.
By definition God’s Creation Mandates are non-sectarian. Commanded by God before the Fall while man was in the Garden of Eden in the state of perfection, they have never been, nor can they ever be, abrogated. Zeal for God’s Creation Mandates will permeate the foundations of our movement governmentally. We seek to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, and therefore will not stop with the establishment of these laws and their authority over just our own United States, but will pursue their establishment and authority across the entire world.
Christian Nationalism does not limit its scope to nation-states nor to the Second Table of the Law. God’s Creation Mandates were given prior to God’s Moral Law, and therefore their codification is mandatory to any beginning attempt to reinstate the rule of God over all His Creation.
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References| ↑1 | At Creation, God named our race “adam” or “man,” inclusive of both male and female. Thus, here in this platform, we Christian Nationalists will use the very name God named us, and will use it as He did—inclusive of both man and woman. |
(Twenty-fifth in a series.)
Happy Independence Day!
This morning I woke up thinking about the point I made yesterday in the post on false shepherds—that we hire them because we prefer their flatteries, optimism, and lies to dependence on God for His mercy and cleansing. From that post:
We find it wearying to return to our Heavenly Father confessing we have sinned and pleading for the cleansing of the precious blood of His Son.
Few things reveal the spiritual condition of churches today more than whether or not the pastor leads his congregation into worship through a humble and true prayer of confession. Generally speaking, where this is absent the worship is pro forma; but where this is present, the worship is sincere and God is glorified.
Not by man’s independence.
By his dependence.
This sermon title of Jonathan Edwards is never far from my mind: “God glorified in man’s dependence.” This is the title of a sermon he preached in Boston on July 8, 1731. The first thing Edwards published, the sermon was on this text:
That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. (1Corinthians 1:29-31)
Today the United States is glorying in our independence. We do this each Fourth of July. We are proud we have no king. We claim to be our own authorities, each of us. We assert that, rightly understood, our civil authorities are our subordinates. We are a democracy, and don’t you ever forget it!
So on Independence Day, we light fireworks, our papers reprint our Declaration of Independence, bumper stickers read “Don’t tread on me!”, and parades and barbecues celebrate our American War of Independence.
My Reformed baptist brothers may be irritated by this point, but I’ve long thought one of the principle reasons for the rejection of covenant baptism (the baptism of infants) is that Americans’ deepest political commitment is individualism. This is particularly true in our South. From birth, we have drunk individualist independence from the breast of our mothers so that “Don’t tread on me!” is our fundamental political philosophy.
Note it is not “Don’t tread on us!”
This is not to argue there is nothing good about independence. No father wants his son unmarried and still living in his basement when he’s thirty years old. We raise our children to individuate; we are grateful to God and breathe a sigh of relief when they transition to adulthood, marry within the faith, and bless us with the next generation of godly seed.
But there is independence, and then there’s independence. Surely the people of God understand the difference.
One day when we were still serving in Wisconsin, I walked down to the True Value store owned by my dear brother, Curt Coddington. I trusted Curt’s faith and godly wisdom, and going into his back room, we sat down to talk. I told him I was angry at my churches (I served a yoked parish of two congregations). The father of five living in a tiny house they provided us, the pay was low. Curt was my closest friend in town. He went to another church, so he was safe, and I sat there and complained. Angrily.
My father had taught me never to speak of money to my employer, and I agreed with him. Still, I was angry, and I sought to justify my anger through Curt’s sympathy or approval.
But Curt was not having it. He responded, “Trust God,” but that only made me more angry.
“Sure, trust God. But how are we supposed to live on what they pay me?”
He was patient and kind, but he said it again, “Tim, you need to trust God.”
“But I don’t want to trust God,” I said. And having blurted it out, I realized it was true. I didn’t want to be dependent on God. I wanted to demand what was rightfully mine, and get it.
Subdued, but still full of self-justification, I walked back to my office, and then I began to come to terms with my sinful self.
Whom was I really angry at?
It came clear to me. My anger was with God. I was angry at the thought of having to depend on Him for our needs.
I didn’t want to depend on Him. I didn’t want to trust Him. I wanted to depend on myself. I shouldn’t have to ask God for what was, in all fairness, ours. Wasn’t it simply what we deserved?
Dependence on God was precisely what I resented having to do. This was ugly faithless me—a preacher of righteousness. A proclaimer of the Gospel of God’s kindness leading us to repentance and faith, here I was with the thought of dependence on my Heavenly Father angering me. I didn’t want to depend on God like the birds do. I didn’t want to ask for God’s help.
But God is glorified in man’s dependence.
My mother once told me that, when I was a toddler, I’d picked a dandelion and was walking with the family holding it in my grubby hand. As I tired, my father offered to carry me, but I responded, “No! I want to carry my own dandelion!”
I rejected my father’s kindness because I gloried in my independence.
Back in Wisconsin, Curt’s helpful admonitions eventually brought me to my senses that afternoon, and I humbled myself before God, asking him to help us with our money. There through my admission of need and request for help, God was glorified.
By my dependence.
Not my independence.
My point is not to oppose Independence Day. Rather it is to get us to realize how much of our American individualism and desire for autonomy is not really about earth, but Heaven. We don’t want prayers of confession on earth because we want our repentance before God, and pleadings for His mercy and holiness, to be once and done. To be justification rather than sanctification.
We are proud moralists who keep track of our rights and make demands of God, rather than coming to Him with lifted arms asking Him to forgive and carry us.
Life is either growth in dependence or independence from God. Cultivate dependence on your Heavenly Father.
He is glorified by our dependence.
(Twenty-fifth in a series.)
If you aspire to shepherd God’s flock, take a look at New Geneva Academy. The weight of responsibility for Christ’s sheep is heavy. NGA prepares men to depend on the Holy Spirit and bear that weight. Instruction is historical, doctrinal, personal, and thoroughly Biblical. Moving isn’t necessary. Get in touch with us and find out more.
From the pulpit, I’ve often pointed out that the preacher is the man we pay to lie while the comedian is the man we pay to tell the truth. The preacher who tells the truth and the comedian who doesn’t tell the truth will both be fired.
Try to imagine a politically correct comedian on a comedy club stage and the point is made.
Comedians are funny because they say the truths no one else will say. The court jester acts as if it’s all in jest, but it never is. Laughter is the anesthetic that renders tolerable the pain of the scalpel’s incision.
It’s a harder sell to convince Christians that we pay pastors to lie.
Thinking highly of ourselves, we respond that we are nobody’s fool; that we have chosen pastors and preachers who are straight shooters. That we wouldn’t tolerate anything less. We know ourselves and we are very discerning when it comes to (well, actually everything) but especially preaching and teaching. Others want to be lied to, but not us.
So no, we’re far above all those people of God that Scripture’s warnings are written for concerning false prophets and hirelings.
If this is you, I’ll leave you to your complacency. Let me simply note that I pity your wife and children so exposed to the darts of the Evil One behind their God-given protector who dwells in the very short-lived comfort of his own vanity and pride.
To others, let us continue by observing how Scripture is filled with warnings against false shepherds and prophets, and how God’s Word tells us we can identify these men through their flattery, lies, and optimism:
They speak emptiness to one another; with flattering lip and with a double heart they speak. May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that speaks great things; who have said, “With our tongue we will prevail; our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” (Psalm 12:2-4)
Here we have all three of these identifying marks. We know the false prophet or shepherd by his flattering lips, his deceitful heart, and his tongue never ceasing to promise great things.
Fascinating, isn’t it? Look around. Listen around. Nothing changes, does it?
The false preacher tells himself that his tongue is his own and he answers to no one in his use of it. No one can correct his tongue by which he gains all his victories.
Speaking through Ezekiel, God promises His people He will bring an end to the lies and flattery of the false preachers:
For there will no longer be any false vision or flattering divination within the house of Israel. (Ezekiel 12:24)
We are to identify false preachers bringing words they tell us are from the Lord by recognizing their deceit and flattery.
The same warnings against false shepherds and description of the marks by which we are to identify them are given to the New Testament Church. Here the Apostle Paul describes the false preachers in the Church in Rome:
Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and occasions of stumbling contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own belly; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting. (Romans 16:17-18)
The Roman Christians were to turn away from the false shepherds among them who used “smooth and flattering speech [to] deceive their hearts.”
Once more, flattery and deceit.
But what about the third mark, optimism?
Likely the most frequently quoted warning against false preachers down through the centuries is this excoriating condemnation of the shepherds of Jeremiah’s time declared by God:
[F]rom the least even to the greatest, everyone is greedy for gain; from the prophet even to the priest, everyone practices deceit. “They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ but there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 8:10-11)
This is that third mark of optimism. The lying pastor and preacher refuses to preach for the healing of the souls under his care. He tells them the real problem facing them isn’t their own sin, but the sins of the deep state, Democrats, the corrupt judiciary, corporate media, government educationists, and Big Evangelicalism’s megachurches. It’s all bad “out there,” but not “in here.”
We have seen the enemy and he’s not us.
This is the final mark of the lying pastor, preacher, and super apostle: he practices deceit, and specifically the deceit of healing the brokenness and sin of the daughters of the Church superficially by promising them “Peace, peace, but there is no peace.”
How does this work today?
Well, think about any man you’re a fan of in some part of the religiosphere and examine what he promises you that calms your anxiety and promises you something you can join with others to hope in. What is he optimistic about?
Does he promise you true manhood? Does he promise you health and wealth? Does he brag about your denominational superiority? Is he telling you he will protect your freedom of conscience?
Does he promise you truth, beauty, and goodness?
Is he telling everyone that he’s fighting for the abolition of abortion? The establishment and protection of male authority in the home and church? The arrival of the millennium?
We could continue, but let’s stop for a moment and get our wits about us. We know perfectly well that these things are not what we need.
This is not to say that the accomplishment of some of these things would not be good. We all seek the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God, true political reform, growth in real manhood, freedom of conscience, and so on. We all work towards the abolition of abortion and the return of truth, beauty, and goodness to our filthy public square. We all work towards a return of God’s Order of Creation in the affairs of man—of Adam first, then Eve.
Peace is a good thing the man of God desires and works for, of course. This is why the false preacher’s promise of peace is able to mislead us. He knows we want what is good and right, so he promises it to us.
But his promise is empty. It’s simply loud optimism devoid of substance.
The false preacher flatters us by promising us true manhood, freedom, justice, beauty, patriotism, profitable work, a Christian nation, the return of male authority, etc. And that promise itself is flattery because he is showing he knows what is in our heart, what we really desire. And see! He joins us in that desire, and isn’t it wonderful to have a hero whose heart beats in the same direction as ours?
But again, these things are not what keep us awake at night. In the darkness of nighttime and death, the wounds we need to be healed are our many, many sins.
What do we think God is condemning when He says the false leaders and preachers of God’s people in Jeremiah’s day were healing His people “superficially?”
They were healing the sins of His people superficially by assuring them those sins were no big deal and they shouldn’t worry about them. Then they were giving them other things to give their attention to and be optimistic about.
There are as many ways to do this and as many false promises and optimisms of false shepherds across history as their are days since God revealed His Moral Law to His people from Mt. Sinai. Still, let’s simply rehearse the three principal marks of the false preachers, prophets, shepherds, and super apostles: flattery, lies, and optimism.
Think about the super apostles of the Church of Corinth having convinced the believers there of their spiritual, doctrinal, and moral superiority. They oozed with pride, even at the point of their accceptance of incest within the Household of Faith. Note the Apostle Paul’s words:
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead (1Corinthians 5:1-2)
What were they proud of?
Well, precisely what their super apostles snookered them into seeking.
They were proud of their beards. Their headcoverings. Their bourbon. Their children’s homeschooling curriculum. Their brown eggs. Their guns. The way their wife bragged about them to the other women of the church. How superior their super apostles were to that pathetic Apostle Paul. How many children they had. How their son was now the most renowned sculptor of idols in the city.
They were so very proud of their joyful celebrations of the Lord’s supper where everyone was welcome!
They were very proud of the new denomination they had started. They were proud of their theonomy. Their graceful non-shrill sermons. Their books behind them in their vodcasts. Their SM7Bs. The size of their audiences. Their freedom of conscience in eating meat sacrificed to demons…
There was no end to what the Corinthians had been made proud of by their super apostles who healed their wounds falsely. Their hirelings who never stopped promising them “Peace, peace,” where there was no peace.
Note it is not just a slightly defective peace, but “no peace.”
If you read the Bible with eyes that see, you will quickly be overwhelmed by the law of sin and death that dwells within God’s people and their leaders, and you will realize that God never stops warning us of the dangers false prophets, false shepherds, hirelings, and super apostles pose to our souls and the souls of our children.
Why are God’s people always so susceptible to these wicked men?
Because we find it wearying to return to our Heavenly Father confessing we have sinned and pleading for the cleansing of the precious blood of His Son.
Yes, it’s that simple.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2Timothy 4:3-4)
Wearying of the lifelong pursuit of that true healing and peace which are the fruits of the endless difficult plodding of sanctification, we buy ourselves pastors who will scratch our ears where they itch. Give us Christian politics, doctrinal polemics, classical education, celebrations of masculinity, eschatological optimism with charts; give us anything other than that first of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses upon which God’s reformation of His Church was founded five centuries ago:
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent'” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
Yes, I know the false prophets today are very convincing in their zeal for whatever is their current emphasis. I see how easy it is for them to convince Christians they are the only ones seriously committed to any sort of lasting “peace.” But unless that peace is humbling and and painful to your pride, and gives you true healing of your conscience before God, they are liars.
Yes, optimistic liars who convince you their optimism is Christian faith and zeal. And yes, they make us feel so much better because they have allowed us to join them up on their bandwagon. That’s what flatterers do, and it’s why they always have tons of men clambering up next to them.
But, dear brothers and sisters, we do so at the risk of our own souls, as well as the souls of everyone we hold dear.
Stop listening to liars. Stop hiring liars. Make your home and church a place where truth is on the throne and lies are banished. It’s hard. It’s very unusual. But set yourself about the work and plead with God for help.
Have you ever noticed what the Apostle Paul puts forward as the marks proving the trustworthiness of the true preacher, the good shepherd:
For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or in deceit; but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts. For we never came in a word of flattery… (1Thessalonians 2:3-5)
The marks of the preacher approved by God are that he doesn’t speak to please men; he doesn’t speak from error, impurity, or deceit, and he never speaks a word of flattery.
Lies, flattery, and optimism are fatal to the soul of the Christian.
Be on guard against men who claim to be teachers and wise men, writers, bigwigs in the denomination, conference speakers, Instagram and YouTube religious and doctrinal influencers who lie.
Truth shouldn’t need to hide behind any modesty panel of humor or irony. Truth is to be lifted up on a high mountain and proclaimed. It is the power of God to all who believe.
It must be understood that the Christian faith is never owned by any King or any party. A constant temptation of Christians is to be programmed by personalities. Rather than taking cheap, easy, stupid, and faithless shortcuts, we ought to be taught how to think. Primarily and tragically, we forget the doctrine of the sinfulness of all men (even our heroes) and the doctrine of the Fall. Learn in this episode what it means to think as a Christian, not as a partisan.
The episode ends with a brief return to answer a question from a previous episode on money.
Harry Blamires’ The Christian Mind: How Should A Christian Think?
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
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Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
A reader of this 2008 Baylyblog article, “Helpful Presbyterion article on Romans 16:1 and woman deacons…,” wrote noting a dead link to Jimmy Agan’s article, “Deacons, Deaconesses, and Denominational Discussions: Romans 16:1 As a Test Case.” He asked if I might be able to locate Agan’s piece for him?
This started me on a search, during which I was waylaid by reading what’s been written about women deacons the past few years. Whew!
The world has been inundated by men with the terminal degree arguing this and that extremely fine distinction between “semantic meaning components” having to do with the Greek word “deacon” and its “cognates.” In other words, lots of guys are spilling tens of thousands of words about every possible aspect of the word “deacon” and its application to church office, and of course, the subtext for all of their word-spillng and scrupulously footnoted publications is the contraverted issue of whether or not churches should have and ordain women to this Biblical office.
What is humorous, but also disingenuous, is the great protestations of these men that one’s view of women exercising authority over men in the church as church officers should have no influence on the question of the “semantic meaning components” of the word “deacon” and its cognates in Scripture.
Right. So noted.
Blather.
Brothers and sisters, the reason long and involved articles with hundreds of footnotes citing other articles also having hundreds of footnotes, all written by men in possession of the terminal degree, have been a growth industry for decades, now, is that men like Pastor Tim Keller and his mass of Redeemerites have used women “officers” they referred to as “deeks” to promote women teaching and exercising authority over men within the Church.
Over several decades, I have written and written and written warnings against these men’s sexual rebellion against God’s Word promoted through their carefully chosen Trojan Horse of the promotion of women into the office of deacon. I will not repeat my arguments here. Anyone looking for the history of this conflict will find many posts opening up the principals and their rebellions under this search of Baylyblog.
There’s something additional needing to be said, though.
No one should need reminding of the influence of the Fall in the life of the Christian. We all live under it each day, and mourn it. But oftentimes we deny this influence we experience ourselves when it comes to choosing our leaders. “We’re bad but they’re good,” we tell ourselves. “We’re dumb but they’re smart.” “We’re liars but pastors and Bible scholars don’t lie.”
Wrong.
All men are liars, as the Bible tells us. Only God is good. Only God is true.
A necessary application of this wonderfully freeing truth is that none of us should ever listen to a sermon or read an article exegeting or expounding God’s Word without being noble like the Bereans who examined the preacher’s words to see if they were true.
Often Christian pastors, teachers, and writers’ words are not true. Many times the lies are intentional. Other times, the lies are the product of the author and his editors having little-to-no self-critical capacities. Thus they give and receive a superfluity of allee-allee-in-frees from one another so that what is published has obvious character failures. Here’s the example that led to the writing of this present piece.
An author (he will remain nameless) published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (I used to be a member) back in 2021 in a piece titled “The Authority of Deacons in Pauline Churches” went on at spectacular length and even more spectacular citations, and near the end he declared his own allee-allee-in-free thusly:
The second factor that can affect one’s position regarding the diaconate relates to one’s view of the role of women in the church. …But it seems to me that this is a case of the tail wagging the dog. Our view of deacons should not be governed by our view of women in ministry.
How this got past JETS’s editors is beyond me. In fact, how it got beyond the man’s own self-critical capacity is beyond me. In the writing of his article on the “authority” of deacons, this man declares no one should be “governed” by his view of “women in ministry.”
What does he mean by “women in ministry?”
Just prior to the above quote, he speaks of “complementarians who do not affirm that women can hold authoritative positions in the church.”
Now then, think it through carefully. This New Testament seminary prof scolds those he claims are letting tails wag them and being governed concerning the proper understanding of the authority of New Testament deacons by the Apostle Paul’s command to the New Testament Church:
But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. (1Timothy 2:12-13)
Some declarations of self-righteousness and scholarly objectivity should be met with catcalls, and this one is a good example. There is not one man today arguing over the meaning of the Biblical word and office of deacon who is not governed by his commitment either to submit to, or rebel against, the New Testament command that women not teach or exercise authority over men.
In fact, let’s take it a step further: no servant of God should teach, write, or preach on the meaning of the Biblical word and office of deacon without condemning any abuse of women that places them in any position, let alone office, in the church requiring them to teach and exercise authority over men. To fail to condemn this practice that Redeemerites have endlessly promoted and under the influence of Redeemer’s money and fame has grown like the weed it is for decades now is as serious a violation of God’s Order of Creation as sodomite marriage. Note the reason women are to be protected, as the Apostle Paul declares it:
For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.
Then he adds a second reason:
And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. (v. 14)
Every last word written or spoken today concerning the meaning and purpose of New Testament deacons is written and spoken by a man or woman who, by what they write, is either calling for submission to or rebellion against God’s Order of Creation. There is no one whose arguments over the meaning of this Greek word “deacon” and its cognates in the New Testament of God’s Word are not governed by their submission or rebellion against God’s creation of Adam first, then Eve; and the application of that order by the Apostolic Church to government and ministry within the Church.
So when a man brags of his great honor, as he leaves your dinner table, count your spoons. When a guy having a doctorate tells you his arguments about the meaning of the New Testament word “deacon” and its cognates are independent of his commitment about women teaching and exercising authority over men, ridicule him. It’s what he deserves.
Everyone in the world today is caught up in the battle over God’s Order of Creation of Adam first, then Eve, and none of us either pagan or Christian ever rises above that battle. Least of all scholars. Least of all Evangelical scholars. Least of all scholars holding membership in the Evangelical Theological Society. Least of all scholars holding membership in the Evangelical Theological Society arguing about what authority deacons did or didn’t have in the New Testament Church, and publishing their arguments in the pages of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.
Sexual anarchy against God’s Order of Creation is the law of the world, today, and men are either with God, or against Him. There is no demilitarized zone where high-falutin scholarly objectivity presides.
The prophet Isaiah confessed:
Woe is me, for I am ruined!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I live among a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.(Isaiah 6:5)
NOTE: Because of the mention of fathers communing and baptizing their own children, some might wonder whom I’m talking about? This rejection of the authority of church officers over the sacraments is everywhere, today. In fact, it is so common that I explain why the Protestant church has always and everywhere rejected this practice in Church Reformed published five years ago, now. Get a copy and learn why this practice violates the Sacraments and the authority of Christ’s shepherds.
Everyone agrees, history repeats itself. This is particularly true with respect to errors and heresies. They repeat themselves.
This morning I’ve been thinking about this concerning the men who have been chatting up their church growth since Covid. These pastors typically pride themselves on being in tune with the political belligerence of young reformedish men who hate masks and are firm, manly, and hirsute.
This man’s pastor brags about how his church has grown since the Covid and 2020 election. He and his elders channelled these guys’ anger, often alienating them from their own pastors and bringing them into their church which, I’ve been told, is now twice the size it was before Covid. They’re like Hybels and Keller, bragging about their church growth, but they’re naive.
Yes, their church has grown. That’s the easy part. All it takes is flattery.
Warnings against the flattery of false shepherds are all through Scripture, but let’s read one from Galatians. The Apostle Paul is opposing the false shepherds’ abuse of the sacrament of circumcision to sow division and destroy souls in the church of Galatia, and near the beginning of his letter, the Apostle Paul puts these false shepherds under a curse.
But note how carefully he points out that he’s not proclaiming this curse in order to curry the favor of anyone. He contrasts himself with these false shepherds, saying no pastor who seeks to flatter and please the men of his congregation can ever be a faithful shepherd of Christ:
As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!
For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. (1:9-10)
After making a number of arguments against sacramentalism, towards the end of his letter, the Apostle Paul speaks of the false shepherds as “those who …desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh” (Galatians 6:12-13).
This isn’t complicated. The false shepherd never stops seeking to alienate the sheep from their own shepherd, stealing them to grow his own flock. He wants them to become his own disciples, and when he’s successful he never stops bragging about it.
False shepherds are known by their habit of stealing other shepherd’s sheep, then bragging about their church growth.
Two notable things about such shepherds.
First, the false shepherd tells people their former pastor is criticising him only because he’s jealous.
Second, the false shepherd goes from bad to worse. He’s grown his flock by promoting the false doctrine that flatters naive sheep, but soon he learns that keeping a hold on his flock won through flattery and political rabble rousing necessitates his continuation down the same path.
Number one above is obvious and needs no explanation, but number two should be explained.
Let’s explain it in terms of pastors today who brag about their growth because of how many sheep they’ve accumulated since Covid.
Most of them have grown their churches by channelling young father’s rebellion against civil authority. Not criticism of civil authority, but rebellion and fomenting disrespect and trash talk against authority.
But as we warned during Covid, rebellion is of a fabric. Pull on the thread and the entire cloth unravels. Trash talk senators, congressmen, judges, governors, and public health officers online; belligerate against them; and this rebellious force unleashed will demonstrate an insatiable appetite which turns against other authorities, also.
Law enforcement officers. Military officers, Umpires and refs. Speed limits. Sheep stolen through rebellious talk about civil authorities will quickly turn from trash talking senators to trash talking medical authorities, state authorities, county authorities, and then the teachers and headmaster at the classical school.
But that’s not the worst of it. In time, the angry beehive of newfound members will also turn on the pastor and elders who first won them by enticing them in the day of their Covid rebellion. It’s inevitable.
Maybe it will start with the sacraments. Mommy is seen giving the bread and wine to her six-month-old babe-in-arms, and when she is told she can’t commune her baby until he’s been baptized, her husband says they have no right to tell him what to do, and they leave the church.
Daddy asks his elder-friend if his six-year-old daughter can be interviewed for membership and communion, but when his elder-friend inquires about the child’s baptism, the father divulges that he himself baptized the daughter in his swimming pool during a small group picnic.
His elder-friend expresses concern, saying he’ll have to take this to the elders for their consideration. He admits that, strictly speaking, a father baptizing his own child is contrary to the church’s bylaws and the Wesminster Confession of Faith. That the sacraments belong to the church—not to the family—and thus the fathers of the church are to administer them.
The father gets angry. He is very sure of himself, declaring that Scripture says nothing about elders or pastors having to decide about baptism (or the Lord’s supper, for that matter). He tells his elder-friend that he and his fellow elders and pastor have no right to tell him what to do. He tells him also that he and his family will leave the church.
The elder-friend asks him to give it a couple weeks so the elders can take time to consider the question, and the man agrees. But sullenly so.
At the next session meeeting, his elder-friend brings it up, explaining how dicey the situation is, after which the elders sit depressed and angry and wondering how to assert their own authority as church officers among a group of sheep they have built up by selling themselves as sympathetic towards everyone who is angry, rebelling, and belligerating against all authority outside the church?
So they decide they will accept the baptism of the child by her father.
Thus the path of the future is established, with every part of the Westminster Standards now subject to any father who disagrees for any reason he’s heard or read online. The pastor and elders are now unleaders or leaders lite, presiding under a congregation where each man does that which is right in his own eyes.
Sleepers awake! Pastors whose church growth came through flattering and gathering rebels will now be forced to submit to those rebels.
In every job, there is a way for cheats to make a quick buck. The pastorate is no different.
If a pastor makes a quick church out of flattering rebels, he’ll pay the price.
Here or There.
If one were to separate the positives and negatives in Scripture, what proportion would we say are positive and what negative? Some might quibble over the definitions of “positive” and “negative,” so another way to approach the issue is asking how much of Scripture is given over to recording God’s promises as opposed to His warnings; His blessings as opposed to His curses?
In his farewell to the Sons of Israel (בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל), Moses gave both equal time:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your seed. (Deuteronomy 30:19)
A true prophet of God, Moses neglected neither the blessings nor the curses.
Today, such evenhandedness is rare requiring us to keep careful watch on those we look to for a word from the Lord. They must not flatter us.
When King Ahab appealed to King Jehoshaphat to join him in war against the king of Aram, Jehoshaphat appealed to Ahab to ask the prophets for a word from the Lord. Agreeing to the request, Ahab called God’s servants together and put the question to them:
Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them, “Shall I go against Ramoth-gilead to battle or shall I refrain?”
And they said, “Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.”
Jehoshaphat didn’t trust them. Four hundred prophets of God all unanimous in their agreement God would give the victory? It didn’t seem right to Jehoshaphat:
But Jehoshaphat said, “Is there not yet a prophet of the LORD here that we may inquire of him?”
Jehoshaphat had already heard four hundred prophets of the Lord, so why did he ask for another?
King Jehoshaphat knew the nature of false prophets is to flatter their audience. Four hundred prophets agreeing God had only blessings and victory didn’t smell right to him, so he pushed Ahab to find a true prophet who would tell the truth.
King Ahab didn’t like King Jehoshaphat calling into question the legitimacy of the prophets he kept on retainer, so he responded:
The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the LORD, but I hate him, because he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.” (1Kings 22:6-8)
You may be a member of a pulpit committee looking for a new pastor or a seminary homiletics professor. You may be a single mother looking for a church home in which to raise the three sons their father abandoned. All of us need a shepherd who will feed us faithfully, but how do we go about finding him?
Listen for God’s “yes” and “no.” Of course you’ll hear God’s “yes.” Most preaching today is the incessant repetition of God’s “yes,” with very occasional additions of God’s “no,” but only applied to the evil liberals and politicians “out there.” To those sitting in the sanctuary during worship, the unfaithful shepherd never stops giving assurances of God’s blessings and promises of triumph and victory to those who belong to Him—which, it goes without saying, include all those attending worship.
It might be acknowledged during the sermon that someone present may not yet have believed in Jesus, and that person is also fed God’s promises and blessings as enticements to have everything good which has been being talked about and promises to those present who are already believers.
If you can’t figure out what “hate speech” is and how to avoid it, open your Bible and read God’s endless threatenings, warnings, negative commands, curses, prohibitions, and judgments. Today, those who know the Word of God and the hatred of those who are slaves of Satan for everything He has written down in His Word through His servants the prophets recognize it is all God’s threatenings, warnings, negative commands, curses, prohibitions, and judgments which are “hate speech,” and that He Himself is the First Hater.
Naturally then, pastors today avoid God’s threatenings, warnings, negative commands, curses, prohibitions, and judgments. In a world now drowning in its sin, there is never a mention of Sodom or sodomy. Too easy to be mistaken as a hater.
God Himself rained fire down on the sodomites of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we never stop parading our own deep and abiding Christian compassion, explaining to anyone and everyone willing to listen how we ourselves hate the sin but love the sinner.
Maybe you’re not looking for a faithful shepherd, but are yourself a shepherd souls purchased with the blood of God’s Own Son look to, and trust, to guard, warn, and lead them safely to Heaven’s salvation?
If so, resurrect God’s threatenings, warnings, negative commands, curses, prohibitions, and judgments in your pastoral care, teaching, and preaching. If you love your sheep and their Chief Shepherd, stop saying God’s “yes” and avoiding His “no.” Leave the four hundred false prophets of Gracedom with their gentle and lowly god-lite behind, and find a true prophet to hang with—someone like Micaiah.
We’re not done with this account of the four hundred false prophets of God’s “yes” and that single true prophet of God who faithfully spoke His “no.” The historical record continues:
Then the messenger who went to summon Micaiah spoke to him saying, “Behold now, the words of the prophets are uniformly favorable to the king. Please let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably.”
Note that “uniformly favorable.” This is what is uniformly descriptive of the preaching of God’s prophets today to God’s sheep who are trustingly looking and listening to them for a word from the Lord.
Micaiah was not like us:
But Micaiah said, “As the LORD lives, what the LORD says to me, that I shall speak.”
May God raise up Micaiahs today!
When he came to the king, the king said to him, “Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we refrain?”
And he answered him, “Go up and succeed, and the LORD will give it into the hand of the king.”
Now that’s funny, and what follows is even more funny:
Then the king said to him, “How many times must I adjure you to speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the LORD?”
So he said,
“I saw all Israel
Scattered on the mountains,
Like sheep which have no shepherd.
And the LORD said, ‘These have no master.
Let each of them return to his house in peace.’”
All Israel scattered on the mountains, sheep which have no shepherd.
This is Israel (which is to say the Christian Church) today.
But again, don’t be led astray by all the warnings, judgments, curses, and “nos” the false prophets of our day proclaim against those outside their congregations. All the liberals, civil authorities, lying media they endlessly condemn.
If you think this is your shepherd’s faithfulness, and that he’s standing with Micaiah, remember that what the four hundred false prophets were agreed upon was God’s judgment and curse upon all the liberals, civil authorities, and lying media of their own day, who were King Ahab and King Jehoshaphat’s enemies.
The lying four hundred were saying “no” to the enemies of God’s church, and if this is all that’s needed for you to judge your preaching as faithful and true, you would have fit in well with that four hundred.
And hated Micaiah for proclaiming God’s “no” and judgment to the Old Testament church and its leaders.
Then the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?”
At this point, you might want to stop me to argue that I’m misapplying the text, saying something like, “Jehoshaphat and Ahab were wicked, but our church leaders today are righteous. The people of God then were evil, but we obey God’s commands!”
Really? Two responses.
First, do you think God’s people standing there listening to the false four hundred’s promises of death to the heathen and victory to righteous Ahab and Jehoshaphat, and their people, wasn’t embraced by the listening congregation? Did the positive assurances of victory not stroke the ears of God’s people precisely where they itched, and is that not why there were four hundred of them and only one true prophet?
Second, why was the true word of God warnings, condemnations, and judgments? Was it because God didn’t see the faithfulness of His people and judged them harshly? Was it because God failed by letting Himself hate both the sin and the sinners? In other words, do you think being a member of the Christian church means you escape or don’t even need God’s “no,” His warnings, condemnations, threatenings, curses, and discipline?
If so, the next section of this historical account will shock you as Micaiah pulls back the curtain of God’s throne room:
Micaiah said, “Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left. The LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said this while another said that. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, ‘I will entice him.’ The LORD said to him, ‘How?’ And he said, ‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Then He said, ‘You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.’ Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you.”
Stop and think carefully about this, dear brothers in Christ. Who is it Who sends deceiving spirits in the mouths of the prophets to bring disaster upon His people and their esteemed leaders?
Micaiah testifies this is done by God the Father Almighty.
To think, let alone say, such a thing must be blasphemy, right?
What’s needed is for one of the four hundred to silence this usurper seeking to discredit him and his four hundred compatriots, and thus steal their position and pay.
Then Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah came near and struck Micaiah on the cheek and said, “How did the Spirit of the LORD pass from me to speak to you?”
The same response as that of the chief elders and scribes to Jesus and His Apostles when they spoke God’s threats and judgments against God’s people of their own time. Their jealousy got the best of them. The true prophets were a threat to their position and pay, so they beat and mocked and plotted against them, then killed them.
In the face of terrible danger, blessed Micaiah wasn’t backing down. He stuck to the truths God was revealing to him:
Micaiah said, “Behold, you shall see on that day when you enter an inner room to hide yourself.”
Micaiah had faithfully proclaimed God’s “no,” and now Ahab dispensed with him:
Then the king of Israel said, “Take Micaiah and return him to Amon the governor of the city and to Joash the king’s son; and say, ‘Thus says the king, “Put this man in prison and feed him sparingly with bread and water until I return safely.”’”
The historical record shows Micaiah had not one, but two last things to say.
Micaiah said, “If you indeed return safely the LORD has not spoken by me.” And he said, “Listen, all you people.” (1Kings 22)
Listen, all you people.
Listen, all you people today.
You can tell who truly speaks for God by examining the message for God’s “yes” and God’s “no.” God’s blessings and God’s curses. God’s promises of God and His promises of evil. Life and death. Right and wrong. Life and death.
Both should be present and pronounced proportionally.
As you examine, don’t be fooled by pulpit prophecies that make allusions to God’s “no” without actually pronouncing it. Something like this is so common today:
God’s plan is best. Why would you believe He wants what’s bad for you? Dont’ you trust Him? Why would God command heterosexual marriage if love can’t be wrong? Yet God is love, isn’t He, and so whatever God commands is for your good. Do you believe that? Embrace the Gospel! I’m pleading with you to believe the truth. It is so beautiful. All of us here have found it sweet to our mouths and our lives have been blessed by giving ourselves to it.
Don’t be afraid to come to God. Jesus said His Own true heart is gentle and lowly, so there is nothing to fear. He has promised those who come to Him He will never cast out, so come. He made you and He knows what is best for you. Won’t you trust Him and embrace the Gospel. He wants this so very much for you! He wants you and your children to flourish!
This is not God’s “no.” This bears no resemblance to His prohibitions, warnings, threats, and curses.
Endless repetition of God’s yes, heightening the rhetoric surrounding it, will never equal one simple declaration of His “no”:
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Galatians 6:7-8)
The people of God know how to justify generosity toward themselves and stinginess toward the church and her shepherds. The Lord rebukes His people for such sin through the prophet Haggai: “Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, saying, ‘Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?'” (Haggai 1:3-4)
On the other hand, there are hucksters in church leadership who love money more than they love the sheep. They refuse to shepherd for fear the tithes and offerings will dwindle.
Pastor Tim & Andrew Henry discuss money at church and aim pastors and sheep toward faithfulness.
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
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Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
“Out of My Mind” from September 1967 issue of Eternityby Joe BaylyJohn Updike, contemporary American novelist, describes his parents as “inclined to laugh a lot, and examine everything for the fingerprints of God.”
Laughter is a gift of God, a good gift.
I think most of us, especially in the household of faith, don’t laugh enough. Especially at ourselves.
We live life deadpan. We hit every problem head-on, without the light release of laughter.
To me, one grace note on the Day of Pentecost was Peter’s reply when the disciples were accused of being drunk.
Had we been in his place, I think we’d have defended our Christian respectability: drunkenness is a sin; the Old Testament condemns drunkenness; we obey God’s Word. Therefore (drawing our morality skirts about us), you insult us by calling us drunkards. We live the separated life. We drink nothing stronger than coffee/Coke.
Not so Peter.
“Look,” he said, “it’s too early in the day to be drunk. Now we have something of supreme importance to tell you.”
Maybe they laughed. At least Peter gave a light reply to a serious charge. And the lightness permitted him to get on with his redemptive business.
God has a sense of humor. I’m persuaded of it.
There are the ordinary evidences, such as His design of camel, dolphin, penguin, and monkey. And middle-aged men.
But there are the laughing spots of history as well, ancient and modern.
Such as that monastery filled with monks who have taken the vow of silence. Those monks spend long hours in their cubicles reflecting, meditating, seeking the presence of God.
In the kitchen is the cook, a man who has to forego the vow of silence–after all, someone has to cook three meals a day, scrub the pots and pans, deal with tradesmen. Sorry about that, Brother Lawrence. Somebody must be worldly. Unfortunately that’s your personal job assignment.
God must have laughed when out of that kitchen—not the cubicles of a hundred monasteries—came the great devotional classic of the late Middle Ages.
I think God must have laughed when Wheaton College—not North Central or Elmhurst or the University of Chicago—was presented with the bones of a prehistoric animal (much more prehistoric than Wheaton’s constituency would suppose), discovered in a local peat bog.
And when Oral Roberts University built an infirmary.
When Hollywood filmed “The Ten Commandments.”
And an Italian Communist produced that most biblical of modern films, “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew.”
When television came along, permitting Christians to catch up an the movies they had missed during the previous 20 years.
You add to the list. Or maybe you’ll want to subtract an item or two as not laughable.
Laughter is a personal thing. What seems funny to the British isn’t funny to most Americans. And the standard of humor even varies from family to family.
Any good gift can be perverted. There’s the danger in humor.
Our laughs can hurt a person created in the divine image. Laughter can destroy.
Laughter can also short-circuit times of potential value. Have you been in a Christian gathering, perhaps after church on Sunday night, when joke was piled on joke, ad nauseum, until any possibility of spiritual fellowship evaporated?
Some Christians cover up their real feelings, even their real personalities, with the mask of humor. Perhaps we fear that others will not accept us as we really are, so we must cover ourselves with the garb of a clown.
Life begins and—in most cases—ends with tears. In between is the possibility for laughter, especially for those who “examine everything for the fingerprints of God.”
We tend to consider writings to be deeply spiritual if they’re written in stilted syntax with archaic vocabulary. This is superstition.
What is deep about Puritans isn’t their stilted syntax and archaic vocabulary, but the fierceness of their seizure of God. They remind us of Jesus’ words in connection with John the Baptist, “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force” (Matthew 11:12).
If the violence of Puritan spirituality and devotion is characteristic of the Puritans, its absence is characteristic of our generation, including the timidity of our pastoral care.
By way of contrast, consider the letter below from Puritan pastor, Samuel Rutherford, to a sister in Christ who had recently lost one of her children, was in the bondage of spiritual depression, and suffering illness. Rutherford’s words are helpful, both for the Viscountess but also us in our ministry to those who go beyond the godly work of grieving, falling prey to bitterness, victimhood, and stewing in their misery.
While I was a child, my parents lost three children to death: one to leukemia, one to cystic fibrosis, and one to hemophilia. Rutherford’s letter reminds me much of my father’s preachings and writings on death. No sentimental parading of one’s pain, but manly declarations of faith.
It was terribly difficult for him and mother. We all knew it, but we heard both of them testify they were never as certain of God’s love for them as when they walked away from the fresh grave of one of their children.
They also reminded parents our children are on loan from God, and He has every right to call in His loan any time He wants.
If you haven’t read Dad’s (I think) finest book, View from a Hearse, get a copy.
Here then is Samuel Rutherford’s pastoral care for Lady Jane Campbeli:
The historical background to the letterLADY JANE CAMPBELI, Viscountess of Kenmure, was the third daughter of Archibald Campbell, seventh Earl of Argyle, and sister to the Marquis of Argyle who was beheaded in 1661.
She was a woman distinguished in her day for the depth of her piety, and her warm attachment to the Presbyterian interest in Scotland. Nor was she less distinguished for generosity and munificence, than for piety. Her bounty was in a particular manner extended to those whom suffering for conscience sake had reduced to poverty or exile.
In the year 1628 she was married to Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar, afterwards Viscount Kenmure and Lord Gordon of Lochinvar, which is not far from Carsphairn. This union did not last many years. In 1634 she became a widow, his Lordship having died at Kenmure Castle, on the 12th of September that year, in the 35th year of his age. But her sorrow on this occasion was alleviated by the Christian resignation and faith which he was enabled to exercise under his last illness. To this noble man she had two daughters, who died in infancy, one about the beginning of the year 1629, and the other in 1634, as may be gathered from allusions to these bereavements, contained in two consolatory letters written to her by Rutherford in these years. She had also, by the same marriage, a son, John, second Viscount of Kenmure, who, however, died under age and unmarried, in August 1649.
This event forms the subject of a letter written to her by Rutherford the 1st of October that year. She married a second husband, on the 21st of September 1640, the Hon. Sir Henry Montgomery of Giffen, second son of Alexander, fifth Earl of Eglinton; but this marriage was without issue. Sir Henry’s religious views were congenial to her own; and he is described as an “active and faithful friend of the Lord’s kirk.”
She was soon left a widow a second time, in which state she lived till a very venerable age, having survived the Restoration a number of years, as appears from the fact that Livingstone, at the time of his death (which took place at Rotterdam in 1672), speaks of her as the oldest acquaintance he then had alive in Scotland.
She was a regular correspondent of Rutherford, the last of whose letters to her is dated July the 24th, 1661, after the execution of her brother above mentioned. Nor after Mr. Rutherford’s death was she unmindful of his widow. “Madam,” says Mr. M’Ward, in a letter to her, “Mrs. Rutherford gives me often an account of the singular testimony which she met with of your Ladyship’s affection to her and her daughter.”
The Letter:To a Christian Gentlewoman on the death of her daughter
MISTRESS,—My love in Christ remembered to you. I was indeed sorrowful at my departure from you, especially since ye were in such heaviness after your daughter’s death. Yet I do persuade myself, ye know that the weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you lieth upon your strong Saviour; for Isaiah saith, “In all your afflictions He is afflicted” (Isa. 63:9). O blessed Second who suffereth with you! and glad may your soul be even to walk in the fiery furnace with one like unto the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God. Courage! up your heart! When ye do tire, He will bear both you and your burden (Ps. 55:22).
Yet a little while and ye shall see the salvation of God. Remember of what age your daughter was, and that just so long was your lease of her. If she was eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, I know not; but sure I am, seeing her term was come, and your lease run out, ye can no more justly quarrel your great Superior for taking His own at His just term day, than a poor farmer can complain that his master taketh a portion of his own land to himself when his lease is expired.
Good mistress, if ye would not be content that Christ would hold from you the heavenly inheritance which is made yours by His death, shall not that same Christ think hardly of you if ye refuse to give Him your daughter willingly, who is a part of His inheritance and conquest? I pray the Lord to give you all your own, and to grace you with patience to give God His also. He is an ill debtor who payeth that which he hath borrowed with a grudge.
Indeed, that long loan of such a good daughter, an heir of grace, a member of Christ (as I believe), deserveth more thanks at your Creditor’s hands, than that ye should gloom and murmur when He craveth but His own.I believe you would judge them to be but thankless neighbours who would pay you a sum of money after this manner. But what? Do you think her lost, when she is but sleeping in the bosom of the Almighty? Think her not absent who is in such a friend’s house. Is she lost to you who is found to Christ? If she were with a dear friend, although you should never see her again, your care for her would be but small. Oh, now, is she not with a dear Friend? and gone higher, upon a certain hope that ye shall, in the Resurrection, see her again, when (be ye sure) she shall neither be hectic nor consumed in body? You would be sorry either to be, or to be esteemed, an atheist; and yet, not I, but the Apostle, thinketh those to be hopeless atheists who mourn excessively for the dead (Thess. 4:13).
But this is not a challenge on my part. I do speak this only fearing your weakness; for your daughter was a part of yourself; and, therefore, nature in you, being as it were cut and halved, will indeed be grieved. But ye have to rejoice, that when a part of you is on earth, a great part of you is glorified in heaven. Follow her, but envy her not; for indeed it is self-love in us that maketh us mourn for them that die in the Lord. Why? Because for them we cannot mourn, since they are never happy till they be dead; therefore we mourn for our own private respect.
Take heed, then, that in showing your affection in mourning for your daughter, ye be not, out of self- affection, mourning for yourself. Consider what the Lord is doing in it. Your daughter is plucked out of the fire, and she resteth from her labours; and your Lord, in that, is trying you, and casting you in the fire. Go through all fires to your rest; and now remember that the eye of God is upon the bush burning and not consumed; and He is gladly content that such a weak woman as you should send Satan away, frustrate of his design. Now honour God, and shame the strong roaring lion, when ye seem weakest. Should such an one as ye faint in the day of adversity? Call to mind the days of old. The Lord yet liveth. Trust in Him, although He should slay you. Faith is exceeding charitable, and believeth no evil of God.
Now is the Lord laying, in the one scale of the balance, your making conscience of submission to His gracious will, and in the other, your affection and love to your daughter. Which of the two will ye then choose to satisfy? Be wise, then; and as I trust ye love Christ better than a sinful woman, pass by your daughter, and kiss the Lord’s rod.
Men do lop the branches off their trees round about, to the end they may grow up high and tall. The Lord hath this way lopped your branch in taking from you many children, to the end you should grow upward, like one of the Lord’s cedars, setting your heart above, where Christ is, at the right hand of the Father. What is next, but that your Lord cut down the stock after He hath cut the branches?
Prepare yourself; you are nearer your daughter this day than you were yesterday. While ye prodigally spend time in mourning for her, ye are speedily posting after her. Run your race with patience. Let God have His own; and ask of Him, instead of your daughter which He hath taken from you, the daughter of faith, which is patience; and in patience possess your soul. Lift up your head: ye do not know how near your redemption doth draw, Thus recommending you to the Lord, who is able to establish you, I rest, your loving and affectionate friend in the Lord Jesus,
S. R.
ANWOTH, April 23, 1628.
(Eighteenth in a series; on 4/30/24, series had views/listens of 10,076)
Last chapter in this series, we documented the many reasons the Trustees of Wheaton College had to rejoice in their hiring of President James Oliver Buswell, Jr. Serving their institution from 1926 to 1940, under his leadership enrollment more than tripled, the college improved their accreditation, faculty members were hired, the percentage of faculty holding the terminal degree increased, departments and degrees (including graduate) were added, the endowment grew, Wheaton’s reputation for Biblical orthodoxy combined with academic excellence attracted a student body of significant ethnic and national diversity so that Wheaton’s reputation went international.
Nevertheless, in January of 1940, Wheaton’s Trustees fired the man.
The campus was shocked. Many decades later, student leaders (including my father, Joe Bayly, and father-in-law, Ken Taylor) spoke of their regret and sense of guilt over the Trustees’ action.
Then, September of 2023, Wheaton’s Trustees went back and stomped the poor man a second time. Since he was in his grave, their stomping could no longer be firing him, so instead they trashed his reputation and expunged his name from the campus.
Now then, why? We’ve written many chapters of this story demonstrating that Ryken and his Trustees’ denunciation of Buswell as a racist is a lie, but now we ask another question. Why did two Trustee Boards separated by almost a century want to vilify this man and rid their immaculate selves of any association with him?
Appeasing students doesn’t explain why the Trustees fired President Buswell back in 1940, nor is it a sufficient explanation for why they denounced and purged his name from their campus this past year. Trustees a century apart publicly demonstrating the same malice toward the same man can’t mean nothing beyond mollifying angry students of color.
You say it wasn’t malice, but judicious exercise of governmental authority, and it’s my aim in this article to demonstrate otherwise.
There can be no doubt these students of color exercising their power chose a victim who was not simply dead and buried, but whom Ryken, Gieser, and their fellow Trustees would be pleased to have an opportunity to disassociate themselves from. In other words, the victim was a joint decision. Ryken and his Trustees wanted him to be the one denounced before their women of color chose him to be the one denounced. If some white Wheaton father had to be sacrificed, everyone knew which father was most safely put forward for the dishonor.
Note not one single voice has spoken up publicly in defense of President Buswell from Wheaton’s Trustees, administrators, or campus. Both the 1940 and the 2023 Trustees are unanimous in their stomping the man. So again, why?
Reading the history of his tenure at Wheaton, there is some possibility of placing the blame on the students, arguing the Trustees were merely appeasing the students back in 1940. President Buswell’s tenure in the office of the president had the usual campus bickering and student complaints.
Jean and Ken Hansen
Coach Fred WalkerOne of those students who served as a spokesman for the complainers was Ken Hansen. Mary Lee and I knew Ken and his wife, Jean. We grew up at College Church with the Hansens and their children. Alongside Marion Wade, Ken was the founder and longtime CEO of ServiceMaster Industries. A major donor to Wheaton College, Ken served as a Wheaton Trustee from 1966 to 1978.
On my bookshelves is a pre-publication copy of Ken’s autobiography1 which contains an account of Ken’s time under Buswell as a Wheaton student. There he discloses how he and his college buddies met with a small group of Trustees to criticize President Buswell.
As a student, Hansen had been hired as a men’s athletic supply room attendant, and here he recounts his taking over the job:
When I walked in …I was stunned by the mess that greeted me. The spring season sports fellows and coaches had piled the dirty, damp uniforms and other togs and towels in hit or miss piles on the floor of the locker room and the supply room. [My coworker] Jim said that he had just been given the job of running the supply room which had been the purview of the head coach, Fred Walker, in the past. The college business manager, Mr. Kirk, Kay Gieser’s father, had made this change. It was furiously objected to by this coach when he arrived for his pre-season practice time… The door of the supply room was re-keyed by Jim. Only he and I had keys. None of the coaches did. That was a source of conflict from then on.2
Sources from the time document significant opposition to football Coach Fred Walker. President Buswell received a number of complaints against Coach Walker, but after he investigated them, Buswell found the complaints to be baseless. The man was honorable and falsely accused, so President Buswell refused to give in to the pressures brought to bear to fire him.
Hansen’s account provides further insight to this controversy, introducing us to James Graham hired by Buswell’s administration in an attempt to shore up Coach Walker’s acceptance by Wheaton’s students:
Dr. James R. Graham came into my life that fall in a major way. He was brought to the campus ostensibly to teach Bible and missions. In reality he was brought to give support to the head coach, Fred Walker. He was a magnet to many of us. He attracted the athletes because he was an athlete. He was a mountain of a man physically AND [emphasis original] spiritually.3
Later in the text, Hansen picks up the story:
Over the conflict of some staff and faculty with President Buswell I and some other students became involved. We organized into a self-declared leadership group which commissioned Don Hoke and me to go to the trustees in town to present our concerns. Don and I had the signatures of these student leaders and went to see a number of these local trustees. Thor Burtness, Herman Fischer, R. J. Nicholas, Edgar Dival, Wm. McCarrell were the prime ones.
…The major conflict had to do with Fred Walker, head coach. We self-declared student leaders sent a memo signed by all of us to the president expressing our disapproval of Mr. Walker. The next afternoon he was at my supply room door calling me to task for this action. As I look back, I am sure that there were more straws in that wind of conflict and change than any one living knows. I regret having a part in it at all.4
Hansens’s candor and expression of remorse are commendable. He continues:
Dr. Buswell made some key decisions for and accomplished much for Wheaton College. President Buswell did leave the college under pressure from the trustees.
Jim Graham was ostensibly brought to strengthen the president’s hand for coach Walker. He, however, became a factor opposing the coach and thus weakened the president’s position in this regard at least.5
So Jim Graham, the “mountain of a man both physically AND spiritually” who was brought in by President Buswell to support Coach Walker did the very opposite. He betrayed both Coach Walker and President Buswell by undercutting Coach Walker among the students.
This is very common in leadership. Whether in colleges, churches, or businesses, those under authority will badmouth the woman or man above them, demanding their superior be fired. It is a basic duty of the top authority to weigh the charges, not simply giving in to underlings’ complaints. Otherwise, the organization is under mob rule. Think of Korah’s rebellion against Moses.
God defended Moses.
The controversy over “the football coach” or “athletic director” is often mentioned as part of the explanation for President Buswell’s sudden termination. This sort of campus intrigue is to be expected in any Christian community. There were other matters of intrigue which could take up pages, including President Buswell pushing his Trustees to allow him to fully integrate the student body by accepting applicants “as black as the ace of spades.”
Buswell, the reformerWhat is hidden but must not be missed, though, is the Trustees’ fundamental opposition to a significant part of President Buswell’s gifting and work for Christ and His Church. President J. Oliver Buswell Jr. was a reformer.
Institutional powers and authorities despise reformers.
No evidence more clearly demonstrates the tendentious nature of the Historical Review Task Force Report than their studied avoidance of President Buswell’s work of church reform. Thus, opening up this work is central to any understanding of the hostility Buswell faced from Wheaton’s Trustees.
Glaring evidence of the Task Force’s studied avoidance of Buswell’s leadership of reform is their mentioning J. Gresham Machen only once.
Machen was the titan towering above all other American church reformers of the twentieth century. Author of the classic Christianity and Liberalism and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, for many years J. Gresham Machen worked side by side with J. Oliver Buswell opposing the heresies oppressing the American church, but the Task Force kept him out of their Report.
Mentioning Buswell’s co-laborer once, even that mention did not record Machen’s close association and work with President Buswell. Rather, Machen’s name appeared in their Report as an aside:
After graduating from Brown University in 1927, [Rev. Wyeth Willard] earned a Master of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1931, studying under J. Gresham Machen.6
Why such studied avoidance of President Buswell’s longtime close association and work with one of the most famous Biblical scholars in the history of North America?
The significance of the Task Force refusing to mention Buswell’s work alongside Machen is that obscuring this part of the history kept Buswell’s godly labors for church reform obscured, also. How could the Task Force recount the work of reform of Buswell and Machen in yoke together over many years opposing the mushrooming of heresies in the American church without some, at least grudging, respect for this aspect of Buswell’s presidential leadership making its way into their Report?
Buswell and MachenThe Task Force knew it wouldn’t do for them even to include the phrase “Machen and Buswell.” Elijah and Elisha, Paul and Barnabas, Luther and Melanchthon, Calvin and Bucer, Whitefield and Wesley, Koop and Schaeffer; but no, not Machen and Buswell.
Still, they couldn’t entirely hide this work in their account of President Buswell’s character and work. Across 144 pages, they had at least to mention it, and they did twice: first in the text of the Report itself, and second as the text of a line in a graphic:
[By] June 2, 1939 President Buswell’s job was seriously in jeopardy. By the beginning of the year, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction among both the trustees and prominent alumni, many of whom worried that Buswell’s constant embroilment in denominational conflicts… were reflecting poorly on the College.7
President Buswell is dismissed by the Board of Trustees due to his participation in Presbyterian denominational conflict and a dispute about the College’s athletics director. Dr. V. Raymond Edman, a member of the faculty, is appointed as the fourth president of Wheaton College.8
The Wheaton sort of Evangelical can’t understand why anyone cares about doctrine, so that they speak dismissively of defense of the faith as “denominational conflicts.” Let the reader understand “denominational politics,” meaning “egos and fatuity.”
Let us turn to President Buswell’s work of reform which Wheaton’s scholars dismissed as inconsequential.
Brothers born for adversityDuring the years J. Oliver Buswell served as Wheaton’s president, he worked alongside Princeton Seminary professor J. Gresham Machen for the reform of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (PCUSA). With a number of other pastors, they were seeking to remove the heresies oppressing the souls of their denomination, but those heresies were so entrenched that their reward for their labors of reform was Buswell, Machen, and their fellow reformers becoming increasingly ostracized by the majority of PCUSA pastors—both heretical and orthodox.
This needs to be emphasized: Buswell and Machen’s work of reform was not just opposed by the heretics, but also those who held to orthodox Biblical doctrine. The orthodox pastors and elders were hostile to Machen, Buswell, and the men they led fighting together for the purity of the Gospel.
In 1924, two years before Buswell began serving as Wheaton’s president, 1,274 church officers of the PCUSA signed The Auburn Affirmation (An Affirmation designed to safeguard the unity and liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America). This Auburn Affirmation was a defense of heretics and their heresies, and the battle was engaged.
Historically, this is referred to as “the Presbyterian conflict.” Hostilities grew throughout the twenties. In 1929, three years after Buswell was installed as Wheaton’s third president, Professor J. Gresham Machen left his professorship at the denomination’s Princeton Seminary and became a founder of the independent Westminster Theological Seminary.
Westminster Theological Seminary, founding faculty: Oswald T. Allis, Rienk Bouke Kuiper, J. Gresham Machen, Allan A. MacRae, John Murray, Ned B. Stonehouse, Cornelius Van Til, Robert Dick Wilson, Paul Woolley
This work of church reform and its surrounding controversy continued into the thirties as the Auburn pastors’ heresies metastasized across the denomination. The betrayal of Scripture and the souls for whom Christ died had infiltrated even the denomination’s missions agency, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. The most famous proponent of the Modernist heresies within the mission was best-selling author of The Good Earth, Pearl Buck, who served as a missionary in China.
In 1933, Prof. Machen wrote an overture to the PCUSA General Assembly which condemned and called for the reformation of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. The overture needed to be forwarded to General Assembly by Machen’s local presbytery, so New Brunswick Presbytery designated the overture for debate and action at its April 11, 1933, meeting.
The overture had four points, and the first was:
The Presbytery of New Brunswick respectfully overtures the General Assembly of 1933:
- To take care to elect to positions on the Board of Foreign Missions only persons who are fully aware of the danger in which the Church stands and who are determined to insist upon such verities as the full truthfulness of Scripture, the virgin birth of our Lord, His substitutionary death as a sacrifice to satisfy Divine justice, His bodily resurrection and His miracles, as being essential to the Word of God and our Standards and as being necessary to the message which every missionary under our Church shall proclaim.9
Preparing to defend his overture at presbytery, Machen wrote a long pamphlet which he distributed to each of his fellow presbyters. He also sent copies to the board members of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions.
Heresiarch and Presbyterian missionary, Pearl BuckTitled Modernism and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A, Machen documented the heresies he, Buswell, and their fellow reformers were fighting to remove from the PCUSA. In his pamphlet, Machen turned, specifically, to the heresies of Pearl Buck documented in her speeches and articles:
Mrs. Buck deals more generally with missions and with the nature of the Christian religion, and what she says …is in thoroughgoing conflict with the historic Christian Faith. She represents the deity of Christ as a thing accepted by some and rejected by others, but certainly not essential:
Some of us (Christians) believe in Christ as our fathers did. To some of us he is still the divine son of God, born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit. But to many of us He has ceased to be that . . . Let us face the fact that the old reasons for foreign missions are gone from the minds and hearts of many of us, certainly from those of us who are young.
She rejoices in the stripping of ‘the magic of superstition’ from Christ, and it seems clear that in the ‘magic of superstition’ she includes the miracles of Christ and the Biblical notion of the salvation which He wrought. . . She rejects directly the Bible doctrine of sin:
I am not inclined to blame human beings very much. I do not believe in original sin. I believe that most of us start out wanting to do right and to do good. I believe that most of us keep that desire as long as we live and whatever we do.
She rejects the old gospel of salvation from sin and even seems to advocate the denial of religious liberty to those who preach that gospel:
In the old days it was plain enough. Our forefathers believed sincerely in a magic religion. They believed simply and plainly that all who did not hear the gospel, as they called it, were damned, and every soul to whom they preached received in that moment the chance for salvation from that hell. Though heard but for a single moment, the preacher gave that soul the opportunity of a choice for eternity. If the soul paid no heed or did not believe, the preacher could not take the responsibility. He was absolved. There are those who still believe this, and if they sincerely believe, I honor that sincerity, though I cannot share the belief. I agree with the Chinese who feel their people should be protected from such superstition.
Pearl Buck was only typical of the corruption of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America. And very specifically, what were the corruptions?
- Original sin
- the denial of the Virgin Birth
- the denial of the deity of Jesus Christ
- the denial of miracles recorded by Scripture
- the denial of the Atoning Death of our Lord Jesus
- the denial of our Lord’s Resurrection from the dead
Without recounting the conflict at greater length, by 1936—three years after Machen wrote his overture and distributed his pamphlet to his fellow presbyters—the critical moment had arrived and charges were filed against a number of these reforming pastors, including Buswell and Machen. Shortly afterward, these men were expelled from the PCUSA.
Yet, by God’s sovereign will and power, their suffering was fruitful to the end that Machen and his fellow reformers founded Westminster Theological Seminary (1929), then the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions (1933); and finally, a new presbyterian denomination called the Presbyterian Church of America (1936).10
Walking a tightrope: Buswell’s efforts to get Wheaton trustees to admit BlacksAs these battles for the reform of the PCUSA were being lost, out in the Midwest at Wheaton College, tension grew between President Buswell and his Board of Trustees. This tension came to a head in 1939 as President Buswell sought the Trustees’ approval for a permanent policy change to permit racially integrated education. This work of Buswell opposing the college’s longtime but informal segregation was the context for the stiff warning Trustee Hugo Wurdack gave President Buswell in his June 2, 1939 letter to Buswell concerning this change:
I do not think it would be wise bring this matter up at this time. There are already a number of controversial matters before the Board with more to come. It would be my counsel to keep out of all controversies, so far as possible, even at the sacrifice of strong convictions.
For some time, President Buswell had been in correspondence with Rev. W. Wyeth Willard who was promoting the acceptance of a young Black female applicant he knew personally. In the end, President Buswell had the joy of informing Pastor Willard that his work had been fruitful:
June 15, 1939
Rev. W. Wyeth Willard
202 Montoleir Avenue Novark
New JerseyDear Brother Willard,
A rather difficult correspondence recently issued in the successful removing of the obstacles to the admission of Miss Rachel Boone. I therefore advised our admissions officer to admit her. He now informs me that Miss Boone’s registration at Houghton College has been completed and that her aunt is very well satisfied with the prospects.
I think, therefore, it would be unwise for us to ro-open the case.
I do want you to know, however, that this conclusion [the permanent policy change to permit Black racially integrated education] indicated in the enclosed memoranda has been reached.
Yours in Christian fellowship
(Signed)
JOB/AW
A “difficult correspondence” indeed. Recall Trustee Wurdack’s response to Buswell’s letter pleading for Black integration on Wheaton’s campus:
I do not think it would be wise to bring this matter up at this time. There are already a number of controversial matters before the Board with more to come.
Having limited capital, leaders must establish priorities, choosing their battles.
President Buswell was defending his football coach suffering false accusations while being undercut by his assistant coach. He was hiring faculty members, seeking to increase the number in possession of the terminal degree. He was working to address the college’s deficiencies, academically, which were obstacles to full accreditation by the North Central Association of Colleges and Universities. He faced inevitable budget shortfalls as the result of the explosion of Wheaton’s enrollment, and this during the Great Depression. He faced opposition by his Trustees to his advocacy of the racial integration of the college.
But underlying it all was the Trustees’ hostility to President Buswell’s work of “denominational conflicts”—which was his work of reform. His prophetic voice joined to that of J. Gresham Machen in defense of the Church’s Biblical integrity was deeply conflictual, and the organizational men leading Wheaton were as unimpressed with their President Buswell just as the organizational men of Princeton Seminary had been with their Professor Machen.
Were Buswell and Machen pugnacious? Were they the sort of punctilious men who make mountains out of molehills?11
Judge for yourself. To repeat, here are the doctrines they defended in their work of reform:
- Original sin
- the denial of the Virgin Birth
- the denial of the deity of Jesus Christ
- the denial of miracles recorded by Scripture
- the denial of the Atoning Death of our Lord Jesus
- the denial of our Lord’s Resurrection from the dead
Organizational men, reformers, and prophetsBack in 1996, a committee of pastors and elders was asked to evaluate the conflict within the church I was serving. After collecting letters and interviewing some of the leaders of the conflict, the group came up with recommendations for the congregation and its officers and pastors.
In time, I too met with the committee. Their spokesman said they thought a new man could get a fresh start, so it was their recommendation I resign. Their spokesman went on to explain they had spent a lot of time looking into matters and had arrived at a conclusion they wanted to put to me in the form of a question. He paused for a moment, then stated their question: “Can a man be a prophet and be a pastor?”
Later that night I recounted this to my brother, Nathan, who was also a pastor. He responded, “That’s the wrong question. The right questions is, ‘Can a man be a pastor and not be a prophet?'”
This is helpful for understanding President J. Oliver Buswell back in the 1930s leading up to the Wheaton Trustees firing him in early 1940. President Buswell was a prophet preaching and writing for the reform of Christ’s Church.
But can a man be a prophet and be a college president?
Wheaton’s trustees answered, “No.”
Are Machen and Buswell, too, among the prophets?
Some men love money. Some love power. Some love their own names and reputations.
Few love the Church of Jesus Christ, and even fewer are willing to do the thankless work of laboring for the Church’s purity and peace. Such men used to be called “churchmen.”
President Buswell was a churchman. Tirelessly, he toiled alongside Princeton Seminary professor J. Gresham Machen for the reform of their Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Along with a number of other churchmen, Buswell and Machen were seeking to expose and expel heretics and heresies from Christ’s church.
Do any Evangelicals remember the Apostle Paul’s farewell charge to his elders in the church of Ephesus:
I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. (Acts 20:29-31)
For their labors of love for Christ and His Church, Machen, Buswell, and their co-laborers in reform were disciplined by the Presbyterian religious leaders. Most were expelled from the PCUSA. In 1936, Wheaton College President J. Oliver Buswell was expelled. Then, three years later, Wheaton’s religious leaders also rid themselves of President Buswell.
False doctrine and the men committed to tolerating and promoting it had such a hold on the reins of money and power within the Presbyterian Church that Buswell, Machen, and their fellow reformers lost the battle.
Still, it must be noted that the battle wasn’t lost because those who were heretics were so many and strong. It was their fellow Presbyterian pastors who weren’t spouting heresies themselves, but who wanted peace at all costs within their PCUSA, who expelled the reformers.
Scripture’s doctrine is preciousFive centuries ago, at the time of the Reformation, an earlier reformer was twice fired and forced to leave his job and home in Geneva. Knowing the nature of conflict within the Church, John Calvin wrote:
The name of peace is indeed plausible and sweet, but cursed is that peace which is purchased with so great loss, that we suffer the doctrine of Christ to perish, by which alone we grow together into godly and holy unity.12
In 1940, Wheaton’s Trustees were scandalized by President Buswell’s battle against heresy. They wanted a peaceful campus and non-controversial president, so they fired President Buswell and promoted history prof, V. Raymond Edman, into the presidency.
Almost a century later another Wheaton president, Phil Ryken, was hired to serve as president by Wheaton’s Trustees. Quite compliant to the demands of his students and Trustees, he too stomped the reputation and honor of his predecessor, James Oliver Buswell Jr.
This is not difficult to understand. Unless, of course, one desires to be Tommy—the pinball wizard. Deaf, dumb, and blind.
(Eighteenth in a series; on 4/30/24, series had views/listens of 10,076)
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References| ↑1 | Ken Hansen, The Ken and Jean Hansen Story: 1918 – 1989. | | ↑2 | Ibid, 53. | | ↑3 | Ibid, 58. | | ↑4 | Ibid, 59. | | ↑5 | Ibid, 60. | | ↑6 | Ibid, 50. | | ↑7 | Report, 51. | | ↑8 | Report, 112. | | ↑9 | Machen’s second through fourth points read:2. To instruct the Board of Foreign Missions that no one who denies the absolute necessity of acceptance of such verities by every candidate for the ministry can possibly be regarded as competent to occupy the position of Candidate Secretary,3. To instruct the Board of Foreign Missions to take care lest, by the wording of the application blanks for information from candidates and from those who are asked to express opinions about them, or in any other way, the impression be produced that tolerance of opposing views or ability to progress in spiritual truth, or the like, is more important than an unswerving faithfulness in the proclamation of the gospel as it is contained in the Word of God and an utter unwillingness to make common cause with any other gospel, whether it goes under the name of Christ or not,4. To warn the Board of the great danger that lurks in union enterprises at home as well as abroad, in view of the widespread error in our day. | | ↑10 | This denomination split at the end of its first year of existence. Three years later, in 1939, the half that held on to the name Presbyterian Church of America changed their name to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Neither church is to be confused with the Presbyterian Church in America, a southern denomination formed in 1973. | | ↑11 | The next article in this series will address the denominational conflict which split the Presbyterian Church of America. | | ↑12 | John Calvin, on Acts 15:2. |
Jürgen Von Hagen and Tim Bayly return to the studio and do some follow-up work on the war in Ukraine. Then they cover numerous other geopolitical, economic, and societal issues:
Is America an empire
Letters from listeners
Milton Friedman and the welfare state
Immigration and skilled/unskilled labor
What is the value of human life?
Under the Third Reich, the United States barred Jews from immigrating here
Impact of American isolationism on the American economy
Trade regime
Changes in the relationship of Taiwanese and Chinese economies
War in Ukraine being closely watched by China
American support for Ukraine indirectly supports Taiwan
Russian culture and Stalin, Chinese culture and Chairman Mao, German culture and Hitler
Were Nazis Martians, or Germans?
East German identity and West German identity
Patriotism in Europe vs America
Love for Fatherland and Christian nationalism
Origin of right-wing (AFD) in Germany today
Oliver Cromwell and Christian nationalism
Don’t ever give any economic forecast
The US economic future
German infrastructure failing but no government wants to cut social welfare benefits
Russian demographics and Putin’s aggression
American economy and growing wealth inequality
Murray’s “Coming Apart”; Belmont and Fishtown
Professors’ pay at American vs European universities
Professors’ pay at Christian colleges
Cryptocurrency
Choosing the church over the university
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
(Seventeenth in a series; on 4/30/24, series’ views/listens at 10,076)
Wheaton College has long proclaimed itself the “Harvard of Evangelicals.” Examining the Report produced by Wheaton’s best and brightest trashing J. Oliver Buswell as a racist leaves the reader with tectonic concerns for the state of the Evangelical minds professing there. Maybe it’s not a matter of bad scholarship, but the simple absence of intellectual curiosity? Or maybe it’s a character issue—say a lack of courage or an aversion to speaking truth to power?
Wheaton’s scholars to the side, among men and women of goodwill, some time ago in this series it became clear President Buswell was no racist. Just the opposite. The true historical record documents J. Oliver Buswell Jr. was an enemy of racism—that skulking evil which Galatians documents (Jews vs. Gentiles) has always dogged the Church of Jesus Christ. Sadly, sinners that we are, racism persists in the Church today. This is true, and it’s equally true J. Oliver Buswell Jr. was the enemy of racism.
Buswell fought racism manfully. In time he had the victory: first at Wheaton, with the commitment to the acceptance of Black applicants which he finally wrested from recalcitrant members of his faculty, administration, and Trustees. (The thanks he got was being fired six months later.) Second, he was victorious over racism through his sons (first and second) who followed their father and fought against it in famously public ways.
So no, President Ryken did not denounce President Buswell as racist and purge his name from Wheaton’s campus because the historical evidence proved he was a racist.
President Ryken denounced President Buswell because his Wheaton students of color demanded it of him. He complied with the students demands by assigning his faculty and staff the task of writing something that would provide him the best cover possible for his intended appeasement. He dignified this group of faculty and staff to which he had assigned this work with the name Historical Review Task Force. Two years later, when they had finished writing his report, he dignified it with the label Historical Review Task Force Report.
It’s challenging today to find a leader of God’s people who doesn’t resemble Aaron’s appeasement of his followers there at the foot of Mt. Sinai:
Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. For they said to me, ‘Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”
…Moses saw that the people were let loose—for Aaron had let them get loose to be a derision among their enemies (Exodus 32:21-25)
Aaron, at least, admitted it. He told Moses the people are “prone to evil,” so I gave in to them.
Nothing as honest has been admitted by Wheaton’s Trustees, administrators, and faculty. Our students are prone to hissy-fits over their victimhood, so we threw files and correspondence into the fire and “out came” this Historical Review Task Force Report.
If anyone bothers to thumb through Ryken and his Trustees’ Report, nothing is striking. It’s anodyne.
Ryken’s staff have composed a 122-page/421-footnote medley on the usual crimes of the usual old white male authorities. Give the indigenous people back our land or pay them for it. Confess we stole it from them or confess that the people we bought it from stole it from them. We’re very sensitive to the evils committed by our great-great-great grandfathers. Can we please say we’re sorry and provide a scapegoat for a joint ritual of laying our ancestors’ terrible sins on his head and sending him outside the campus?
Since releasing their Report back in September of 2023, President Ryken and his fellow administrators have been celebrating their own righteousness achieved through confessing their great-great-great grandfathers’ sins. Their celebrations have been very public, and without the slightest irony or self-doubt. Nor has there been any criticism or pushback from Wheaton faculty members blessed with the protection of academic freedom.
None of Wheaton’s august minds have given their colleagues’ Report any scrutiny.
From outside the campus, though, Ryken and his Trustees have received private rebukes and warnings. The rebukes have come from high places including a group of wealthy alumni donors. Nevermind. The Trustees remain in self-congratulatory mode along with Wheaton’s administrators while President Ryken receives accolades from students in their campus paper, running puff pieces about how excellent his leadership has been. And conflict finds him unflappable.
Faithful and discerning leadership is so rare across Christian institutions, organizations, and the Church today. Then, when God is so kind as to send us a good shepherd, we kill him. Jesus lamented, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her.”
God sent Wheaton a good shepherd named J. Oliver Buswell. How did Wheaton’s Trustees respond to him?
At their January 20, 1940, meeting, they fired him.
Why? What made Wheaton’s Trustees want to rid themselves of President Buswell?
Was enrollment falling? Was the football team losing? Was he getting fresh with the coeds? Was he a plagiarist? A thief? Was the school’s ranking tanking?
None of these things.
In 1926 when Buswell’s presidency began, undergrad enrollment was 377. By 1940 when he was fired, it had increased to 1,110. President Buswell assiduously worked on the improvement of the school’s scholarly credentials, increasing the percentage of faculty in possession of the terminal degree, founding the Wheaton Graduate School, and gaining accreditation by the North Central Association of Colleges and Universities. In 1929, President Buswell reinstated the Bachelor of Philosophy degree; then, in 1938, he added graduate study in Theology—offering an MA in Theology.1
Ryken, his Trustees and faculty grudgingly admit this in their Report. But note their final sentence. They couldn’t help themselves:
During (Buswell’s) tenure as president (1926-1940), the College’s endowment expanded substantially, both the faculty and the student body roughly tripled in size (from a few hundred to more than a thousand), and the school’s academic rigor and national (and international) reputation grew as never before. Wheaton had become what some have referred to as “the Harvard of Fundamentalism.” But these dramatic changes were not accompanied by a more expansive vision for racial equality.2
Poor Buswell needed a “more expansive vision.” Tsk-tsk.
“For racial equality.” Tut-tut.
It’s a lie, but a useful one for protecting their own leafy suburban campus customer stream, salaries, and billion dollar endowment.
The reader of such effete criticism must, of course, understand every last member of the Task Force, administration, and Board of Trustees is certain he himself is in possession of the most expansive vision for racial equality possible. But it should strike fear into the hearts of these faultless men judging Buswell to spend a moment asking themselves what other expansive visions of impeccable moral equality their successors ninety years from now will discover as future generations turn to examining the detritus of their own lives, then denouncing them and purging their names from Wheaton’s campus.
We hasten to say this series of articles is no hagiography. President Buswell is a sinful father in the faith similar to fathers in the faith listed by Hebrews including Abraham, Sarah, Noah, Rahab, Samson, and David. There has never been a father or mother in the faith without sin. Our Lord Jesus Alone is spotless. President Buswell was not spotless, and if this series was something other than an exposure of the slander spread against him by Ryken and his faculty and Trustees, after much study of the man’s life and papers, I could write of some aspects of his life’s work I’m guessing he came to regret. As a matter of fact, it’s common to find him apologizing for this and that offence as one reads his letters to his co-laborer, J. Gresham Machen.
We’ll pick this story up in our next article in this series. Learning what motivated Wheaton’s Trustees to fire President Buswell in 1940 is crucial for understanding why, almost a century later, President Ryken and his Trustees denounced the man publicly, then purged his name from their campus.
(Seventeenth in a series; on 4/30/24, series’ views/listens at 10,076)
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References| ↑1 | ”Wheaton College Historical Enrollment Statistics/Tuition,” Office of Academic Records and Services, Updated July 1992. | | ↑2 | Report, 13. |
Years ago, a close and lifelong friend handed me a postmillennial book, saying I needed to become a postmillennialist. A couple weeks later, we were talking on the phone and I told him I thought his postmillennialism wasn’t a function of Scripture, but his optimism.
It’s common for postmillennials to respond in kind, dismissing those who disagree with their millennarianism as merely pessimists.
Maybe they’re right.
Anyhow, both sides attribute the other side’s eschatology to character or personality, and there’s no question this intense battle over obscure and ambiguous texts of Scripture is a helpful reminder to us all how the Fall has corrupted our reason and intellect. Original sin misleads our hermeneutics, and not merely our morals.
Moving on, what sort of connection is there between postmillennialism and, say, sacramentology?
Postmillennials and paedocommunionists worship together. They are one and the same man. As members of the postmillennial, paedocommunionist CREC say, themselves, it would be difficult for anyone to join them in worship without being postmillennial. Thus, recently, the CREC’s presiding minister posted a paean to the CREC, saying:
Our postmillennialism is deeply embedded in our lives. This is more than a preference for historical optimism. Postmillennialism is how we see the Bible moving. It is far from a mere academic discussion. In fact, it would not be easy to function happily in the CREC without that eschatological predisposition.
He added:
Our paedocommunion practice is fundamental to our existence as a whole.
He goes on to share with those who have not yet joined the CREC what a splendid, dynamic, much-sought-after group of congregations they are, calling readers to join up. Taking him at his word, let’s examine the nature of the doubling down he and his pastor-friends testify they share as the center of their identity: they are postmillennial and paedocommunionist.
My thesis stated to my friend fifteen or so years ago was that his own postmillennialist fervor was a function of his optimism. Interesting, isn’t it, how the CREC’s presiding minister himself also explains their postmillennialism in terms of “optimism,” while claiming it isn’t a function of personality, but a descriptor of their view of the trajectory of history. It is “historical optimism,” but then he adds that it’s “more” than “historical optimism.” He’s right.
Moving to his sect’s paedocommunion liturgies, any examination of his fellow CREC pastors’ words spoken at their weekly observance of the Lord’s supper demonstrate their thralldom to this optimism. Having worshipped with the CREC and paedocommunionists a number of times, here are words I’ve never heard in their liturgies:
Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. (1Corinthians 11:27-32)
CREC paedocommunionists, we are told, are also postmillennialists, and it’s my observation they speak entirely positively at the Lord’s table just before administering the body and blood of our Lord.
But from the Scripture text above, let us recall these elements taken without examining oneself and properly discerning our Lord’s body cause members of Christ’s church to sicken and die. That is if we believe the Apostle Paul’s warning.
Do we? It’s a serious question. Do you and I believe that sacrament of the Lord’s supper is dangerous, or have we slumbered into complacency and optimism in our habits and words, handling these holy things in a posture of chipper presumption; “It’s all good!”
For five centuries, reformed Protestants all united in condemning paedocommunion have also been united in using these or similar words at the Lord’s table while serving the elements of bread and wine. Here, for instance, they’re found in the Scottish Book of Common Order:
Dearly beloved, As we are now about to celebrate the Holy Communion of the body and blood of Christ, let us consider how St. Paul exhorteth all persons to examine themselves before they eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For as the benefit is great, if with a truly penitent heart and lively faith we receive that holy sacrament (for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink His blood; then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us; we are one with Christ and Christ with us), so is the danger great if we receive the same unworthily. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
Therefore I warn all who are not of the number of the faithful, all who live in any sin against their knowledge or their conscience, charging them that they profane not this holy table.
And yet this is not pronounced to exclude any penitent person, how grievous soever his sins have been, but only such as continue in sin without repentance.
Examine your own consciences, therefore, to know whether you truly repent of your sins, and whether, trusting in God’s mercy, and seeking your whole salvation in Jesus Christ, you are resolved to follow holiness, and to live in peace and charity with all men.
If you have this testimony in your hearts before God, be assured that your sins are forgiven through the perfect merit of Jesus Christ our Lord; and I bid you, in His name, to His holy table.
And although you feel that you have not perfect faith, and do not serve God as you ought; yet if, by God’s grace, you are heartily sorry for your sins and infirmities, and earnestly desire to withstand all unbelief, and to keep all His commandments, be assured that your remaining imperfections do not prevent you from being received of God in mercy, and so made worthy partakers of this heavenly food.
For we come not to this supper as righteous in ourselves, but we come to seek our life in Christ, acknowledging that we lie in the midst of death. let us, then, look upon this sacrament as a remedy for those who are sick, and consider that the worthiness our Lord requireth of us is that we be truly sorry for our sins, and find our joy and salvation in Him. United with Him who is holy, even our Lord Jesus Christ, we are accepted of the Father, and invited to partake of these HOLY THINGS WHICH ARE FOR HOLY PERSONS.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.
Beloved in the Lord, attend to the words of the institution of the Holy Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ, as they are delivered by the holy apostle Paul (I Cor. xi. 23-26): “I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed took bread: and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.”
Etc.
Back in sixteenth century Geneva when John Knox was the pastor of the English language congregation, these were the same words he used in his administration of the Lord’s table. They were also the words used by John Calvin.
So from the beginning, the Reformed Protestant church condemned paedocommunion as well as administering the Lord’s supper with both serious and extensive warnings and threats and serious and extensive encouragements and promises.
Today, postmillennial paedocommunionists only give serious and extensive encouragements and promises.
For decades in our every-other-week observances of the Lord’s supper at the conclusion of our two worship services each Lord’s day, those same words above from sixteenth century Geneva were precisely what our pastors used at the table of our Lord. And recently at this same Trinity Reformed Church, its current pastor, Jody Killingsworth, used these words.
These words are not necessary for faithful Lord’s supper administration. These words are not required of pastors of our Evangel Presbytery. But over decades, all of us have come to love these words—and more, the wonderful balance, the Scriptural proportionality, of God’s “yes” and “no” which they faithfully communicate to the flock of God as we approach the sacrament.
Again, no one is required to read these words passed down to us across the centuries, but we are required to refuse the administration of paedocommunion and we are required to give serious and extensive warnings at the table, along with serious and extensive encouragements. (It’s worth mentioning that Trinity Reformed parents are asked to bring their little ones forward with them so the pastors and elders stationed on each side of the table can pray and lay hands on, to bless, all the little ones as part of the Lord’s table administration.)
Now then, why do postmillennial paedocommunionists never fence the Lord’s table with Biblical warnings bearing any resemblance to those used by Knox and Calvin?
The optimist is the man who can’t bear to say “no,” and the man who can’t bear to say “no” is the man who can’t bear conflict.
But isn’t the CREC known for engaging in conflict? Weren’t they the ones during Covid who protested by singing maskless in front of their county courthouse? Aren’t they known for their relentless criticism of civil authorities? What is this if not conflict?
Yes, of course this is conflict, but not where conflict is most difficult and most critical. Opposing civil authorities is easy compared to opposing one’s own church members. The Apostle Paul suffered much more at the hands of his own church family than at the hands of the outsiders, especially the Jews and the Roman civil authorities. Note that after listing his many sufferings outside the church—stonings, beatings, whippings, jailings, etc.—he ends the list by stating what was most painful for him. Going from the lesser to the greater, he ends his list with:
Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. (2Corinthians 11:28)
The Apostle Paul never stops writing in defense of himself across his letters to the churches. And why? Was it because the Jews and Romans were bad mouthing him?
Not in the least. It was because the Christians were bad mouthing him. The attacks on him inside the church were constant. But again, why?
He himself explains it:
I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. (Acts 20:29-31)
The faithful pastor is the man who never stops warning those souls inside—not outside—his congregation.
Now then, back to postmillennialists’ paedocommunion sacramental liturgies.
Do their words as they administer the Lord’s supper warn their sons, daughters, and brothers in Christ against neglecting or refusing to examine themselves, and thus not properly discerning the body of our Lord? Do they refuse to keep in careful attention the sickness and death meted out to God’s people by God in loving discipline as they administer their paedocommunion?
Earlier today, I was talking to two young daughters in the faith about how painful conflict in families and churches is, and how God sends us this pain to sanctify us. I went on to recount how, recently, I had been looking at old pictures of my brother Danny’s bloated face as a five-year-old dying of leukemia. Looking at the pics left me in tears. I was his four-year-old brother and, until he got leukemia, we were cheerful and joyful together. But soon after those pics were taken, he died.
Explaining how I wondered at the time whether it was my father or mother’s sin that caused God to take Danny’s life, I explained to the girls that each night after Danny died during family devotions prayer time, I prayed out loud to God, “Dear God, would You please raise Danny from the dead?”
Explaining the agony this would have caused my father and mother, I told them that they had never asked me to stop. Going on, I said suffering is God’s discipline, and that by faith our Heavenly Father never fails to produce suffering’s fruit of sanctification and righteousness. In adults, but also in little children.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s my observation postmillennial paedocommunionists have difficulty acknowledging and warning of God’s discipline; not His discipline of the world, but His discipline of us, our wives, and our children. That’s why warnings are missing from their administration at the Lord’s table.
So now, let me say for myself what I said to my dear young daughters in the faith: Nothing in my life has been as formative and faith-strengthening as the death of Danny (and my other brothers).
The man of faith does not deny danger and suffering. He affirms God’s judgments, shedding tears, mourning, and grieving. Then he confesses his faith:
The judgments of the LORD are true; they are righteous altogether.
They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them Your servant is warned;
In keeping them there is great reward.Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.
Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me;
Then I will be blameless,
And I shall be acquitted of great transgression.Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:9-13)
Rev. Dr. Jürgen von Hagen, the senior pastor of Free Evangelical Church in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany, and professor of economics at the University of Bonn, Germany, joins Rev. Bayly at the Michigan house for a free-ranging conversation on Ukraine, Putin, German church history, the European economy, and leadership.
A quick summary of Jürgen’s view: Putin won’t be satisfied with Ukraine.
Two books referenced in the show, both by Timothy Snyder:
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
Bachelor of Divinity
Certificate in Bible & Theology
Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
…why should we offer poison instead of life-giving food to our tender children?– John Calvin condemning paedocommunion
Each of us has spent significant time the past couple of years warning brothers and sisters in Christ against Moscow’s promotion of their paedocommunion schism. We’ve decided it’s time to revisit our warnings here at Warhorn. The schism should not be simply the subject of private warnings, but also public warnings and condemnations. This is for the restoration of the unity of the Church, but also for the protection of the souls of the sheep God has entrusted to us for feeding and protection.
The past few decades, many godly have joined the work of exposing this schism’s errors theological and historical, but even more pastoral and exegetical (Scriptural). (see links at the end of the article)
As pastors with years of familiarity with this schism, here are some pastoral warnings.
Like Romanism, the practice of paedocommunion is a contagion. Conservative Reformed families happen upon the practice, but having never heard the Biblical exposition of 1 Corinthians 11, they simply think, “This is so nice! Families sitting together in worship and sharing the meal with their kids. I want this for my children, too.”
This family has not gone through any conversion of principle. They simply have never been taught Scripture’s warnings about the abuse of sacraments. In this connection, do note that the CREC’s practice is not the largest practice of paedocommunion among us. Much more often, little children today are communed by churches that are Baptist and broadly Evangelical where the deepest thoughts about children partaking are along the lines of, “How wonderful it is for the young ones of the church to be included! Because why not?”
If you’re in one of these churches, watch the little kids take communion next time, then realize these little ones have never been baptized into Christ’s Church. We should tremble at our presumption in the administration of God’s holy things.
So again, paedocommunion is not so much taught, as caught.
A number of my friends have converted to Roman Catholicism (Tim speaking). Several of them are graduates of the seminary my brothers and I attended (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary), so they have been well-educated exegetically (Doug Stuart, Gordon Fee), historically (Richard Lovelace, Nigel Kerr), and theologically (David Wells, Roger Nicole). Despite their new Romanism, though, these men are not normally committed to Rome’s dogma. They simply prefer Rome’s culture.
Ask them (as I have) what they think of Mariolatry, prayers to the saints, the infallibility of ecumenical synods, transubstantiation, Medjugorje, Vatican stews, works of supererogation, the treasury of merit, and masses for the dead? In response to the inquiry, they give a cavalier dismissal on the order of, “You know, Tim, I don’t spend time thinking about those things.”
This has also been their response when I push them to study the doctrine of justification, asking them to read Buchanan’s The Doctrine of Justification. Having taught it several times in New Geneva Academy, I consider Buchanan’s work maybe the best exposure of Rome’s sacramental mercantilism. But no, they don’t study the doctrine of justification. As my Dad was wont to put it about converts to Canterbury and Rome, “It’s smells and bells.”
Like converts to Rome, converts to Moscow aren’t converted theologically, but culturally.
Usually, they know Moscow has been big into Federal Vision. People have a vague memory of something happening with that, but nobody ever really knew what it was all about or how to explain it, so who cares? Theonomy and post-millennialism get all the glitz now.
If they’re asked about Moscow’s practice of paedocommunion, it’s not uncommon for New Saint Andrews folks to respond that they aren’t personally committed to paedocommunion, but they’re not opposed to it, either. They’ve never bothered to study the issue.
Many NSA and CREC people like Moscow’s cultural and political commitments, so they’re not going to fuss over Moscow’s doctrinal and sacramental errors.
Former baptists are particularly susceptible. Falling in love with sacramental assurances concerning their covenant children, they first baptize them, then blithely move on to communing them.
Back in 1979 at Gordon-Conwell, I was talking with a fellow student of baptist background. Walking across campus one day, my friend turned, and giving me a conspiratorial smile, he said, “Well, if we’re going to baptize babies, we should give them communion too!”
This is how Baptists think.
Other than a deficient attempt at getting our former Presbyterian Church in America to approve paedocommunion written by Rob Rayburn, which our General Assembly roundly rejected, there has been an absence of plausible exegetical, let alone doctrinal or historical, arguments by those practicing and promoting Moscow’s error.
There has been no absence, though, of men of faith opposing Moscow pastorally, historically, theologically, and Scripturally. We too have given ourselves to this work (again, see below). We have condemned Moscow’s desperate attempts (following Jeff Meyers’s lead) to obfuscate and deny the plain meaning of the text of 1 Corinthians 11:23-34.
Read, study, and heed our warnings. Don’t be fooled by Moscow’s embellishments, digressions, and poetical puff pieces passed around by the church officers in their association.
Moscow is presently at a crossroads.
They’ve long practiced paedocommunion. To Moscow and its compatriots, it’s been what a capella Psalter-only is to Reformed Presbyterians: their raison d’être.
Forming the heart of their sacramentology, paedocommunion has swallowed Moscow’s ecclesiology and theology. It’s always this way. In the end, the error never serves the whole, but the whole serves the error. Schism is not a function of the mass of healthy tissue, but that tiny cancerous growth it hides.
Anyone inclined towards the opinion that sacraments don’t matter has never read the Bible or church history.
Recently, there has been an initiative among Moscow’s associates to be more forthright, constitutionally, that paedocommunion defines their association. However, this initiative has spawned some pushback. Some would prefer to keep paedocommunion a gentleman’s agreement not explicitly stated. In this connection, it’s always been noteworthy Moscow has declined to state paedocommunion as an exception to the Westminster Standards, as another presbyterian association has forthrightly done.1
We’ve put out there on social media that we’re relieved Moscow’s CREC is finally considering being truthful in stating that paedocommunion is their association’s fundamental commitment.
Back in 2011, prior to the Founding of Evangel Presbytery, our congregation in Bloomington, Trinity Reformed Church, was considering whether we would join Moscow’s CREC. So we invited my lifelong family friend, Doug Wilson, to come and speak to the congregation. Following Lord’s Day worship, the pastors, elders, and Doug fielded questions from the congregation as they weighed this decision.
Hundreds were present, and things were going swimmingly until near the end when a congregant directed his question to Doug. He asked whether, if we joined Moscow, our elders would be required to serve the Lord’s Supper to infants and toddlers of a CREC family who moved to Bloomington and joined Trinity?
Doug’s response had not an iota of nuance: Yes, our elders would be required to administer paedocommunion to the infants and toddlers of that family.
Doug didn’t realize it at the time, but I was flabbergasted by his response. So was our session and congregation. It was the end of us uniting with Moscow.
Later that week, Doug and I talked. I told him his answer to the congregant’s question—yes, your session would have to administer paedocommunion to families coming into your church from other CREC churches—had determined the firm rejection by our congregation of joining the CREC.
In that same call, I also said his answer had contradicted his Moscow/CREC Bylaws. He was surprised, so I read him the pertinent text from his Bylaws. Also, I said to him that I found it telling he and his CREC brothers didn’t bother taking any exceptions to their Westminster Standards concerning their practice of paedocommunion, whereas RCJR and his fellow Covenant Presbyterian Church officers were forthright in taking the exception.
Readers must understand how thoroughly paedocommunion defines Moscow, although many would choose to hide or deny it.
In a recent promo video for the denomination, the current CREC Presiding Minister Uriesou Brito makes this telling statement:
We have convictions that are very unique to the Reformed tradition—convictions that include the participation of our children in the life of the church; the opening of the table for those very children because unto such belong the kingdom of heaven.
At this point in their history, whether Moscow and its congregational associates will state this commitment publicly is still being debated. Certainly, the straightforward thing would be to admit who they are and what they do and believe.
Yes, there are some people in association with Moscow who don’t believe or practice paedocommunion just as there are some people in this or that Reformed Presbyterian congregation who won’t die on the hill of a capella Psalter-only. Understand though that these are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Here at Warhorn and Evangel, what we are committed to is faithfully opposing Moscow’s error in such a way as to guard the souls of our Lord’s sheep.
Sacraments are always as serious as death and Hell. Genevan Reformed Protestants have always, and still, agree the Biblical administration of our Lord’s sacraments is one of the three marks of the true Church:
The Notes, therefore, of the true Kirk of God we believe, confess, and avow to be, first, The true preaching of the word of God; into the which God has revealed himself to us, as the writings of the Prophets and Apostles do declare. Secondly, The right administration of the sacraments of Christ Jesus, which must be annexed to the word and promise of God, to seal and confirm the same in our hearts. Lastly, Ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered, as God’s word prescribes, whereby vice is repressed, and virtue nourished.2
The sacraments can’t be more serious for you, your family, and your loved ones. Reformed Protestants have always agreed, condemning paedocommunion as a violation of the Biblical administration of the sacraments.
Five centuries ago, John Calvin declared the uniform condemnation of Moscow’s paedocommunion:
Furthermore, they object that there is no more reason to administer baptism to infants than the Lord’s Supper, which is not permitted to them. As if Scripture did not mark a wide difference in every respect! This permission was indeed commonly given in the ancient church, as is clear from Cyprian and Augustine, but the custom has deservedly fallen into disuse. For if we consider the peculiar character of baptism, surely it is an entrance and a sort of initiation into the church, through which we are numbered among God’s people: a sign of our spiritual regeneration, through which we are reborn as children of God. On the other hand, the Supper is given to older persons who, having passed tender infancy, can now take solid food.
This distinction is very clearly shown in Scripture. For with respect to baptism, the Lord there sets no definite age. But he does not similarly hold forth the Supper for all to partake of, but only for those who are capable of discerning the body and blood of the Lord, of examining their own conscience, of proclaiming the Lord’s death, and of considering its power.
Do we wish anything plainer than the apostle’s teaching when he exhorts each man to prove and search himself, then to eat of this bread and drink of this cup? A self-examination ought, therefore, to come first, and it is vain to expect this of infants. Again: “He who eats unworthily eats and drinks condemnation for himself, not discerning the body of the Lord”. If only those who know how to distinguish rightly the holiness of Christ’s body are able to participate worthily, why should we offer poison instead of life-giving food to our tender children? What is that command of the Lord: “Do this in remembrance of me”? What is that other command which the apostle derives from it: “As often as you eat this bread, you will proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes”? What remembrance of this thing, I ask, shall we require of infants when they have never grasped it? What preaching of the cross of Christ, the force and benefit of which their minds have not yet comprehended? None of these things is prescribed in baptism. Accordingly, there is a very great difference between these two signs, as we have noted in like signs also under the Old Testament. Circumcision, which is known to correspond to our baptism, had been appointed for infants. But the Passover, the place of which has been taken by the Supper, did not admit all guests indiscriminately, but was duly eaten only by those who were old enough to be able to inquire into its meaning. If these men had a particle of sound brain left, would they be blind to a thing so clear and obvious?
It troubles me to burden my readers with a heap of trifles. Nevertheless, it behooves us to make short work of the specious reasons which Servetus, not the least among the Anabaptists — indeed, the great glory of that tribe — girding himself for conflict, decided to bring forward…
[Servetus] objects, that Christ’s symbols were instituted for remembrance, in order that everyone should remember that he was buried with Christ. I reply that what he has contrived out of his own head needs no refutation; indeed, what he applies to baptism rightly refers to the Sacred Supper, as Paul’s words show: “that each one examine himself”; there is nowhere any such thing said of baptism. From this we conclude that those who, because of their youth, are not yet capable of examination may rightly be baptized…
He objects that they must be fed spiritual food if they are new men. The answer is easy: by baptism they are admitted into Christ’s flock, and the symbol of their adoption suffices them until as adults they are able to bear solid food. Therefore, we should wait for the time of examination, which God expressly requires in the Sacred Supper.
Afterward, he objects that Christ calls all his people to the Sacred Supper. Yet it is clear enough that he admits none but those who are already prepared to celebrate the remembrance of his death. From this it follows that infants, whom he vouchsafed to embrace, remain in their distinct and proper rank until they grow up, and yet are not strangers. He objects that it is monstrous for a man, after being born, not to eat. I answer: souls are fed in another way than by the outward eating of the Supper; therefore, to infants Christ is nonetheless food, though they abstain from the symbol. But the case is different in baptism, by which only the door into the church is opened to them…
He claims further that all Christians are brothers, but that, to us, children are not of that number so long as we keep them away from the Supper. But I return to that principle that only those who are members of Christ are heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven; then Christ’s embrace was the true token of adoption, by which infants are joined in common with adults, and that abstaining from the Supper for a time does not prevent them from belonging to the body of the church. Indeed, the thief converted on the cross did not fail to become a brother of the pious, although he never came to the Supper.
But it is no wonder that those reprobate spirits, as if agitated by a frenzy, drag in the crassest absurdities in defense of their errors. For God justly avenges their pride and obstinacy by such irrationality. I trust I have made plain how weakly Servetus has supported his little Anabaptist brothers. (Institutes; IV.16.30-31)
In the shadow of Federal Vision, it would seem wise to side with John Calvin, would it not? He has five centuries of church fathers grateful for his exegesis of Scripture.
LINKS
Redefining things… (2005)
https://baylyblog.com/blog/2005/06/redefining-things
An examination of “paedo-faith.”
Home from the CREC… (2008)
https://baylyblog.com/blog/2008/11/home-crec
An encouraging visit with CREC brothers and some criticisms
A liturgical reform to make Reformed liturgical renewalists gnash their teeth… (2012)
https://baylyblog.com/blog/2012/06/liturgical-reform-make-reformed-liturgical-renewalists-gnash-their-teeth%E2%80%A6
“Do you notice, as I have, that modern Reformed liturgists who are scrupulous over weekly ‘Eucharists’ and ‘Covenant Renewal’ flow charts have no heart for fencing the Table?”
Superstitious sacramentalism is a danger within the Reformed church… (2014)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2014/05/superstitious-sacramentalism-danger-within-reformed-church
“…the intensity of commitment and drawing fellowship lines on the basis of paedocommunion is at least a parry, if not a thrust, in the direction of a reordering of emphases and priorities in Reformed worship.”
Leithart’s future-end of Protestantism IX: liturgy and ritual will lead the way… (2015)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2015/01/leitharts-future-end-protestantism-ix-liturgy-and-ritual-will-lead-way
“The choice is clear: either we will continue to emphasize robes, sacramental efficacy, and liturgical formalism, or we will return to preaching the Word of God in humble reliance upon the Holy Spirit.”
Leithart’s future-end of Protestantism X: F-V men accuse opponents of being hamfisted and stupid… (2015)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2015/04/leitharts-future-end-protestantism-x-f-v-men-accuse-opponents-being-hamfisted-and
“F-V’s deconstruction of Reformed doctrine centered on sacramentology.”
Worship wars: Jeff Meyers and Peter Leithart have won… (2015)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2015/11/worship-wars-jeff-meyers-and-peter-leithart-have-won
“When men and their wives, seeking the hope of Heaven for their children, choose a church for its practice of infant communion and weekly administration of the Eucharist, the battle is over.”
Calvin on Covenant Renewal, Federal Vision worship… (2015)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2015/11/calvin-covenant-renewal-federal-vision-worship
“To the Covenant Renewal Worship, Federal Vision men, both weekly communion and paedocommunion are confessional issues…”.
Covenant Renewal Worship, Federal Vision men abuse Zwingli… (2015)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2015/11/covenant-renewal-worship-federal-vision-men-abuse-zwingli
“Two things they may object to (even not knowing they were hearing Zwingli’s liturgy) are things where Zwingli is right: namely, Zwingli’s repudiation of special attire for the celebrant and the faithfulness of Zwingli’s warnings of danger to participants who don’t eat and drink by faith.”
Precisely what is paedocommunion and why does Calvin condemn it… (2015)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2015/11/precisely-what-paedocommunion-and-why-does-calvin-condemn-it
“Rayburn’s point in saying this is not to warn readers that our Reformed fathers condemned paedocommunion, but rather to dismiss their condemnation under the reasoning that they had not given the practice proper consideration. After all, ‘in most cases’ they had not ‘ever discussed it.’”
From Yale’s Edwards manuscripts, this response to the paedocommunionist novelty… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/02/yales-edwards-manuscripts-response-paedocommunionist-novelty
“Because modern proponents of infant communion (commonly and confusingly called “paedocommunion”) including most notoriously Jeff Meyers (PCA), Peter Leithart (CREC), and Rob Rayburn (PCA) make the same arguments made by Edwards’s opponents centuries ago…”
Paedocommunion (1): Introduction… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/02/paedocommunion-1-introduction
“This is an introduction to a series of posts on paedocommunion, the practice of communing at the Lord’s Table children who have not yet confessed their faith and been examined by their pastor or the elders of their church.”
Paedocommunion (2): permission or requirement… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/02/paedocommunion-2-permission-or-requirement
“Those of us holding to the historic Protestant and Reformed liturgy and administration of the Lord’s Supper understand 1 Corinthians 11 to prohibit the practice of paedocommunion.”
Paedocommunion (3): when proper discernment requires no discernment… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/03/paedocommunion-3-when-proper-discernment-requires-no-discernment
“Jeff Meyers’s novel exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11 subscribed to by paedocommunionists leaves them convinced that, when the rest of the Covenant community is partaking of the Lord’s Supper, regardless of age, for a member of the Covenant community to abstain is sin.”
Paedocommunion (4): a house divided… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/03/paedocommunion-4-house-divided
“Those who require discernment on the part of the child before he can partake in the Supper have already rejected the reasoning of a large part of the paedocommunionist camp.”
Paedocommunion (5): George Knight’s exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11:17-34… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/04/paedocommunion-5-george-knights-exegesis-1-corinthians-1117-34
“Some have been convinced by Jeff Meyers’ simplistic and novel exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11 in which he concludes that the only sin that text warns us against is the sin of disunity by not having absolutely everybody in the church partake of the Lord’s Supper. His position can be summed up by his astounding statement: ‘I don’t believe that this passage requires an inward act of contemplating and evaluating one’s sins.’”
Paedocommunion (6): infantile desires are neither discernment nor a confession of faith… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/04/paedocommunion-6-infantile-desires-are-neither-discernment-nor-confession-faith
“…we will turn our attention to Side B. Typically, the qualifications they require consist merely of the child ‘being able to tell he is part of the group.’ This view presents several problems.”
The good father: a church with Biblical sacraments… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/07/good-father-church-biblical-sacraments
“The father does not preside over baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The church owns these sacraments and delegates their administration to their pastor.”
Bitterness, crackpots, and Joe Sobran… (2016)https://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/09/bitterness-crackpots-and-joe-sobran
“The FV guys’ contrarian, oppositional nature damages their discernment. If you think that Jews are secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes, dousing us with chemtrails and stealing our precious bodily fluids, when somebody comes along and says ‘Let’s do paedocommunion! The Bible demands it!’ or ‘Death is Good!’ or ‘in her conflict with King David, Michal was right!’ your mind doesn’t have the braking mechanism that makes you say, ‘I’m not sure about this, are you sure this isn’t wrong???’”
Quarantine, worship, and the Lords’ Supper (2020)https://warhornmedia.com/2020/05/18/quarantine-worship-and-the-lords-supper/
“We have been too eager to make common cause with former baptists in their newfound affirmation of covenantal headship. Having not corrected paedocommunion born of their newfound enthusiasm, we now find this error entering the historic Reformed church, and with it this error’s natural companions of father’s administering household communion and pastors’ abandonment of those historic warnings at the Lord’s table universally repeated for five centuries of Reformed worship, now.”
Precisely what is paedocommunion, and why does Calvin condemn it (updated version, 2022)https://warhornmedia.com/2022/03/14/precisely-what-is-paedocommunion-and-why-does-calvin-condemn-it/
Evangel Presbytery’s Directory for the Worship of God | 61. The Lord’s Supper, section 1 “General Provisions of the Lord’s Supper” (2024)
https://bco.evangelpresbytery.com/directory-for-the-worship-of-god.html#the-lords-supper
“Paedocommunion—by which is meant the admitting of covenant children to partake of the Lord’s Supper either by virtue of their baptism alone or before a credible profession of faith has been expressed to their session by giving evidence of the necessary ability to examine themselves (1 Cor. 11:28) and to judge the body rightly (1 Cor. 11:29)—shall not be practiced. Scripture’s command to judge the body rightly shall be understood to require of the communicant an intellectual understanding of the significance of Christ’s sacrifice on his behalf. The novel interpretation in which that command is understood merely to require the communicant to refrain from disrupting fellowship within the visible church is rejected.
“Given that God’s Word does not lay out a specific age for their admission to the Lord’s Supper, the ages at which covenant children are admitted to the Lord’s Supper will vary. Nevertheless, baptism, a credible profession of faith, a demonstrated ability to recognize and be sorry for their sins and to understand and express what Christ accomplished for them by His death on the cross shall always be required before the session admits covenant children to the Table.”
[+]
References| ↑1 | In contrast to Moscow’s CREC, the similar paedocommunion association called Covenant Presbyterian Church is conscientious in declaring their exception. Their Constitution IIB1c reads: “WCF 29:7 – Worthy Receivers of the Lord’s Supper: We add that ‘worthy receivers” may also include the baptized children of baptized parents who profess the true religion.” | | ↑2 | The Scots Confession, Chapter 18 – Of the Notes by Which the True Kirk Is Discerned From the False and Who Shall Be Judge of the Doctrine. |
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.
Master of Divinity
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Groundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great Conversation
Intro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc.
This parable was written by my grandfather, Joe Bayly, and is part of his collection of stories, The Gospel Blimp (and Other Parables). A recent email from a Christian organization inspired me to republish it here for free.
Judson Dormer came out of China in 1949. He was swept out by the Communist regime, along with thousands of other missionaries and their dependents. They left the church behind, its hospitals and schools and other institutions possessed by the enemies of God.
After a short rest in the small town in upper New York from which he had first gone to China, and to which he had returned several times on furlough, Dormer began to accept meetings in various places. In the early fifties, people were immensely concerned about Communism, both in China and also in our country. Senator Joseph McCarthy was then alerting Americans to the danger of our own Trojan Horse.
So this returned missionary, Judson Dormer, was much in demand as a speaker. Primarily he took church engagements, but he also spoke at Kiwanis and Rotary and other service clubs, as well as at high school assemblies.
Let me tell you, he was an imposing person. He had what we’ve come to call charisma, at least as far as I understand it. He stood up there on the platform and looked you straight in the eye, and you just had to believe that what he said about the Red Menace was true. When you went home afterwards, like I told my wife, even the headlights of passing cars looked red.
I guess the big reason for this was that Dormer had himself suffered at the hands of the Communists. He was able to tell us what they were like up close.
First time I heard him was at Second Church in Iowa City. I had supported his missionary society for some years—actually, it was one of the first obligations we had taken on after we were married—and so I decided to drive in to the meeting when I heard he was to be there.
Marian was in the midst of canning, and she said, “You go alone. I can hear him some other time.” So I got into the pickup truck and drove into the city by myself.
A lot of speakers start out by telling how glad they are to be in Iowa City, or how at home they feel in a Baptist or Presbyterian church. Or they tell a funny story.
Not Judson Dormer. He stood up there in the pulpit, right after the pastor had introduced him, and looked us straight in the eye. He was silent for maybe a minute, then he held up five slender, pointed sticks.
“These bamboo rods,” he said, passing them from one hand to the other, “were pounded down under my nails with a hammer by my Communist jailers. They interrogated me for as long as fifteen hours at a stretch, trying to get me to deny my faith and admit that I was an American imperialist agent. But God brought me through, and I’m here tonight to warn you that what happened in China can happen tomorrow—tonight even—in the United States of America.”
He told us how he had been arrested at the missionary compound, separated from his wife, and hauled off to prison in an army truck. He was in that prison for ten months, he said, and those months were the closest thing to hell that anyone could imagine. Interrogations for long periods of time, under a single light bulb, with teams of fanatical, sadistic Communists taking turns questioning him. Almost daily beatings, living in an isolation cell with only a bucket. These were the things he endured.
Those bamboo sticks pounded under the nails were among the least of his sufferings. He could not describe others in a mixed group. (He probably could today; things have changed that much.)
I don’t remember everything he said that night, but I do remember thinking, during my fifty-mile drive back home, that America was in tremendous danger. I also thought how proud I was, although that may not be the right word, to have had a part all these years in his mission’s work. I might be an Iowa farmer, but I had done something to stem the Red Tide in China.
When I pulled into the yard, I went right into the house, not even stopping to check the barn. I headed straight for the kitchen.
“Marian,” I said, “did you ever miss something tonight. Judson Dormer was just great. You’ll have to go tomorrow night.”
“I will, if I get this canning done,” she said.
She was tying spices up in a bit of old sheet to put in the vinegar she had boiling on the stove. It smelled good, like fall.
“Look,” I said, “you’ve got to go, whether it’s done or not. I almost feel ashamed of myself, coming back to the land and cattle and house—even cucumber relish—after what I heard tonight.”
“Tomato relish, green tomato relish,” she corrected me. “What did this man have to say?”
So I told her, as best I could. By the time I finished, she was ready to call it a night and go to bed.
The next night we both drove in to Iowa City. If anything, he was better than the night before, including more details of his ten-month imprisonment.
We went up to the front to speak to him after the service was over. I introduced myself and Marian to him, and told him how much his messages had meant to me. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Don’t thank me, thank God.”
Then he asked me what I did, and I told him about the farm. I didn’t say much, because there were other people waiting to shake his hand. I also told him that we had supported the work of his mission in China for a number of years.
Before he turned away from us, Dormer took out a little black book and asked me to write down our name and address. The book was filled with other people’s information.
Driving home, I asked Marian what she thought about Judson Dormer.
“He is certainly a good speaker,” she said. “He holds your attention, and you’re surprised, when he stops, at how long he’s spoken. At the same time . . . ”
“What?” I asked. “Was there something about him you didn’t like?”
“Not really.” And I couldn’t get anything more out of her.
To Marian’s credit, in all the years since, she hasn’t mentioned the misgiving, or early warning signal, she had that first night. But that’s the sort of woman she is.
A couple of months later, we had a letter from Dormer. It wasn’t on his mission’s letterhead. In this letter he told how the Lord had led him to establish a new work, an independent testimony to the faith. He called it “Truth Against Communism,” and there was also the verse on the letterhead, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
He appealed for money to support his work, and of course we added him to our list of missionaries and Christian works. This wasn’t too hard, since the corn harvest that year was especially good, and prices were high.
I’ll pass over the next few years, only explaining that every fall Dormer returned to Iowa City. The meetings outgrew Second Church, and were held in the municipal auditorium. Thousands of people heard him, and hundreds became members of Truth Against Communism. (For a ten-dollar contribution, you got a membership card for your wallet, and a subscription to Alarm!—his monthly paper.)
One fall when he was there, he accepted our invitation to come out to the house for dinner. It was a long trip out and back, but he seemed to appreciate getting to see the farm, and—of course—Marian’s cooking. We had a steer butchered and put in the locker that week, so we had some good steaks. And, recalling that first night I ever heard Dormer, I got Marian to break out some of her green tomato relish.
After dinner, while Marian was getting ready to go into town with us, I took Dormer for a little walk through the pasture.
“You know,” he said, “I grew up on a farm. It wasn’t at all as big as this; farms in New York State usually aren’t. It’s a very simple life, but once you leave it, you never can go back. Shanghai, or even Iowa City, I guess, gets in your blood, and you’re sunk.”
I must admit, when he said that, I felt a little dissatisfaction with my life. What had I done? Where had I been, except in Cambridge, Iowa, all my life? Still, when I thought about it later, I got some satisfaction out of thinking that Marian and I had at least sent our money to China and the Congo and other places, to serve the Lord there.
One day, about four or five years after we had first met Dormer, we had a different kind of letter from him. The letterhead read “Reclamation Mining, Ltd.” Judson Dormer’s name was there as president, and the address was a Canadian one. I had a moment of surprise that he was in business rather than his anti-Communism mission work, but that was soon dispelled. I kept the letter—here it is.
Dear Brother and Sister in Christ:
As you know, I have given my life to stamping out the brushfires of Communism in China and the United States.
One serious obstacle to mounting an all-out attack on the enemy is the lack of money. This is true not merely of Truth Against Communism; it is true of every other work of the Lord.
How much more could you do if you had ten times as much money—even a hundred times as much money—to give to the Lord’s work as you are now giving?
God has now made this possible. I am writing to let you know about a miracle by which your money can be multiplied like the loaves and fishes.
As you doubtless know, there are many worked-over gold mines in the West. They are worked-over, but not exhausted. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold still lies there, some on the surface, some underground in abandoned mines, just waiting to be reclaimed.
Why was this gold missed? Because it was too expensive to separate from the ore. And it would still be too expensive if it were not for the miracle I mentioned.
That miracle is a new mining machine, representing a totally new concept in ore separation, that has just been invented. I am teamed up with the inventor (his name is at the top of this letter, as vice president and treasurer) and we are announcing the availability in Reclamation Mining, Ltd., on the following basis:
-
Anyone may invest at $1,000 a share (Canadian or American). You may buy as many shares as you wish, with the following proviso: since I want this whole project to benefit the Lord’s work, every investor must agree to give a minimum of ten percent (a tithe) of the profits to Christian work. You need not give this to Truth Against Communism, although I hope many of you will do so.
-
For every $1,000 you invest, I guarantee you will receive $500 per month, starting one year after you have bought into the operation.
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Anytime after six months, you may get your money back, with ten percent interest per annum, simply by requesting it.
Some of you may want more information about the Miracle Machine. I regret that I cannot describe it for you, except in the broadest terms. The inventor has no intention of even registering it for patent purposes, since that would enable any unscrupulous person to duplicate it.
But I can tell you that a prototype is now operational. I have seen black ore transformed—by God’s wonder of modern technology—into the purest gold. Gold, I might add, that is like the product of suffering in the Refiner’s fire.
We will soon be closing this offer, so I appeal to you not to be overly long in deciding to invest . . . for His kingdom and your financial independence . . .
I read that, and I read it again. Then I took it in the house and got Marian to read it.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Do you think we should invest?”
She folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. “You’ve decided about buying the farm and farm machinery and cattle up to now. You’re the one who decides when to sell the corn. And I’ve been pretty well satisfied. So I don’t see why I should have to be a part of this decision. You make up your mind and I’ll go along with it.”
“But we’d have to mortgage the property.”
“If you decide to mortgage, I’ll sign for it with you. But you decide.”
Two days later I went to Cambridge State Bank and arranged for a $7,000 mortgage loan. I explained that it was for an investment. Since we had finished paying off the old mortgage on the property several years before, I had no trouble getting the money.
I had the check made out to Reclamation Mining, Ltd., and sent it off airmail. I enclosed a short letter to Judson Dormer, explaining that Marian and I were with him in this, and that we wanted seven shares.
A few weeks later, we got a receipt for the money.
The next year passed pretty fast. That was the year we had torrential spring rains, and you couldn’t get a tractor into the fields until late in May. Whenever I got worried about the crops, I’d think about our shares and be at peace. That’s how much confidence I had in Judson Dormer.
As the end of the year approached, Marian got enthused too. We’d talk about what we’d do with the money after we paid off the mortgage. One thing was to buy a camping trailer. Another was to increase our giving substantially—way beyond the tithe—to the Christian works we were interested in.
I never expected a check right on the anniversary of our investment. But when two weeks passed and then a month, and then two months, I began to get a little concerned. So I wrote a letter to Judson Dormer, asking if maybe the check had gotten lost in the mail.
Several weeks later I had this mimeographed letter from Dormer in reply:
Dear Friend,
Unexpected complications in securing machine parts have delayed our reclamation mining project.
I regret that this has delayed the payments on your investment that I guaranteed. This is doubtless a disappointment to you, as it is to me.
Be assured that we are working night and day to become operational, and will keep you informed by regular progress reports.
It will be worth it, I think you’ll agree, when your monthly checks begin to arrive . . .
I hated to show the letter to Marian, but I did. She just said, “I guess all of life has its complications. So we shouldn’t be surprised if this does, too.”
Six months later, we had another mimeographed letter. This one was signed by Ernest Madling, Certified Mining Engineer.
Dear Investor in Reclamation Mining, Ltd.,
At the request of our mutual friend, Judson Dormer, I am writing to give you my professional opinion about the ore separation process and related machinery in which you have purchased shares.
The process is absolutely sound in chemical engineering theory.
Of more importance, I have seen the machine working at an abandoned mine in the West. (Discretion forbids my identifying its location more precisely.) Quality and quantity of gold reclaimed for the ore are excellent . . .
Well, this encouraged us. So we just waited eight months more, and had the mortgage on the farm converted to run a longer term. It still wasn’t easy making the payments.
By this time, I was writing to Reclamation Mining, Ltd., every six weeks or so, sending a letter to Truth Against Communism at the same time. The last letter I sent, I asked them to return our total investment of $7,000, as Judson Dormer had promised he would at the very beginning. I sent the same letter to both addresses, by registered mail.
When this letter produced no results, I wrote to the missionary society Dormer had served under in China. They replied that he had resigned from the mission about six years earlier, and they regretted that they could supply no information about him.
A month or so later, reading the Saturday church newspaper of the Iowa City paper, I noticed that a missionary of this society was going to be speaking at a church there the following day. So Marian and I drove in to that service on Sunday morning, instead of our own church in Cambridge.
The missionary was good, but I could hardly wait for the service to end. I wanted to ask him a lot of questions.
Marian and I waited around until everyone else had left the church, except a few people talking at the front. Then we introduced ourselves to the missionary.
“I’d like to ask you about one of your former missionaries,” I said. “That is, a former member of your mission.”
“Judson Dormer?” he asked.
“Yes. Do you know about his mining project?”
“That’s why I thought you wanted to ask about him. Did you invest any money?”
“Seven thousand dollars. Is there any hope, do you think, of getting any of it back?”
“I’m afraid not. I was just up in Canada, and it’s a pretty big mess. If an investor who’s Canadian would lodge an official complaint, the government would investigate. But nobody will.”
“How about here in the States?”
“It was a Canadian operation. The Securities and Exchange Commission won’t get involved. Incidentally, I lost two thousand dollars myself. Money I had saved for retirement.”
“I’m sorry. With the farm and all, it isn’t so serious for us.”
Marian had been silent up to this point. But now she said, “You know, it’s sort of strange how he hoodwinked us—and a lot of other people, too.”
“No doubt about it,” the missionary said. “And most of the people couldn’t afford it any more than we could.”
“Makes you wonder,” Marian continued, “about all those other things he told us—about the things that happened to him when the Communists took over in China.”
The missionary was quiet for a few moments. Then he spoke, “You know, he never was in any Communist prison.”
“He wasn’t?” we both exploded.
“No, he made that whole story up. Very few people in the mission even knew that, and when he resigned, our leaders decided not to say anything about it. I guess they thought he was no longer answerable to them, and it would be an act of Christian love to cover it up.”
“Love for whom?” Marian asked. “The people who believed him and supported Truth Against Communism, and later invested in his mining scheme?”
“Nobody could have known at the time—before it all happened—how it would turn out,” the missionary said.
“What about that report from the certified mining engineer?” I asked. “He said the machine really worked.”
“Ernest Madling isn’t a mining engineer,” the missionary said. “He’s a pastor out in the prairies. Dormer evidently persuaded him to write that letter and sign it as he did.”
“Do you have anywhere to go for dinner?” I asked. “We’re going to eat here in Iowa City before we head for home, and we’d like to have you join us.”
“Sorry, I’d really like to,” the missionary said. “But I’m going home with the pastor.”
So we said goodbye and went out and got into the pickup truck.
“Do you know what?” Marian said. “You’re going to take me to the best restaurant in town for Sunday dinner.”
“Sure,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Yes, one more thing. I like that missionary. He wasn’t flashy, but he had a lot to say that was worth saying. I’d like us to think about giving to his support.”
The dinner was great, except the relish wasn’t as good as Marian’s.
(Sixteenth in a series; 9,900 views as of 4/14/24)
NOTE from TB: Wheaton alums have emailed a number of responses to this series. Here’s one received from the son of a nationally-prominent Evangelical leader who was a Wheaton alum from the time of Buswell’s presidency:
As I read this last post I was reminded of my father saying the trustees chose Edman for his malleability and lack of courage. They were never again going to permit a president like Buswell to lead Wheaton….
At their January 1940 meeting, the trustees of Wheaton College asked for the resignation of their president, J. Oliver Buswell, Jr. He declined to resign, so they fired him. Eighty-three years later, Wheaton’s Trustees piled on, denouncing President Buswell as racist and purging his name from Wheaton’s campus.
What is it about this man that elicits such public displays of disdain or hostility from two separate Wheaton boards of trustees almost a century apart? Isn’t it safe to assume the guy himself was the problem, and not the trustees?
Wheaton’s Trustees depend on their constituents thinking this way. It seems safe to denounce a man who left campus eighty years ago, dictating and signing his final letters “Ex-President” as he cleaned out his office. Who’s going to stand up for a man whose departure was so ignominious?
These former things provide Dave Gieser, his fellow Trustees, and their President Phil Ryken1 good cover for bashing Buswell yet again, proving themselves sons of their 1940 fathers.
Appeasing their students, Gieser and his Trustees called on the more malleable among their faculty members and staff for scholarly assistance. Dignifying their conscripts with the name “Historical Review Task Force,” they mandated the production of a document that would justify their planned surrogate repentance in President Buswell’s behalf, all to pacify their black, indigenous, and other collegians of color.
It took two years but finally, September of last year (2023), the Task Force issued their Historical Review Task Force Report.
Since the Report was researched and put together by college profs, one would expect careful scholarship. But no. Thoughtful readers of the Report are struck by two things.
First, the report’s preciousness. No opportunity is missed to signal liberal colleagues that Wheaton’s best and brightest are finally getting it. Racism. Reparations. Land rights. I was surprised to find no mention of St. Greta Thunberg or single use plastic bags. The Task Force is so desperate to please.
Second, the report’s tendentiousness. It’s been amazing to spend months and months collecting all the historical facts these Wheaton profs excluded. After a while, it became undeniable the exclusions were intentional. All of them flowed in one direction.
It’s clear the Trustees got what they paid for: “Pay no attention to the rest of the story.” The previous fifteen articles in this series document much of this “rest of the story,” but there’s more.
Before we return to this theme of the rest of the story, though, let’s stop to consider our cultural moment and the significance of what Wheaton’s Trustees and administration have been doing since the release of the Report last September.
Our patricidal cultureWheaton’s administration under the authority of their Trustees have been making a shambles of their authority for decades. We’ve documented some of the more scandalous episodes, but none so thoroughly as this latest. Why spend so much time on this one?
Lies told by religious leaders in order to avoid threats to their power and money should be exposed—particularly when they chatter about repentance as cover for their slander. Beyond slander and hypocrisy, their lies are assaults upon the character and reputation of a godly father.
For decades, now, Western society has given itself to a virulent display of hatred for our fathers. In their much-ballyhooed Report, Ryken and his Trustees are placating this hatred.
As I write, Ryken and his fellow administrators have been announcing several campus celebrations of their Report’s spiritual accomplishments, congratulating themselves publicly and issuing invitations to join them in their joy. Recently they publicized their latest one, announcing they had issued an invitation to the Rev. Dr. Charlie Dates to come and bless them for their surrogate repentance:
Dear Wheaton College Community,
On behalf of the Historical Review Implementation Task Force, you are invited to attend the Historical Review Symposium on Tuesday, March 12.
Repentance, Responsibility, and Renewal
March 12, 7:00-8:30 pm
Barrows AuditoriumThis Symposium will feature Reverend Dr. Charlie E. Dates on the topic of biblical repentance, institutional responsibility, and communal renewal.
Dr. Dates is the Senior Pastor of the Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, as well as Pastor of Progressive Baptist Church of Chicago. Dr. Dates serves as an Affiliate Professor at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Wheaton College. He earned a Master of Divinity and a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL. Dr. Dates is a contributing author to Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Say It!: Celebrating Expository Preaching in the African American Tradition.
This is an important event for our campus community. It follows the Fall Symposium, which featured a multidisciplinary faculty discussion of the Historical Review. This evening with Dr. Dates will benefit faculty, staff, students, and alumni as we continue to engage together the findings of the Historical Review.
Philip Ryken
President
So what was the Rev. Dr. Charlie Dates’s blessing?
The student paper reports:
Charlie Dates, senior pastor at Chicago’s Progressive Baptist Church and Salem Baptist Church – two predominantly Black churches – delivered a message about how the college can continue to strive toward these virtues, especially on racial justice issues.
“Maybe Wheaton will seek not just to be the Ivy League of Christian institutions but the kind of institution that raises up relevant Christian leaders,” he said. “Leaders who are not so addicted to old white male theology, so drunk on the commentaries of slaveholders that they can break away from white supremacy in our Scripture reading and preach the truth…”
Dates’s animusThe Rev. Dr. Charlie Dates has a dream, doesn’t he?
Dates’s dream is that one day “Relevant Christian leaders” will once and for all repudiate:
- the “old theology.”
- the “white theology.”
- the “male theology.”
I do hope you didn’t bother getting in a huff about this. Such blowhard rhetoric is merely the required response of a Black spokesman to White self-abnegation. It’s banal and should anger no one. Who takes offense at a cliché?
Dates should get a grip. Black men have won nothing at Wheaton. They shouldn’t mistake surrogate repentance for the real thing. He might also realize that racism is racism, whether White or Black.
Beyond haranguing Whites, Dates appealed to the conceit of youth and the hatred of men—dissing the “old” and the “male.”
Being pronounced by a Black man, all of it was perfectly scripted to provide a catharsis for Wheaton’s President, trustees, and faculty. Spiritual dramaturgy.
We must recognize and expose this spiritual hypocrisy clothed in the Name of God. Keep in mind the similar charade put on by the false prophets of the time of Judah’s King Jehoshapat:
Zedekiah prophesying with horns
Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah were sitting each on his throne, arrayed in their robes, at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets were prophesying before them. Then Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made horns of iron for himself and said, “Thus says the LORD, ‘With these you will gore the Arameans until they are consumed.’”
All the prophets were prophesying thus, saying, “Go up to Ramoth-gilead and prosper, for the LORD will give it into the hand of the king.” (1Kings 22:10-12)
Prophets appeasing the kings by dancing with horns on their heads are not true prophets. Appeasement is always flattery, and flattery is the tool which identifies the false prophet.
Stop for a moment to consider the students’ parents who are paying these men to educate their sons and daughters “for Christ and His Kingdom.” Slandering a godly father, then defending that slander by claiming it is godly repentance before God, betrays not only that father, but the students’ fathers; and, finally, God the Father Almighty from Whom all fatherhood is named:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father (πατέρα) from whom all fatherhood (πᾶσα πατριὰ) in heaven and on earth is named (Ephesians 3:14-15)
When we strike and curse our godly fathers, we strike and curse our Heavenly Father from Whom our fathers received their calling and honor.
Readers may ask, “How can we call J. Oliver Buswell a ‘godly father?’ He was a racist, wasn’t he?”
No, there is no sense of the word “racist” used rationally that is properly applied to President Buswell. Reading the articles published here in this series makes it clear that those who denounce this father as racist are deceivers.
President Buswell systematically opposed racism. He was a reformer whose fruit on the campus of Wheaton, as well as among his children, was a Biblically prophetic witness against the racism so prevalent at Wheaton at the time. He left a lasting legacy that opposed segregation and defended interracial marriage, particularly through the discipline and professors of Anthropology he brought and institutionalized there.
The truth is J. Oliver Buswell was a reformer. Nail that one down. Without coming to recognize this fundamental truth about this father in the faith, it is impossible to understand why Wheaton’s religious leaders have despised, terminated, denounced, and scrubbed the man’s name from their campus.
Ryken and his hired writers could easily have spent much of their pages and 400 footnotes documenting Buswell’s work of reform, but this is the witness, evidence, and history they gagged.
Why?
Sheep don’t have patience for much beyond who wears the white and who the black hat, so President Buswell had to be unambiguously staged as the villain.
In truth though, prophets are complicated. Because their warnings and condemnations are spoken to the people of God—not the media, politicians, or Marxists—we find them hard to love. Within the Church, the best of us have an ambivalent relationship with God’s prophets and reformers.
And the worst of us?
Wheaton has lots of churches of the wealthy for whom the profitability of the godly life must be guarded. No one who grew up in Wheaton or has lived there is confused over why Wheaton hasn’t allowed a single man to bear prophetic witness to the people of God over the course of the 80 years since they rid themselves of J. Oliver Buswell.
His prophetic witness is the reason Wheaton fired President Buswell, and every man hired since Buswell has understood the terms of his employment. The supreme qualification for the successful candidate for religious leadership positions controlled by Wheaton’s men remains malleability.
The history Wheaton’s best and brightest2 have assembled mentions only in passing President Buswell’s commitment and work of church reform, yet this work stood at the center of his Trustees’ decision to rid themselves of him. He had become a noxious presence in their lives.
Our next article will open up this matter of why President J. Oliver Buswell Jr. elicited such hostility from Wheaton’s Trustees yesterday and today.
(Sixteenth in a series; 9,900 views as of 4/14/24)
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References| ↑1 | Ryken is former pastor of the Presbyterian Church in America’s Tenth Presbyterian Church and son of Leland Ryken, author of Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were. | | ↑2 | Readers may think it unseemly to refer to Ryken and his trustees and faculty in this way, but Wheaton loves to be referred to as “the Harvard of Christian schools.” A few years ago, an article in the campus paper, The Wheaton Record, began: “Wheaton College has often been described as the Harvard of Christian schools due to its academic and spiritual disciplines. In keeping with this unofficial title, students at Wheaton experience a challenging educational environment within the context of faith…” |
Read a bunch of reviews of a book of rank feminist heresy deconstructing God the Father yesterday. All the reviews discussed the heresy in carefully modulated terms and were disgustingly obsequious toward the female author.Avoid these hirelings. Such men are everywhere in the Reformed church today. Their refusal to warn, but always and everywhere to merely join the conversation, is just as destructive to souls as the heretics they’re reviewing. The man who cares more about how his peers view him and whether he’ll be seen as part of the conversation bears no resemblance to any prophet or reformer of the past. He doesn’t warn. He discusses. He is a dog who refuses to bark, promising to guard but turning tail when the wolf comes for the sheep.Which is worse, histrionic discernment or dispassionate disquisition? Both are equally insidious because both lull us to sleep, innoculating us against the pastoral warnings that should characterize the care of true shepherds guarding their sheep. Remember the Apostle Paul characterized his ministry: “Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears” (Acts 20:31).Read and trust men like this to pastor you. Men who don’t cry and don’t even start admonishing their flock (or limit their warnings to politics and culture) are hirelings. Run.
(Fifteenth in a series; 9,900 views as of 4/14/24)
Our Savior’s rule in judging a man is, “By their fruit ye shall know them.”
Wheaton’s Historical Review Task Force took no interest in fruit, but stayed with assembling “gotchas” such as:
Camp skits… [of Wheaton’s] HoneyRock Camp featured staff members in native headdresses, made deprecating references to “witch doctors,” and depicted children dressed as “Apache Indian maidens” [which] reveal …a level of ignorance at best and downright cultural insensitivity at worst. (p. 59)
Imagine having a beer with one of these guys. They remind one of Chesterton’s description of the Prussian as the man who introduces himself, “Excuse me, I am a faultless being.”1 Scholars of the past did history. Scholars today do moral superiority; or worse, moral indignation augmented with fainting spells.
Honestly, shouldn’t fruit get a little of our attention? If Wheaton’s best and brightest are damning President Buswell as a racist, don’t we owe it to the man to look past the Task Force’s gotchas and examine his fruit?
Fired in January 1940, during the following decades Buswell’s leadership produced much fruit on the Wheaton campus as well as in the lives of Wheaton alumni. Since Ryken and Wheaton’s trustees and faculty are denouncing Buswell as racist, let’s give careful attention to this aspect of his fruit.
In the decades following President Buswell’s presidency, what was his legacy concerning racism?
Buswell’s sons cite AnthropologyWe’ve already seen that a good way to test a man’s fruit is to study his sons—tree and acorn. Among the acorns that fell from Buswell was a spiritual son, Joe Bayly. Another was his biological son, James Oliver Buswell III.
Joe Bayly
Reading the attack upon racism authored by Joe Bayly (my father), I was struck by the prominence Dad gave the discipline of Anthropology. It seemed out of character for Dad to cite social science as proof of the equality of the races when this equality is so plainly declared by Scripture:
For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3;27-28)
Growing up in the second half of the twentieth century, it was always obvious Scripture taught every man2 of every race equally bore the image and likeness of God, and therefore every man was equal to every other man of every other race. Thus, when I first read Dad’s 1956 article, “A Northern Christian Looks at the Race Question: A penetrating evaluation of our imperfect witness,” knowing Dad’s submission to the authority of God’s Word, I found this part of his article somewhat disconcerting:
In the first place, the Bible indicates that in this age of grace, all human beings are on an equal basis in God’s sight, and are equally in need of the message of redemption. The Negro is no less a human being than the white, nor do I find any ground in Scripture for considering the Negro lower down on the human scale than the white. Anthropologists tell us that if we take off the outside layer of skin, it is impossible to differentiate between a Negro and white person from the skeleton. …Negroes have the same mental capacity and potential as white people, according to scientific studies.
Gunnar Myrdal (An American Dilemma) has summed up the scientific position in these words: “When we approach [race] problems on the hypothesis that differences in behavior are to be explained largely in terms of social and cultural factors, we are on scientifically safe ground. If we should, however, approach them on the hypothesis that they are to be explained primarily in terms of heredity, we do not have any scientific basis for our assumption.”
I feel that we should be quite definite on this point since some white people, including Christians, tend almost unconsciously to consider the Negro as a lower order of human being than the white.
What struck me was Dad starting with the authority of Scripture, but concluding with a “scientific basis” and then declaring “we should be definite on this point.”
Good writing reserves the strongest argument for the end: the last paragraph in a chapter and the last chapter in a book. Yet here Dad moves from the greater to the lesser; from the authority of Scripture to the authority of social scientists.
Anthropology and racismProfessor James O. Buswell III
Similarly with President Buswell’s biological son, Professor James Oliver Buswell III; I was surprised by how heavily he relied on Anthropology in his article condemning racism:
…the force of science and Christian principles are gradually accomplishing the deathblow …the common ground held by science and Christianity is the field where racial segregation will finally fall….
…it is found by the social sciences …that “separate but equal” public educational facilities are inherently unequal.
The social teachings of the Gospel as they relate to the status and treatment of minority groups need not be held aloof from the social sciences in the same field. …The message of the Gospel in collaboration instead of conflict with social science over its common ground, will carry a much greater impact upon the social thinking of our times and the times that lie ahead.
Buswell the Son then declares:
Anthropology [is the] principal science concerned with race [and] one of the fastest growing subjects on the undergraduate level.
What is the import of Bayly and Buswell’s appeals to Anthropology for this present controversy over President Phil Ryken and Wheaton’s Trustees denunciation of President Buswell?
If Anthropology was then known to be “the principal science concerned with race;” and if this fledgling academic discipline consistently opposed racism; how did Anthropology come to find a home at Wheaton? Whom do we have to thank for Anthropology being welcomed and permanently established as one of Wheaton’s academic departments?
Readers of this series have already guessed the answer. This magnificent structural coup against Wheaton’s racism was the genius of the very man Wheaton’s Board of Trustees now, today, are denouncing: President J. Oliver Buswell Jr.
Buswell hires anthropologist Alexander GrigoliaNote Wheaton’s pride in early adoption of Dept. of Anthropology.
Fall semester of 1936, President J. Oliver Buswell Jr. hired anthropologist Alexander Grigolia as a part-time professor. In 1937, President Buswell got his trustees’ approval to promote Grigolia to full-time faculty status, and the following year President Buswell gave Grigolia the mandate to create a Wheaton Department of Anthropology.3
Russian-born, Alexander Grigolia began his graduate work at the University of Berlin, then moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.4 In time he emigrated to America and earned his second doctorate in cultural Anthropology at University of Pennsylvania (where he also confessed Christian faith).
It should be pointed out the narrative Evangelical pseudo-intellectuals have spawned concerning Buswell has long been that he was an ignorant “fundamentalist.” They savage the man. Truth is, Buswell was a true intellectual whose choice of a faculty member to lead his Anthropology initiative had studied and earned degrees from Berlin, the Sorbonne, and University of Pennsylvania; and during his first year lecturing at Wheaton, was invited to give a guest lecture at University of Chicago.
Sorbonne in early 20th century.
This new discipline of Anthropology was inimical to racism. President Buswell was no bumpkin. He understood the significance of hiring a well-credentialed anthropologist and mandating his creation of this new department at Wheaton. When President Buswell recruited Grigolia and gave him this mandate, he intended the fruit this would bear. He was implementing a strategic coup within Wheaton that, for years to come, exposed and opposed racism.
So it was that, three years before his 1939 directive to Wheaton’s registrar that henceforth Blacks be admitted, Grigolia began professing Anthropology to Wheaton students.
As we’ve shown, President Buswell’s son was an intense enemy of racism. It should be no surprise, then, that he majored in Anthropology and studied under Professor Grigolia. Also that he went on to get his PhD in Anthropology, then later serving Wheaton as a professor of Anthropology.
Billy Graham majors in AnthropologyNevertheless, Wheaton’s best-known student who majored in Anthropology under Grigolia was Billy Graham. Arriving on campus in 1940, only months after the Trustees fired President Buswell, Graham tells his reasoning in deciding to major in Anthropology. His explanation and its significance for his lifelong opposition to racism are recounted in a March 2015 article published in the American Anthropologist titled, “Anthropology and the Making of Billy Graham: Evangelicalism and Anthropology in the 20th-Century United States.”5
The article begins:
In a 1986 interview with Parade magazine, well-known evangelist Billy Graham was asked if, when looking back over his life at age 68, there was anything he would have done differently. He answered, “I wish I had gotten more education. If I could have, I would have gotten a PhD in Anthropology, to understand the race situation in this country better.”
Having majored in Anthropology at Wheaton College… Graham and his chroniclers have pointed to his anthropological training as influencing his views of race, leading first to his vocal (if initially inconsistent) opposition to legal segregation, followed by his decision in 1953 to defy the pressure from southerners to practice racial segregation in his famous crusades. Eventually he would declare racism to be one of the greatest social problems of the 20th century.
Note the American Anthropologist declares Billy Graham’s “anthropological training” at Wheaton as the source of his prophetic Christian opposition to racism and segregation. As a reminder, Graham’s anthropological training at Wheaton began in 1940, three years after President Buswell gave Alexander Grigolia the mandate to found Wheaton’s department of Anthropology. Also the very year Wheaton’s trustees fired President Buswell.
Billy Graham (l) with Prof. Alexander Grigolia (r).
As Wheaton’s trustees expelled President Buswell from their campus, Billy Graham arrived and became the most prominent example of the fruit President Buswell produced from his hire of Alexander Grigolia of the University of Berlin, the Sorbonne, and University of Pennsylvania.
Graham explains his decision to major in Anthropology after matriculating at Wheaton in 1940:
A focus on Anthropology would give me a liberal arts education in the best sense, obliterating any condescending notions I might have toward people from backgrounds other than my own. Alexander Grigolia [was] the head of the college’s new Anthropology department [and] popular among the students . . .
The article is compelling reading for anyone interested in the true history of Evangelicalism’s early and insistent opposition to racism and educational segregation typified by the primary sources we have published authored by Buswell’s spiritual son, Joe Bayly, and his biological son, James O. Buswell III. (Both pieces were published by Tenth Presbyterian Church pastor, Donald Grey Barnhouse.)
But here we add this testimony of the most famous Evangelical of them all, Billy Graham. He majored in Anthropology at Wheaton, and why was there a major in Anthropology at Wheaton way back in 1940, when very few other colleges had an Anthropology department?
Remember the simple observation of Buswell the Son while a professor of Anthropology at Wheaton, that Anthropology is the “principal science concerned with race.” We also just read Graham’s statement he majored in Anthropology there at Wheaton because Anthropology would “obliterat(e) any condescending notions I might have toward people from backgrounds other than my own.”
What “condescending notions” was Graham referring to?
Here’s a description of the influences Prof. Grigolia had been under during his graduate studies, and how he placed those commitments at the heart of the Anthropology curriculum he instituted at Wheaton:
Professor Franz Boaz
The curriculum Grigolia developed reflected the views of Franz Boas, often considered the founder of U.S. Anthropology, who was an ardent opponent of the scientific racism (the belief that scientific evidence proved the existence of different racial groups and their inferiority or superiority) prevalent in the early 20th century.6
What record do we have of Graham inculcating these views while under Grigolia?
Grigolia’s curriculum seems to have had an impact. Several chapters in an introductory text contain [Graham’s] prolific underlining… [T]he following sentence was underlined: “Absolutely pure races no longer exist; and this by itself makes it extremely hard to distinguish existing groups on a racial basis.”7
Wheaton prof Mark Noll writes:
Billy Graham had …shown how attractive a nonracist form of affective southern evangelicalism could be.8
Steven P. Miller provides more documentation of the development and wide influence of Billy Graham’s opposition to racism:
National politicians, such as Dwight Eisenhower, and national publications, such as the liberal Protestant Christian Century, looked to Graham to exert regional leadership concerning integration and civil rights. That he would assume a public role in the area of race relations was far from inevitable. Graham wrote that growing up as a white Southerner, he “had adopted the attitudes of that region without much reflection.” His education at Wheaton College, where he majored in Anthropology and gained awareness of the cultural relativity of race, led him to question his racial assumptions.9
Graham’s 1953 Chattanooga crusade
[In 1953 in] Chattanooga …before the start of the crusade [Graham] personally removed the rope separating the black and white sections of the audience. The incident went unreported in Chattanooga’s major dailies (which gave more attention to Graham’s proficiency as a golfer), although Graham later claimed that his action “caused the head usher to resign in anger right on the spot (and raised some other hackles).” A photograph of the Chattanooga crusade, later used in a Graham promotional booklet, showed white and black audience members sitting together.10
One swallow doth not a summer make, so what fruit of Buswell’s promotion of Anthropology at Wheaton was there beyond Billy Graham? Did Grigolia and the Anthropology Department he founded have any growing influence against racism on Wheaton’s campus the decades following the late thirties?
Yes, and that influence was profound.
To draw this article to a close, let us document this influence through the work of a previous race task force. This one did it’s work back in 1960 and was made up of Wheaton anthropology and sociology professors.
The president at the time was J. Oliver Buswell’s successor, President V. Raymond Edman. Edman had made a formal request of Wheaton’s Division of Social Sciences to produce a “Wheaton College Statement on Race Relations,” and the Division delegated the task to its Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
The work was led by Professor Gordon S. Jaeck, Chairman of Wheaton’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the work was concluded and submitted to President Edman on July 11, 1960, under the following letter from its chairman:
July 11, 1960
Dr. V. Raymond Edman
President
Wheaton College
Wheaton, IllinoisDear Dr. Edman:
The Department of Sociology and Anthropology is pleased to present herewith a proposed Wheaton College Statement on Race Relations. This statement has been prepared in response to your request to the Division of Social Sciences. In a Divisional meeting, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology was directed to undertake the preparation of the statement.
This statement has gone through numerous revisions and drafts. Actually this constitutes the eighth and final revision. It has been presented to and discussed by the entire Division of Social Sciences. While there was general agreement with the statement and while many of the suggestions for change coming from the Division were included in later drafts of the statement, we would need to make it clear that this statement is from the Department and not from the Division. Within our Department it has unanimous approval. Departmental faculty who have contributed to this statement and who in effect are equal parties to it include the following:
Professor Lamberta Voget
Assistant Professor James O. Buswell, III
Instructors Alvin Moser, David Winter
Special Instructor James Murk
The undersigned, Chairman of the DepartmentIt should be further pointed out that in constructing this statement over the past several months, we have consulted freely with non-white students on our own campus and with Negro leaders in the Chicago community as well as such leaders from other parts of the country. Available literature in the field presenting the Christian viewpoint has also been reviewed.
On behalf of the forwarding Department and the Division, we would appreciate being informed as to the progress of this statement as it is considered by the Administration of the College.
(signed)
Sincerely,
Gordon S. Jaeck, Chairman
Department of Sociology and AnthropologyGSJ: jdl
Enc.
c.c. Dr. S. R. Kamm, Chairman, Division of Social Sciences
What we learn from the above text is that the production of the requested and attached Wheaton College Statement on Race Relations was plagued by controversy, and thus the warning by Chairman Jaeck of President Edman that, despite the careful process, the broad consultations with Black students and national and local Chicago leaders, and then a total of eight revisions, there remained faculty members in the Division of Social Sciences who refused to sign the document.
What was the document itself?
Here is the text which only found agreement within the Department of Sociology and Anthropology:
WHEATON COLLEGE STATEMENT ON RACE RELATIONS
Preface
This statement is prepared for the Wheaton family. It assumes that the first step in a consideration of a Wheaton College view of race relations is to examine ourselves and gain an overall perspective.
The position of the Negro in American life was a flaming issue a century ago when Wheaton College was founded. The era was one of dynamic enthusiasm for Christian Utopianism, and the College had a founder whose confidence in the potentialities of a liberal arts education reflected strong social convictions. President Jonathan Blanchard was active in the anti-slavery agitation of a century ago, and when establishing the College he had in mind an institution which would be open to all races alike, that young people might be trained for intelligent leadership with Christian and social orientation. His fearlessness experienced rough opposition, but his actions continued true to these convictions. His friendship was extended to Negro students who lived in his home as well as to those in southern colleges.
In the course of time the College moved more clearly to a premillenial (sic) position, with a growing interest in evangelism and in theological issues. Essential as this was to a more Biblical orientation, it was accompanied by a declining preoccupation with social problems. Attitudes toward various issues tended to reflect the prevailing evangelical and/or general American climate rather than to maintain the leadership principle. [emphases in the original]
In reacting against the “social gospel” which had engulfed so much of organized Christian life, the College settled into a defensive position with strong emphasis on the maintaining of orthodox beliefs and a “separated from the world” standard of living. Although the College never formally adopted a policy of discrimination as relates to race, in practice members of minority groups, particularly Negroes, were for a time excluded from admission to the College; and then, after admission was reopened to them, they were restricted in regard to housing and certain social activities.
Scholars who are students of American society find that there tends to be considerable discrepancy between scientific knowledge and social behavior. At Wheaton we are subject to a similar pitfall. Scientific evidence indicates that all men belong to the same human family with equal personal and social potentials (positive and negative). As a body of Christian scholars Wheaton College accepts the valid findings of the physical and social sciences; but in addition we believe we have a higher responsibility, namely, that of a Christ-centered academic and social life. Our conduct with respect to minority groups may not always reflect these beliefs.
In God’s sight, according to His Word, the meaningful differentiations between people are based on how they are related to His Son, whether they are of the world or have been born from above, whether they are His sheep or not, whether they abide in the Vine or not, whether they walk in the Spirit or after the flesh, whether they are obedient or disobedient. Distinctions based on social categories are of this world’s system. In Christ Jesus there is no segregation. “There cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all.” (Col. 3:11.) As concerns the presence and functioning of each member of the Body of Christ, we read, “But now hath God set the members each one of them in the body, even as it pleased Him.” (I Cor. 12:16.) What glory of unity was presented at Pentecost when all barriers disappeared as the outpoured Spirit witnessed to the completed work of the Savior, and the Risen Lord began to indwell His people in a living, vital relationship that bound them to Himself and to one another! Here was a divine pattern and the beginning of an ongoing process that transcends social distinctions. As long as the Holy Spirit is permitted to impart the divine nature, to make real the indwelling Savior, this unity continues. Said Peter as he faced his congregation in the home of Cornelius, “Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him.” (Acts 10:34-35.) On the one hand, “ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23.) On the other hand, all who have been called of God are made partakers of the same divine nature (II Peter 1:3-4) and are members one of another. (Rom. 12:5; see also I Cor. 12:12-27.)
American practices of discrimination have prevented the personal, economic, social, intellectual, and spiritual growth of a large segment of our population; this segment has been isolated from the main stream of American development even though it has no other native land or cultural identification. The Christian Church has been as guilty as the secular community, a fact which has not been concealed from either Christians or non-Christians abroad. Whether missionaries or in other callings, whether on the home front or in other lands, evangelical white people have tended to regard colored peoples as inferior and have so treated them. The consequences have multiplied beyond measure, certainly beyond our control. We must depend upon and work with our colored brethren, assisting them into and in places of leadership, and look to them, both at home and abroad, for the constructive action which we are not qualified to take. The extent to which we see ourselves in proper perspective will be the measure of our future strength.
If we are to judge from our own national history and from the many cross-currents of international life today, the rising new nations of the earth will face grave problems quite apart from the race factor. Followers of Jesus Christ the world around have a double responsibility, as national citizens and as members of His Body, to join together, whatever their localities, in sharing the responsibilities of national and world-wide ministries in the gospel.
College years are of deep social and spiritual significance to growing Christian young people. They provide the opportunity for students and faculty to become acquainted with persons of diverse backgrounds, to understand each other in Christ, and to assume the responsibilities of true friendship as the end of College years distribute us the world over in keeping with divine guidance. We, therefore, at Wheaton College have a heavy responsibility toward the Christian community, toward our nation, and particularly to our College family of various races and nationalities to face the issues of race relations on our campus and in the world-wide Body of Christ.
In order to implement our convictions and express our Christian compassion we present the following propositions:
- That the College foster a series of programs and discussions designed to acquaint the College family of racial problems and issues.
- That steps be taken to find a colored person qualified for appointment to the faculty.
- That the College acquaint itself with practices of discrimination which prevail in the city of Wheaton.
- That the College continue the strengthening of its whole educational and extra-curricular program so as to provide as fine training as possible for its foreign students.
- That admission requirements be re-studied with a view to correcting any possible distortion of the campus social structure growing out of an unrepresentative kind of life which does not offer interaction with some of the important segments of our society.
- That rules governing dating and permissions for marriage be uniform for the whole student body. Counseling should be available to all persons on a voluntary basis; earnest consideration should be given to assist all our young people in finding the will of God. Interracial couples should be given understanding and wise counsel, the same as other couples, without pre-judgment concerning the will of God.
Prepared by the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Wheaton College
June, 1 960
What was the response?
Eleven days later, on July 22nd, President Edman sent the proposed statement out to his Executive Council members:
July 22, 1960
My dear Brethren:
The enclosed progress report from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology is to be read, to be kept in the utmost confidence, and passed on from one member to another and thus returned to me. At some future meeting of the Council, we can discuss this report.
I shall appreciate that no word whatever be said about it, even to members of our families. We may want to have extensive changes in it before it is issued. Like the statement on inspiration made by the Bible Department several years ago, this statement will need the approval of the Trustees before there is any word about it.
Thank you very much. Cordially,
(signed)
V. R. Edman President
VRE/mc
Memorandum to be circulated to the following members:
Dr. Enock C. Dyrness (check mark indicating his receipt)
Mr. Harold G. Faulkner (check mark)
Dr. Arthur H. Volle (check mark)
Dr. Merrill C. Tenney (check mark and dated “7/29/60”)
Mr. Charles W. Schoenherr (check mark)
Mr. David L. Roberts (check mark and dated “7/27/60”)
Dr. John H. Fadenrecht (check mark)
Dr. V. Raymond Edman (check mark)If one who has finished reading it will kindly make sure that it gets to the hand of the next one, please. If that one happens to be away from campus, it can be passed on to another who is here. I want this to be read as soon as possible and returned to the office. Thank you.
Wheaton’s archives then reveal this response in the form of a memo written by Executive Council Member Dr. Merrill C. Tenney:
July 29, 1960
Dear Dr. Edman:
I have just received your letter with a tentative Wheaton College statement on race relations. I have read the statement rather carefully, and have noted several points which I would like to raise for discussion.
I would like a further clarification of the third paragraph beginning on page 1, which implies that Wheaton College at some time practiced the exclusion of minority groups, particularly Negroes. To the best of my knowledge this has not happened since 1925, and I had never heard that such was the case. If this was true, what was the reason for the exclusion of the minority group? And was that exclusion connected in any way with the College’s position on orthodoxy?
I will agree that the basic division of mankind is not by race but by regeneration. On the other hand, would we exclude those whom we regard to be unregenerate? Of course, spiritual distinction is much less obvious than the distinction of race, since there is no external color which marks one’s spiritual state.
Point six on the last page should be discussed thoroughly within the administrative group before any formal presentation is made to the faculty or to the public. I am in agreement that there is no sin in interracial marriage, and that the principals, if they are willing to take the risk, have liberty to do it . On the other hand, the union of two persons from widely differing cultures and habits, even within the same race, necessitates adjustments that are extremely difficult; when the adjustments come between members of different races, with the consequent social pressures, the adjustments are sometimes impossible.
When young people unthinkingly involve themselves in such a situation, should counseling be only on a “voluntary” basis?
A further consideration enters into this problem. Will some of the parents of our students regard a tacit approval of interracial marriage as a danger to their children? Can we meet this situation without becoming discriminatory in our treatment of the minority groups, particularly of those of non-Caucasian blood?
I have no objection whatsoever to having a person of Negro or Oriental blood on the faculty and would welcome such a person if he met all the prevailing Wheaton standards. My experience this summer in Hawaii convinced me that Caucasians and others could work together harmoniously in the same churches and on the same faculties.
In short, I agree that this important social question should be studied carefully and sympathetically by the faculty, administration and trustees. I think, however, that we should not rush into print until we know precisely what we are going to do and whether we can pay the cost of our resolutions.
Cordially yours,
(signed)
Merrill C. Tenney
MCT:jk
Much could be said about the documents above, starting with the fact that the Wheaton College Statement on Race Relations here solicited and proposed never saw the light of day. Dead on arrival it was.
Clearly interracial marriage was still a third rail issue on Wheaton’s campus. Was the concern sincerely pastoral, or was it simply racism peeking out from its hiding place?
But let us keep in mind the point of this article. President J. Oliver Buswell Jr. had founded the Department of Anthropology at Wheaton way back in 1937 when Anthropology was the “principal science concerned with race,” and this Wheaton College Statement on Race Relations produced by Wheaton’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology was the fruit of President Buswell’s opposition to racism.
Who has the temerity to deny this?
President Buswell was no fundamentalist, hick, or country bumpkin. He knew precisely what he was doing when he hired Alexander Grigolia, the Sorbonist, to profess Anthropology part time. He knew precisely what he was doing when he brought Grigolia on full time. He knew precisely what he was doing when he tasked Grigolia with founding Wheaton’s Department of Anthropology way back in 1937 when, as Wheaton College today brags, “Wheaton’s Anthropology program was one of the first of its kind among national liberal arts colleges.”
So let us ask whether this information was unknown to Phil Ryken, his Trustees, and their faculty employees who produced the denunciation of President Buswell as racist in their execrable Historical Review Task Force Report?
Watch this carefully.
The author of the article quoted above detailing how Professor Alexander Grigolia and Wheaton’s Department of Anthropology led Billy Graham to oppose racism and segregation was none other than present Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Wheaton College, Professor Brian M. Howell.
Which is to say, President Phil Ryken, the Trustees of Wheaton College, and Wheaton’s best and brightest employees knew the same President Buswell it denounced as a racist was the man who brought Alexander Grigolia on board to teach at Wheaton and founded Wheaton’s Department of Anthropology where students learned why and how to oppose racism on the basis of both Biblical and scientific principles.
President J. Oliver Buswell, Jr.’s promotion of Anthropology was the seed which bore the fruit of Wheaton’s New Evangelical alumni attacking racism; and specifically, their voluble condemnation of educational segregation we have documented here.
Where does this leave Wheaton’s Historical Review Task Force, their Report, and the denunciation of President Buswell as racist?
It obliterates the whole moral charade.
A man who is a racist doesn’t hire a Sorbonist and Ivy League anthropologist who is adamantly opposed to racism, nor does he give that man orders to create a new department of Anthropology which discipline at its core strips racism of its scholarly legitimacy.
Some presidents are good fundraisers, but not good scholars. Some presidents are good at flattering rich men, but bad at knowing their professors’ character and the import of their research and teaching.
President Buswell was neither of those men.
Rather, he was a superb scholar who knew how popular Professor Grigolia was among Wheaton’s students as well as the inevitable fruit Grigolia would produce destroying racism within the Church of Jesus Christ.
Anthropology was the cornerstone of scholarly opposition to racism in the world of that time, yet today’s faculty members under President Phil Ryken make not a single mention of President Buswell’s leadership founding Wheaton’s Department of Anthropology.
Of course, there will be some readers who, despite reading this and the previous fourteen articles in this series, will claim this exclusion of the coming of Anthropology to Wheaton was an accidental omission from the Task Force’s Report.
The French say there’s no one so blind as the man who doesn’t want to see.
(Fifteenth in a series; 9,900 views as of 4/14/24)
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References| ↑1 | G. K. Chesterton, Letters to a Garibaldian (third letter). | | ↑2 | God named our race “adam,” and therefore “man” here follows this Divine naming of male and female together under the male of the species. | | ↑3 | Initially, the department was called the Department of Anthropology and Archeology. | | ↑4 | Phil Saint, Fossils that Speak Out: Creation vs. Evolution (Bladensburg: Dove Christian Books, 1989), p. 2. (Saint provides an inspiring account of Grigolia’s conversion during his pursuit of the doctorate at UPenn.) | | ↑5 | American Anthropologist, Vol.117, No.1, pp.59–70. Copyright 2015 by the American Anthropological Association. | | ↑6 | Brian Howell, “How Billy Graham Married Evangelism and Anthropology,” https://www.sapiens.org/culture/billy-graham-anthropology/ Homo Sapiens (accessed March 26, 2024.) | | ↑7 | Ibid. | | ↑8 | Mark Noll, God and Race in American Politics: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 157. | | ↑9 | Steven P. Miller, “Billy Graham, Civil Rights, and the Changing Postwar South” in Politics and Religion in the White South, ed. Glenn Feldman; 2005; p. 160. | | ↑10 | Ibid, 161. |
Parachurch ministries, political causes, and entrepreneurial enterprises seduce good men away from giving their lives to the Church and her pastoral work. How do we attract young men to the work of the Church during the formative years of their lives? College professors successfully shape their students, often in perverse ways. Why do pastors lack a similar zeal? What must pastors do to identify and draw men into working with Christ’s sheep?
As mentioned in the show, please check out the Psalm setting by My Soul Among Lions.
Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.
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(Fourteenth in a series; 9,900 views as of 4/14/24)
The Wheaton employees who produced the Historical Review Task Force Report claim the following correspondence between President Buswell and Trustee Hugo Wurdack is their “smoking gun” proving President Buswell was racist.
Here is that correspondence in its entirety:
May 17, 1939
Mr. Hugo Wurdack
5501 Lindell Boulevard
St. Louis, MissouriDear Mr. Wurdack,
Some years ago you spoke to me about Wheaton admitting colored students. At that time we had no colored students in the College, though there were one or two in the Academy. I think you thought our Filipino students were colored.
I have no race prejudice in my heart. I have in the past twice seriously considered full time Christian service in a field wholly devoted to colored people. However, I have felt that for a small Christian school where the social contacts are so close, it would be better to avoid coeducation of the races. I have advised colored students to go to Lincoln Institute, Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky.
Now there is a considerable amount of pressure being brought to bear upon me from certain quarters. If I should throw the question into an open meeting of either the faculty or the trustees, I believe the result would be an argument and a strong division of opinion. I am trying to avoid the issue while quietly advising colored applicants to go elsewhere. May I please have your advice?
Yours in Christian service,
JOB/AN
Not receiving a timely response, President Buswell repeated his request:
May 25, 1939
Mr. Hugo Wurdack
5501 Lindell Boulevard
St. Louis, MissouriDear Brother Wurdack,
I am trying to perform a difficult task. I really stand in great need of a reply to my letter of May seventeenth.
Very cordially yours,
JOB/AN
Two weeks after Buswell’s first letter, Wurdack finally responded:
June 2, 1939
Mr. J. Oliver Buswell
Wheaton College
Wheaton, IllinoisDear Mr. Buswell:
I am in receipt of your communication in regard to the question of colored students to be admitted to the college.
While I have absolutely no prejudice against colored students and for my part would be willing that they should be admitted into the college, at the same time I do not think it would be wise to bring this matter up at this time. There are already a number of controversial matters before the Board with more to come. It would be my counsel to keep out of all controversies, so far as possible, even at the sacrifice of strong convictions.
Sincerely,
Hugo Wurdack (signed)
HW:ES
Seeking clarification, President Buswell followed up:
June 5, 1939
Mr. Hugo Wurdack
Railway Exchange Building
St. Louis, MissouriDear Mr. Wurdack,
Thank you for your letter of June second. Thank you very much indeed for the following statement which relieves the situation:—
“…I have absolutely no prejudice against colored students and for my part would be willing that they should be admitted into the college…”
I am enclosing a copy of a memorandum to Profesor Dyrness which I am now dictating, but which I will not send to him until I have had time to hear from you again, just in case I might have misunderstood your thought.
I am afraid you did not note the last paragraph of my letter. What you advise me to do is precisely what I said I intended to do. I am therefore taking the liberty of quoting that paragraph again.
“Now there is a considerable amount of pressure being brought to bear upon me from certain quarters. If I should throw the question into an open meeting of either the faculty or the trustees, I believe the result would be an argument and a strong division of opinion. I am trying to avoid the issue while quietly advising colored applicants to go elsewhere. May I please have your advice?”
Yours in Christian service
JOB/AW
Accompanying the above letter was this rough draft of the memo Buswell was in the middle of dictating to Wheaton’s registrar, Professor Enock Dyrness:
Copy to Mr. Wurdack
6-5-1939
Dear Mr . Dyrness
I have just received from Mr. Wurdack a letter which reads in part as follows:
“…I have absolutely no prejudice against colored students and for my part would be willing that they should be admitted into the college…”
Mr. Wurdack is the only one ~~definitely~~ connected with the College who has ever objected to our having colored students in any definite way. Evidently he has now a different point of view. I do not know of anyone else connected with the College who has ~~ever~~ committed himself on this point. I suggest therefore that you admit the colored girl recommended by Rev. Wyeth Willard of Newark, but I suggest that you keep the matter as quiet as possible and say nothing about it in any way which will be likely to provoke discussion.
As you know, I have been trying to dodge this issue. I cannot see that any moral principle is involved. I am inclined to think that it would be better in a practical way if colored people would go to their own colored schools such as Lincoln Institute in Kentucky. However, because of the great amount of pressure which has been brought to bear upon us xxxx [word exed out and “us” substituted] in this case, I suggest that we admit colored students hereafter. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [several words exed out] We shall probably have objections from certain quarters, but we can simply avoid as much trouble as possible.
Please let me have your reactions to this suggestion.
Very cordially yours
P.S. I am holding this memorandum for two days, allowing time for Mr. Wurdack to make any further suggestions which may occur to his mind.
Finally, this from Trustee Wurdack:
June 6, 1939
Mr. J. Oliver Buswell
Wheaton College
Wheaton, IllinoisDear Mr. Buswell:
I have your favor of June 5th.
I think you have interpreted my statement correctly.
As to the last clause in your letter, I agree fully with your suggestion of letting the colored applicants down easily, by advising them to find a school elsewhere.
Sincerely,
Hugo Wurdack (signed)
HW:ES
The above exchange between President Buswell and Trustee Hugo Wurdack is the “smoking gun” President Phil Ryken, the Trustees of Wheaton College, and their employees put forward as proof that President Buswell was racist. We will get back to the content of these letters, but first some important things to keep in mind.
First, remember what President Buswell’s own son, Professor James Oliver Buswell III, wrote opposing racism back in 1962. Here is an excerpt:
slavery itself was found on an ideology incompatible with Christianity, no matter how “Christian” were its forms. Likewise it is found by the social sciences and the prevailing legal opinion of our day that “separate but equal” public educational facilities are inherently unequal.
The segregation defense system retains most of the basic arguments regarding the Negro race that were incorporated into the slavery defense system.
Note this excerpt specifically condemns segregated education when segregated education is precisely what Wheaton’s Historical Review Task Force Report condemns Buswell the Father for promoting!
Buswell the Son spoke out and published a book opposing racism, and his doing so was not inimical to his father’s commitments, but the fruit of those commitments.
Second, remember what President Buswell’s spiritual son, Rev. Joseph Tate Bayly IV, wrote opposing racism back in 1956. Here is an excerpt:
The white Southerner usually is strongly against intermarriage and severe in punishing any Negro who has social contact with a white woman. Yet judging by the evidence of mulattos one sees in the South, many white men evidently treat Negro women as chattels. Surely a Christian should protest against such a sinful, hypocritical double standard.
A mild-mannered, elderly Pullman porter on the Southern Railroad put it this way several years ago: “We Negroes can’t understand why white men aren’t willing to sit next to our women, when they’re so ready to sleep with them.”
As I read the Word I find just one commandment with reference to forbidden marriages: for the Christian, marriage must be “in the Lord.” The unequal yoke is that which binds Christian with non-Christian, not one race with another. And in the Old Testament, the forbidden marriage for the Israelites was on the basis of those who did not know the Lord Jehovah, not on the basis of color.
Note this excerpt defends interracial marriage and was published eight years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act! Joe Bayly’s leadership opposing racism was the fruit of President Buswell’s influence on this son in the faith.
Third, President Buswell was having to mediate a host of conflicts at Wheaton, and many of Wheaton’s conflicts were coming to a head during the above exchange of correspondence.
Both on campus and within the Board of Trustees, these conflicts were over things such as the college’s standards of morality, secret societies, the fitness of the character of Wheaton’s football coach, and President Buswell’s partnership with J. Gresham Machen in the work of reform within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA).
Buswell, Machen, and many of their fellow reformers had been expelled from their Presbyterian church three years earlier, in 1936, and Wheaton’s Trustees and donors disapproved of President Buswell’s involvement in church reform.
While working shoulder to shoulder with Machen for church reform, Buswell was also leading a college through a burgeoning growth in the student body, hiring of faculty, improving the college’s accreditation, the inevitable college campus imbroglios—and in the middle of the Great Depression, relentless budget crises.
The above correspondence displays the insecurity of President Buswell’s position at the time. He had become a tightrope walker.
Fourth, as the thirties drew to an end, the conflict over Black applicant Rachel Boone loomed large and threatened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. It all came to a head in late 1939 and early 1940 as Buswell sought the Trustees’ approval for a permanent policy change to permit racially integrated education of Blacks and Whites at the college. The campus was already racially integrated in their lower grades, but Wheaton’s Trustees and faculty were divided over moving the campus integration up to the college level.
Returning to the correspondence itself, here are the smoking gun statements Ryken and his Trustees point to as proof of Buswell’s racism:
Some years ago …we had no colored students in the College
And what would President Ryken, his Trustees and employees say about this statement?
That President Buswell alone was responsible for the absence of Black students at the College level under his presidency and this absence was because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
I have felt that for a small Christian school where the social contacts are so close, it would be better to avoid coeducation of the races.
And what would President Ryken, his Trustees and employees say about these two statements?
That President Buswell thought it would be better to avoid coeducation of the races because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
That President Buswell was opposed to close social contact between Blacks and Whites because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
Now there is a considerable amount of pressure being brought to bear upon me from certain quarters.
And what would President Ryken, his Trustees and employees say about this statement?
That “certain quarters” were having to pressure President Buswell because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
I am trying to avoid the issue while quietly advising colored applicants to go elsewhere.
And what would President Ryken, his Trustees and employees say about these statements?
That President Buswell was trying to avoid discussion of Black college integration among Trustees and faculty because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
That President Buswell advised Blacks to go elsewhere because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
As you know, I have been trying to dodge this issue.
And what would President Ryken, his Trustees and employees say about this statement?
That President Buswell was trying to dodge the issue because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
I cannot see that any moral principle is involved.
And what would President Ryken, his Trustees and employees say about this statement?
That President Buswell saw no moral principle at stake because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
I am inclined to think that it would be better …if colored people would go to their own colored schools…
What would President Ryken, his Trustees and employees, say about this statement? \
That President Buswell wanted Blacks at Black colleges because he was a racist who despised Blacks.
I suggest therefore that you admit the colored girl
And finally, this statement also: what would President Ryken, his Trustees and employees, say?
That President Buswell was admitting Miss Rachel Boone over his own personal preference against admitting her. That he was forced to do this by all the enlightened Trustees, donors, faculty members, and students clamoring for Blacks and Whites to study, eat, and live together within Wheaton College.
Another view
President Phil Ryken along with his Trustees and employees have judged President Buswell uncharitably, and this is sin.
If any of us were to put ourselves in President Buswell’s shoes, we would easily see ourselves doing as he did. If President Ryken and his Trustees were to put themselves in President Buswell’s shoes, they would easily see themselves doing as he did. With them, we would do well to ask ourselves what we would have done differently?
There were numerous conflicts dividing Wheaton’s college campus when Miss Rachel Boone’s application arrived. A few years earlier, President Buswell’s predecessor, President Charles Blanchard, had accepted a black woman, Miss Nellie Bryant, to Wheaton College, and the women of the college refused to room or eat with her. It was national news and Miss Bryant was forced to leave Wheaton’s campus. The scandal was notorious and left a bitter taste in the mouth of every Wheaton faculty member, trustee, and member of the administration. President Blanchard’s wife blamed her husband for the scandal, telling the press that all of it was her husband’s fault for not informing anyone the woman was Black.
President Buswell was facing a similar situation with Miss Rachel Boone, also Black.
What was he to do? He was walking a tightrope with his trustees up in arms over budget crises, conflicts over moral standards on campus, the moral fitness of the college’s football coach, and his own notoriety for reform work opposing heresy within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Buswell had been forced out of his denomination while many pastors and elders with influence among Wheaton’s trustees had remained within that denomination. They had hunkered down and continued to serve within the denomination. They resented Buswell’s prophetic witness and pushed for Buswell’s removal from Wheaton.
What was he to do?
Walking his tightrope, President Buswell obeyed Scripture’s command:
If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. (Romans 12:18)
Whether White or Black, who would fault President Buswell for “quietly advising colored applicants to go elsewhere” knowing of the previous ostracism of Miss Nellie Bryant by Wheaton’s female students?
Whether White or Black, knowing of the national scandal of Wheaton’s college women refusing to eat or share a room with Miss Nellie Bryant, who would fault President Buswell for writing:
I have felt that for a small Christian school where the social contacts are so close, it would be better to avoid coeducation of the races.
Whether White or Black, who would fault a president facing a Board of Trustees, donor base, and faculty ready to divide over integrated education with stating:
I am trying to avoid the issue while quietly advising colored applicants to go elsewhere.
You say he should have forced the issue? You say he should have faced down Trustee Hugo Wurdack who, in response to the president’s attempt to get the Trustees’ approval for admitting Miss Rachel Boone, wrote:
It would be my counsel to keep out of all controversies, so far as possible, even at the sacrifice of strong convictions.
Well, read the correspondence. President Buswell did, in fact, face down Trustee Wurdack. In his rough draft of the memo, Buswell summarized Burdack’s position as follows:
I have just received from Mr. Wurdack a letter which reads in part as follows:
“…I have absolutely no prejudice against colored students and for my part would be willing that they should be admitted into the college…”
Registrar Enock Dyrness didn’t have the letter, but only what Buswell reported above. The construction President Buswell put on Wurdack’s correspondence is humorous if we forget what was at stake. Buswell cornered Wurdack, and came through with the victory.
The chess match ended with Miss Rachel Boone accepted by Wheaton College. The moves were back and forth, left and right, up and down, but in the end Miss Rachel Boone was admitted to Wheaton College.
Not only that, but President Buswell decreed that, henceforth, Wheaton would accept all Black applicants!
Then he was fired.
And, get this, eighty-three years later, white-privileged President Phil Ryken, his white-privileged Trustees, and all the faculty and staff employees on Rykens lily-white-privileged Historical Review Task Force condemned the man as a racist.
How should we put it?
So far as it depends on you, leave no good deed unpunished.
If you get the chance, slander your fathers in the faith. They can’t defend themselves. They’re dead.
(Fourteenth in a series; 9,900 views as of 4/14/24)
The final two decades of Joe Sobran’s life, Fran Griffin did us kindly by serving as Joe’s publisher.
Before then, for many years Joe had been published by National Review, but Buckley began pressuring Joe to shut up about Israel. Eventually he took Joe to lunch and tried to get him to agree to stop criticizing Israel’s domestic and foreign policies.
Joe declined. Referring to the Jews who supported conservative causes, by Joe’s account, Buckley’s final rejoinder that day was, “Joe, we need these people.”
Joe wasn’t to be bought.
In National Review, Buckley smeared both Joe Sobran and Pat Buchanan as anti-Semitic. From that day on, I never read National Review. Some might call this foolish consistency, but loyalty means a lot to me.
Something about the enemy of my friend is my enemy. If you’ve been reading here recently, you know how dogged my defense of J. Oliver Buswell has been in the face of Phil Ryken smearing him as a racist. Buswell was a faithful father to my own father, and he himself opposed racism.
Attacking men as “racist” or “anti-Semitic” is so cowardly. Precisely how does one defend himself against such smears? Especially if one has been dead for decades.
Back to Sobran, after their lunch, Buckley went back to his office and sent a fax informing Joe he was fired from National Review.
By God’s grace, in the years to come, a godly Roman Catholic woman began serving as Joe’s publisher, and ever since I have loved her for it. Never had the privilege of meeting Miss Griffin (or Miss Johnson), but Fran sends out things occasionally, and this one came this week. It’s such a fine tribute! Make sure you read it. (The leading picture is of Pat Buchanan, Fran Griffin, and Joe Sobran.)
There are many Roman Catholics whose faith is true. I wish I had known Miss Johnson. May she rest in peace.
Willa Ann Johnson, R.I.P.,
Reaganite, Sobran’s friend, conservative luminary
by Fran Griffin
March 7, 2024FGF Books, 3/7/2024 — Willa Ann Johnson, a lifelong principled conservative activist, a key member of the Reagan Revolution, an ardent pro-life Catholic, and a good friend of both Joe Sobran and Samuel T. Francis, went to her eternal reward on February 25. She was 81 years old.
In the early 1960s, Willa become a Roman Catholic, which shaped her life from that time forward. In 1964, she worked tirelessly on the Goldwater for President campaign. Undeterred by the landslide victory of Lyndon Johnson, Willa worked as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill for conservative Members of Congress for several years.
Her talents did not go unnoticed. In 1971, she was named senior vice president of the newly-formed Heritage Foundation, helping to get that organization launched into the prominence it now has. She became the director of Heritage’s Resource Bank, assisting numerous conservative organizations in developing winning strategies to advance a conservative agenda nationwide.
Within weeks of the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Willa was speedily recruited as a key member of his administration. She became the director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel – a position perfect for both her and our country as she was instrumental in placing conservatives in key positions in the Reagan Administration.
But Willa, a loyal Reaganite, was a conservative visionary who wanted to do more. She keenly perceived the great need to combat the millions of dollars of money that was being poured into left-wing causes. In 1984, she founded the Capital Research Center, “America’s investigative think tank,” which exposes leftist foundations, unions, environmentalist groups and left-leaning advocacy organizations. Its purpose was and is to bolster private philanthropy and to alert donors about the activities and agendas of so-called public political advocacy organizations. CRC continues today to protect our freedoms by exposing the power-seeking interests that oppose our nation’s founding principles – thanks to Willa’s idea to launch the organization.
To know Willa was to quickly realize that she was a devout Catholic who took her faith seriously. Having achieved much success as a conservative activist, ardent pro-life advocate, and national leader, she aspired to do more. In her 10th year as President of the Capital Research Center, she resigned her position – and then did a baffling thing. She sold her house, gave away all her money to charitable causes, donated all her possessions, and decided to live as a homeless person on the streets of Washington, D.C.! Like St. Francis of Assisi who abandoned all his possessions to do God’s will; and St. Catherine of Siena who secluded herself for three years, and then, inspired by Our Lord, walked on foot from Italy to Avignon, France, to tell the pope to come back to Rome — and similar to many religious monks and hermits throughout the centuries — Willa spent much of her time in prayer at churches, and in contemplating Our Lord’s will for her. What she learned during that time, and what she did for others no one will ever know. Eventually she was persuaded to return to the “real” world. In 2004 she left the streets to take a job at the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women, where she again promoted conservative principles and also mentored young conservative women. After a few years she retired and quietly lived out the rest of her life.
From the time of her conversion to Catholicism, Willa embraced the life of a devout single Catholic. She never married, but was a devoted aunt to her niece and nephew. Willa was uncompromising in her principles. She was brilliant and soft-spoken, ever determined to fight battles for the survival of our country. She loved her Savior and, as a result, exhibited kindness, love, and warmth to everyone she encountered, including this unworthy writer.
May this humble and worthy soul rest in peace.
In this episode of our Beyond the Wardrobe series, we talk about Edith Nesbit, who arguably invented modern children’s fantasy. Her book Five Children and It is about, yep, five children who find a Puddlegum-ish “sand fairy.” He grants wishes that go very wrong, and the results make for a charming adventure. Support us here! Subscribe here! Download […]
Pastor Tim sat down again with pastor and economist Jürgen von Hagen to discuss the religion of global warming. It is the nature of mankind to want to be involved in something big. What’s bigger than acting to save the Earth? Yet, basing our actions and governmental policies on scientific models is a complicated venture. […]
We are pleased to announce that Abortion and the Church by Evangel Presbytery is now available in paperback in our online bookstore. All electronic formats are available for free at abortion.evangelpresbytery.com. For discount rates for churches and ministries, please contact us.This much needed book thoroughly exposes the wickedness of abortion, as well as the American church’s complicity in our nation’s slaughter of the preborn.
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In this episode of our Beyond the Wardrobe series, we talk about the classic (?) modern fairy tale The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It’s a fun, episodic, tongue-in-cheek adventure story that kids will enjoy. Baum was an interesting guy and we talk about him too.
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Out of Our Minds is back. Andrew Henry is our new co-host, but this episode Pastor Bayly is with Pastor Jürgen von Hagen and, because Tim and Jürgen were up in Michigan, Andrew was not able to join them. Our subject is refugees, immigration, and migration.
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We talk about one of the great silent film comedians, Charlie Chaplin, and his satire Modern Times. Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! Subscribe to the podcast here!
The first in our Beyond the Wardrobe series! We talk about Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. A widowed field mouse named Mrs. Frisby tries to cure her son. She’ll need the help of some mysteriously intelligent rats. Dark, melancholy, and gripping, and a good book about the fragility of life. Support us here! Subscribe […]
(Twentieth in a series.) The previous article in this series concluded with a recounting of the opposition of a leading woman of our church to our elders when they called both congregations to leave the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). It seemed clear she didn’t think sodomy was any “abomination,” as God said.1 Naturally, then, she […]
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Out of Our Minds is back with a new voice. Mr. Andrew Henry—entrepreneur, musician, and all-around curious man—will join Pastor Tim Bayly for the upcoming episodes. Sometime soon we’ll have Mr. Henry introduce himself on the podcast. Today’s episode answers, “Does it take a church to raise a child?” When parents enter new territory with […]
Back in 1950, my parents with some couples founded Delaware County Christian School in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Facing resistance, Dad pushed a policy to be adopted that blacks would be welcome. In the fifties, the school was integrated because that’s what it means to follow Christ. This posted today because Mary Lee and I […]
This show. Oh man. What a show. Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
(Second in a series.) When coins were made of gold, thieves trimmed the edges and kept the trimmings, passing off the smaller coin at full value. Pastors do the same. This betrays their calling. Like the Apostle Paul’s pastoral understudy, Timothy, pastors are called by God to “retain the standard of sound words” and “guard […]
Christopher Nolan’s best movie? Plus … should Christians even watch Oppenheimer? Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! Subscribe to the podcast here!
(Third in a series.) As mentioned in the first of this series, on May 23 my wife and I learned of three deaths—Sharon Dykstra, Bill Mouser, and Tim Keller. That these three died at the same time was to me jarring and instructive. Most readers didn’t know Sharon Dykstra or Fr. Bill, so I introduced […]
Your kids have already devoured Narnia and Lord of the Rings? Here are some other fantasy novels to edify, terrify, and amuse without pumping their minds full of garbage. Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
It’s a movie! With camera angles, lights, actors, and more! Plus … what is up with Tom Cruise and scientology anyway? Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! Subscribe to the podcast here!
Our heroes discuss ice cream ninjas and detective novels, among other things. Plus how should Nathan introduce the other hosts? Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
Let’s take a deep dive into one of the most iconic and influential films of its time and all time: Rocky. Run up the stairs of great criticism and insight with us. Plus we’ll talk A LOT about the history of bloodsport and pugilism, and whether violence (sporting or otherwise) is a “necessary evil” or a […]
We’re back, baby! Sorry for the delay. Thanks for your patience. We’re offering some much needed context on one of the best books we’ve ever done, Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. SUPPORT US HERE! Subscribe to the podcast here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here!
Hey hey We’re the show notes! People say we show note around But we’re too busy singin’ To put anybody down! It’s our Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review. Pee-yoo! Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! Subscribe to the podcast here!
Sandy's Book Recommendations: Now One Foot, Now the Other by Tomie dePaola The Saints Everlasting Rest by Richard Baxter The Undistracted Widow by Carol W. Cornish A Grief Observed by C S Lewis When a Christian Spouse Dies by Jay Adams
We have a discussion about comedians for some reason. Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
(Second in a series of three.) As I mentioned in the first of this three-part series, on the day Mary Lee and I spent travelling back from three months in Taiwan (May 23), we learned of three deaths—Sharon Dykstra, Bill Mouser, and Tim Keller. That these three died within a day or two of each […]
But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word. -Isaiah 66:2 Back when nations issued coins made of precious metal, it was common for thieves to shave the coin ever so slightly, then pass it off in a monetary exchange at full […]
Last time, I asked the question, What makes worship beautiful in God’s sight? For starters, we should point out that God does not find worship offered to false gods beautiful. “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:3). Some idol worship may be aesthetically pleasing to you or me, but it is always […]
Want to see some martial arts comic book action done right? Not at all like Marvel or any of that crap? Then let our heroes introduce you to 5 films in the Rurouni Kenshin series of Japanese action melodrama. They low-key love them. Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! […]
It’s the classic Sound of Sanity episode. Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
(First in a series of three.) This morning (May 23, 2023) Mary Lee and I returned to the United States after three months in Taiwan. Before departure, we heard Tim Keller died. A few hours later, we heard Fr. Bill Mouser died. Upon arrival in the States, we heard Sharon Dykstra died. While Mary Lee […]
Not even the Flash himself can outrun the consequences of being in this terrible movie! Did that sentence make sense? The point is, The Flash is a bad movie. It’s really, really bad. Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! Subscribe to the podcast here!
It’s another edition of Sanityshelves, baby. What have our heroes been reading? Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
Our heroes discuss a podcast series that is taking things from them. (Note: for maximum coverage, this podcast is being published in the Sound of Sanity and Sanity at the Movies feed as well.) (Additional note: Jake and Nathan and Brandon are getting together this week to try to finally get that schedule worked out. […]
Here’s an excerpt from the fifth volume of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s magnum opus, a lengthy history of the Russian Revolution titled The Red Wheel. Note the revolutionaries’ utter disdain for the peasants, and thus the soldiers they were depending upon to keep fighting in their defense during World War I. Then too, remember Stalin’s slaughter of […]
Is it all a deconstruction of fatherhood and morality itself? Or is it a fun movie with nuances and complexities and things? That’s the question that lies before us as we review Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse (2023). And we don’t agree! Uh-oh! Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! Subscribe to the […]
Nathan and Ben say hello. The SoS crew has been busy with trips, and that’s all we have to say, but… what’s this? A quick take on the Super Mario Bros movie? That doesn’t belong in this feed! Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
Our heroes discuss whether white evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in American. (Nope). And how to be strategic about church as the world becomes increasingly nasty to Christianity. Or more properly, how not to be. And other things.
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Our heroes talk about the apocalyptic satirical classic Dr. Strangelove. Which is a pretty inappropriate movie. And pretty hilarious. And pretty timely. Cold War era type tensions? Madmen with their fingers on the button that could destroy the world? Demonic overlords rising up from the shadows? This one plays like a new release.
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We’re talking vasectomies, elite breeding, alien radio signals, and more!
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RejectionWhen Joe Bayly, my grandfather, first wrote The Gospel Blimp, nobody would publish it. It was poking fun at all the Christian non-profits and parachurch organizations that took themselves so very seriously, and Christian publishers were not impressed with the idea. So he created Windward Press and published it himself in 1960. Regular Christians who hated pretension loved it, and the book sold like hot cakes. But it wasn’t just poking fun. It had a serious point. It didn’t just take a hat pin to the pomposity and compromise endemic in the world of Evangelical ministry. It called the whole industry into question. Why did all of these organizations exist? To accomplish the Great Commission more effectively than the church and her members ever could.
Opposition“Effectiveness” was the reason they existed. The Gospel Blimp showed clearly that the glorious effectiveness was a often myth and prompted people to wonder whether we needed many of these organizations. The result was many leaders of Christian non-profits felt personally attacked and were very angry at my grandfather.
Then he moved to Wheaton, which was where they were all headquartered. It was a cold reception.
FireThe story continued to resonate, though. It sold and sold and sold. Eventually another publisher even deigned to republish it. Soon it was even being made into a movie, with Shorty Yeaworth, best known today for his cult classic The Blob, directing. The story worked just as well in film, and very little needed to be changed to make a script. Shorty’s wife Jean helped work on it. The movie was filmed, edited, and almost complete when the studio caught fire. All material for The Gospel Blimp film and various other projects was in the building. According to Shorty’s son, Kris, he and various employees ran into the building to save what they could, but foremost on their minds was rescuing The Gospel Blimp. This was not the day and age of digital films and off-site network backups. It wasn’t just a matter of grabbing the right computer or hard drive. Rather, they were dealing with various reels of film, separate audio reels, masters, originals, etc. These materials were the first out of the building, and Kris recounted to me continuing to run in and grabbing things until he almost got trapped, escaping out a window with burns on his legs only shortly before the fuel tank went up.
Wearing outWhen the film was released in 1967, it was almost as popular as the book. Just under 40 minutes long, now Christians could enjoy the short story together, and they did. For years, reel-to-reel copies of the movie traveled around the country being projected at Christian schools and churches, gradually wearing out. I’m (just) old enough to remember the days before VCRs. I remember watching reel-to-reel films in school, seeing the countdown to the start of the actual content. You could see the hairs, dust, and scratches that would slowly accumulate with every viewing. As with most things, time and use wore the copies out. As demand increased, you couldn’t just make new copies from the master, or it would wear out. Instead, you made copies of the copies. Then copies of copies of copies. Each generation was one step lower in quality.
Running outThen, in 2005 it was released on DVD by Gospel Communications. I don’t know how that came about, but eventually they decided they were done with it. They sent their remaining stock to Jean Yeaworth, who reached out to my dad and asked if he wanted it. He said he did, and in Dec 2009, we received a box of DVDs and a box of old reels we knew nothing about. In 2013, we republished the book, and throughout this time we kept the DVDs for sale on Amazon until they began to run out in 2015.
My dad reached out to Shorty’s son, Kris Yeaworth and spoke about getting a new master made so we could continue to provide the movie in DVD form. However, the idea fell by the wayside. That seemed like it was going to be the end of the line for The Gospel Blimp film.
Low qualityIn 2018, a low-resolution copy of the film was posted online, seemingly an original digitization from a fairly worn-out physical film. At various times other low resolution films have shown up, and although the artifacts of a worn out film have their charm, we were never pleased with these copies as alternatives.
We thought the film, like the book, was still great entertainment and prophetically on point. Little seems to have changed in the Evangelical non-profit sector. We wanted to provide something better, but branching out into video seemed like a bridge too far.
Monsters!Still, eventually we got back in touch with Shorty’s son, Kris, who told us he had looked and looked for the original master to The Gospel Blimp. When we told him we had a box of reels, he asked us for pictures. He wrote back, “I was thrilled to confirm, based on what I see, what you have in your possession is in fact the original A+B rolls, comprised of camera original. You also have the magnetic audio track… Again, I’m overjoyed to report that you have in your possession, the ‘holy’ grail of Gospel Blimp filmage, to coin a phrase.”
Kris told us that he could master a new hi-def digital version of the movie if we could pay for the equipment rental and get him the masters. With his warnings not to open or touch anything, and certainly not to ship them, Nathan Alberson made a trip to Monster Bash 2021 in Mars, PA, where Kris was going to be selling pieces of the original Blob. With the masters hand-delivered, we waited. Kris made a beautiful, brand new hi-def wide-screen version of the movie for us, and we were excited.
BusynessThen we sat on it. You all know how life goes. We had invested about $1500 and a couple of days of driving, but we didn’t have the time to take the project to completion.
A couple of months ago, I got a bee in my bonnet, and decided it was time. So here we are. Nathan Alberson has a made a wonderful new trailer for the movie, we’ve got a streaming provider, and we’re ready to release it to you.
Cost?We’ve invested money in this. Not a lot, but suffice it to say that Warhorn’s financial need is great right now. Nevertheless, we don’t want cost to prevent anybody from being able to watch The Gospel Blimp. We’re making it available right now in a pay-what-you-want model, that will give you permanent access to stream the video. We hope you’ll help us pay for it. Click here to watch it. Enjoy!
Hey, it’s just a little check in episode where we talk about the things we’re going to do do soon, so you can watch along if you so desire. Four classic superhero films, the best sports film of all time, the greatest political satire, and more…
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We’re talking trauma, transgender pronouns, and the Bible Project, baby. Oh man oh man.
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A couple of weeks ago, I chaperoned a field trip to the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, Kentucky. Built at the turn of the twentieth century, it was modeled in the Gothic style after the Abbey Church of St. Denis and the cathedral of Notre Dame, both in Paris. Though not as formidable as its predecessors, the place is still breathtaking.
Stained-glass windows (eighty-two of them) fill the expansive walls. Gorgeous stone sculptures and wood carvings greet you at every turn. Green and white marble floors, inlaid with brass, spread underneath your feet, making you feel as if you’re on the very road to heaven, especially as you gaze upward at the soaring vaulted ceilings and the angels they contain. As our tour group was about to leave, a professional organist arrived to practice for a wedding that weekend, and he played, beautifully, Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” on the catherdral’s organ with its 3,863 pipes resounding in perfect harmony.
What glory!
I couldn’t help but compare this sensuous experience to the space in which our own church worships. It’s not, shall we say, aesthetically pleasing. It’s a gym. The colors on our walls don’t come from stained glass, but from quirky school spirit banners. And instead of stone-carved cherubim observing our worship from celestial ceilings, we’re overshadowed by steel beams and huge exposed HVAC ducts.
Where would you rather worship?
I must confess that my heart was filled with reverence and awe as I walked into that stunning cathedral. It made me want to be a part of whatever goes on there. I wanted to stay for hours and gape at the galaxy of artistic detail that enveloped me as I sat in the beautiful oak pews.
But there was one catch: the entire sanctuary was filled with idols. Idols upon idols, in fact. Truth be told, the main reason people go there at all is to see and admire the works of man’s hands—not the works of God. And sadly, even those who do go to commune with God find themselves instead bowing their knees to graven images, or offering prayers to the body parts of dead saints. The whole place is a house of spiritual death.
When I walk into the gym on a Sunday morning to set up for our service, I am not filled with awe. My soul is not elevated by the mechanical whir of motors lifting basketball goals into their less distracting positions among the rafters. And there’s not much glory in arranging black plastic chairs on a dizzying array of intersecting out-of-bounds lines.
But as the time for worship approaches, God’s people begin to gather. And then, together, they offer fervent prayers to God. They joyfully sing praises to the name of Jesus Christ. And they faithfully listen to the preaching of God’s Word.
Which sanctuary is more beautiful?
After our field trip, I mentioned the spiritual death of the cathedral basilica to another parent on the field trip. She acknowledged the truth of what I said, but she expressed a longing to be able to have that kind of aesthetic beauty in worship, even though we’re not Roman Catholics. “Can’t we have both?” she asked.
What do you think? Can you have both beautiful aesthetics and the presence of God’s Spirit in worship?
Here’s my answer:
Sometimes God graciously grants both. He may grant an impressive building to a faithful church. He may grant skillful musicians to a humble congregation. And yet, Scripture clearly teaches, you can’t set your heart on both.
Many Christians fall into the trap of thinking they can safely devote themselves to the kingdom of Jesus Christ and to the pursuit of earthly, fading glory. But Jesus says you cannot serve two masters, because either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and aesthetics.1
For one thing, outward beauty quickly fades away. Just look at Notre Dame. Men may succeed in rebuilding her famous spire, but, in the end, even Our Lady of Paris will be nothing more than a pile of rubble. “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”2
So what does make worship beautiful? In God’s sight?
I plan to spend the next installment or two of these writings exploring some of Scripture’s answers to that question.
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References| ↑1 | Of course, what our Lord said was, “You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matt. 6:24). But do you know what you get when you take a tour of a bona fide basilica? Endless descriptions of how many millions of dollars it took to replace that matchless white marble, to acquire that hand-etched glass from Germany, to finish that façade with the rose window that looks so much like Notre Dame’s . . . Decadent aesthetics and the pursuit of wealth go hand in hand. | | ↑2 | Proverbs 31:30 (niv). |
James Gunn is a weird sicko, and always has been, as we discuss in detail. But also, his Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3. is weirdly kinda sweet. But is it actually any good? Therein lies the question. And we strive to answer it in detail!
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This episode covers the subjects of women voters, green funerals, trans activists! Just like the title says.
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We review the trailers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Flash, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, and Oppenheimer. Which movies are we excited for, what do we predict, and how can we approach all this morally and open-handedly? We ask the big questions, baby!
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Having twice preached through the book of Acts, something I found remarkable there is burned into my heart. Consider the faithful support and defense preachers received from their brothers and sisters in Christ from the beginning of the Christian Church.
Go over the accounts of the persecution suffered by the church’s preachers Peter, John, Stephen, Silas, and (neverendingly) Paul. It seems impossible there’s no mention of men or women in the Church blaming the preachers for all their troubles.
Consider, for instance, how the Apostle Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost:
Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.
“This Jesus whom you crucified.” Pretty intense, isn’t it? Peter cries out to the conscience of his listeners, warning them they crucified the Man God has now made Lord and Messiah. It’s not a gentle and lowly theme. No one at the time would have found it graceful or comforting, and we know this because of what happened as soon as he’d said these words:
Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”
How did our Pentecost preacher end his sermon?
Peter said to them, “Repent” (Acts 2:36-38)
Listening to the Apostle Peter’s boldness and faith condemning the wickedness of his listeners that day, it seems unlikely reformed church members and officers would still respond the same. This is much more likely:
Peter, what’s wrong with you? Jesus is grace. He’s not condemnation. Don’t you believe in God’s grace? You’re not doing Christ-centered preaching. Do you think you’re some Old Testament prophet or something?
You wasted a perfect opportunity to extend an olive branch. They just killed Jesus! They know it. Don’t insult them by pointing out the obvious. Watch out or they’ll kill you, too. And us!
The same preaching to the conscience, convicting listeners of sin and righteousness and judgment, is documented repeatedly across the pages of Acts.
Shortly after Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost, we read how the Apostles Peter and John were again preaching the Gospel and it infuriated the “rulers and elders and scribes” of Jerusalem. Calling Peter and John into their assembly, after interrogation and debate “they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.”
The account continues,
But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
This is the classic text demonstrating the proper time to refuse to obey civil and ecclesiastical authorities whom God otherwise commands us to obey.
Next comes what I’m trying to draw our attention to. We read that when Peter and John “had been released, they went to [their brothers and sisters in Christ] and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.”
Note what they reported to have been said to them was intensely hostile, and that the authorities said it in the immediate aftermath of their murder of Jesus. Every brother and sister in Christ knew what was at stake—not just with the Apostles Peter and John, but also with all five thousand of them now joined together in the Jerusalem Church. The livelihood and life of each of them was on the line, and they knew it.
Did they respond by gagging their preachers? Did they tell Peter and John to be quiet? Did they demand Peter and John take steps to de-escalate the situation?
No. Listen to their response, in prayer:
O Lord, it is You who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said, “Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.”
For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.
And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Your bond-servants may speak Your word with all confidence, while You extend Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.
No flinching, appeasement, or suing for peace. Were there any “peacemakers” in the church at that moment?
How did God respond?
And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness. And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all. (Acts 4:24-33)
When I was an undergrad at University of Wisconsin in Madison, I watched a Christian street-preacher torn viciously attacked out on Library Mall. I’d often watched and admired his zeal. His pertinacity. Standing there behind the crowd of hundreds, I’d watch him getting mocked and man-handled by wicked women and men, even to the point of one man physically assaulting him, sexually. The police present joined the mob in their laughter, doing nothing to protect him. Students of the Evangelical parachurch ministries on campus whined about how wrongheaded and unhelpful he was to their campus evangelism.
Leon Varjian on Library Mall
After the pagan picked God’s servant up and held him in a bear hug while pantomiming buggering him, the campus vice-president and president, Leon Varjian and Jim Mallon, arrived pulling a Radio Flyer wagon filled with cases of eggs. Leaving their wagon at the back of the crowd, Leon wended his way up to the front and, at very close range, began pelting the preacher with dozens of eggs.
The crowd of students and law enforcement officers were in a large circle around the assault, laughing and applauding it. It grew unbearable, and while their attention was on Leon assaulting the preacher with eggs, I walked over to the wagon and began picking up the eggs, one by one, and smashing them 0n the concrete. I was slow and deliberate.
At that moment, mob psychology became a real thing. The crowd that had been surrounding the preacher shifted. It was like a wave and in seconds the preacher was outside the circle and I was the center. I hadn’t accounted for this. Their laughter had turned to fury. It was astounding. Never having experienced such a thing, my hair stood on end. The danger was visceral.
A young girl watching over my left shoulder as I write this just now asked, “Is this about you?”
No—it’s not about me.
It’s about the preacher of Jesus Christ—my hero.
I’m ashamed it took me as long as it did to stand up and defend him. By God’s grace, I left without even getting punched. Thankfully, the assaults on the preacher stopped and I don’t remember them returning.
From the smashed eggs on the pavement of Library Mall, I walked up State Street and across Capital Square to the city police headquarters. Entering, I asked if I could speak to the officer in charge. He met with me and I filed a formal complaint against his officers.
He listened patiently and I left relieved he hadn’t gotten angry and seemed genuinely concerned.
Understand why I’ve always had a love for men who are hated for righteousness’ sake—particularly pastors.
Dear reader, do you know how many of them are punished for their faithful pastoral care and preaching each and every week? Do you know and grieve how many of them are fired every month by evil men who hate God and His Word? Do you know how many of their wives are intensely hurt? How many of their godly wives have had to fight off bitterness at their husband’s persecution, usually by the rich members and officers of the church? Do you know how many pastors’ kids become pastors’ kids because of the suffering they watch their loving and zealous fathers endure?
These past two weeks, I’ve been talking with two pastors whose jobs are on the line. Both of them are humble and godly. Both have excellent wives. Both love their sheep. Both have been on the hot seat, and now one of them has been fired.
For what?
Nothing that we don’t read about over and over in Scripture.
So why do so few of us recognize these same things when they happen in our churches today? These conflicts are all over the book of Acts.
Both of my fellow pastors are being opposed because they are doing their work faithfully, in the fear of God. But oh how their rich and proud members (egged on by their wives) hate them for it.
It’s a very old story:
We have Abraham and Moses for our fathers. We are circumsized. You shut up. We don’t need you. We’ve made our separate peace with Herod and Rome. Don’t mess with the good thing we’ve worked so hard to get. Go away and leave us alone!
Updated, it has now become:
We are Christians. We are baptized. We gave the money to build this church. We own this place. Don’t mess with the good thing we’ve worked so hard to get. We don’t need you. Shut up and leave us alone!
Have you noticed that nobody gives the right outline of the book of Acts? All the outlines are too complicated. It’s should be a single sentence: “Paul preached in one city and caused a riot, but God protected him and he started over again in the next city.”
Even this outline, though, leaves out what I want to point out once more before bringing this chapter to an end.
The brothers and sisters in Christ defended and prayed for the Apostle Paul. They weren’t silent. They didn’t blame him for the riots. They didn’t punish him for making their city and synagogue angry. They rejoiced in the truth and were in lockstep with God’s servant.
Did you know Luther preached through Galatians twice because he needed to get its truths back into his thick head a second time? Me too, and maybe my favorite verse is Paul’s plaintive lament to the church members there in Galatia he was warning and rebuking:
So have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? (Galatians 4:16)
All that’s required to fire a good shepherd is for the good sheep to be silent.
John Calvin was expelled from Geneva twice.
Jonathan Edwards was prohibited from preaching against the Lord’s Supper sacramentalism he had inherited from his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. It was the leading men of his church in Northampton who refused to allow him to preach against giving communion to the “unconverted.” They told him “no,” but agreed to read a book on it if he wrote one.
He did, and then they refused to read his book.
A bit later Edwards was gone.
What you might not know is that Edwards next took a call to serve a small town out on the edge of the frontier where he defended the Native Americans, preached them simple sermons, and worked for their literacy. But there in Stockbridge, once more he suffered under the intense opposition of the wealthy leading men of the church.
Job’s comforters today will tell us how Calvin made mistakes and Edwards shouldn’t have done this or that if he wanted to stay in Northampton.
So? What now? Are these men also going to tell us what was wrong with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, and Amos? Do they dare to oppose the murdered prophets Zechariah, John the Baptist, and Jesus. Would they oppose John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul using the same sort of criticisms they have used to shout down their own pastors, today?
No, of course not. They know which side of their bread is buttered and would never think of attacking Scripture’s prophets and preachers. After laying garlands on the tombs of Isaiah and John the Baptist and Calvin, they attack their own pastors.
But hey, their own pastors and preachers are so abusive. They think they’re such hot stuff. They’re egotists. They always demand people listen to them, but they have nothing encouraging or uplifting to say.
Our pastor thinks he’s a prophet and can rebuke us, but he’s no Isaiah. He’s no Amos or Zechariah. He may think he’s Jesus, but he’s not.
During a life in which Mary Lee and I have loved pastors who fear God and ask for the Holy Spirit to lead their preaching and pastoral care, we’ve heard it all. The rich and influential church members are brutal to faithful pastors.
So, good sheep, let us ask you this question:
Has your pastor become the enemy of your church’s rich elders by telling them the truth?
If you have been blessed by God with a pastor who is one of Christ’s good undershepherds, love him. Thank him. Love his children. Thank his children. Love his wife. Thank his wife. Give her some good tins of tea. Buy her the sofa she can’t afford, but would love. Secretly give her money to take her family on a vacation, or her and her husband to go on a second honeymoon.
Aside from such acts of love, though, do please defend him by silencing the schismatic women and their husbands who hate him. (And yes, of course no one would ever use that word).
Good shepherds deserve to be loved by those they shepherd.
Another of the Apostle Paul’s statements in Galatians I love almost as much as the first:
The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him. (Galatians 6:6)
If you aspire to shepherd God’s flock, forget the legacy seminaries. Trust me. I have personal knowledge of most of their administrators and profs. They are not your friends. Come to New Geneva Academy. We feel the weight of responsibility for Christ’s sheep. We’ll train you to bear that responsibility. By faith. Your training will not be a head trip, but rather personal and spiritual and weighty. You don’t need to move. Contact us.
(Nineteenth in a series.)
The story of the county supervisor needs to be filled out more. You’ll remember she was the Search Committee member who hosted her committee’s interview of Mary Lee and me in her comfortable home; and that, as the interview began, she demonstrated she was sharp as a tack: if I’d killed my mother, she’d assume I had a good reason. Then a few weeks into our call there in Wisconsin serving her church, she informed me of the Sunday school teacher who had taught that Mormons were Christians.
As we settled in and time passed, we came to trust her judgment. She was no flatterer and demonstrated serious spiritual commitment.
My first year preaching, one Sunday morning she came after worship holding a very thick volume she wanted to lend me. She said my sermon the previous week had reminded her of a sermon preached by Charles Spurgeon on the same text. Might I enjoy reading it?
Up to that point, I’d never read a Spurgeon sermon, so I said I’d like to to borrow the volume (one among many volumes of Spurgeon’s sermons), and took it home to find out what Spurgeon had done with the text I’d had a hack at.
I’d read quite a bit of Edwards including a number of sermons, but with Edwards one can, in a way, find his superiority reassuring. Reading his sermons, you may well think, “No, I can’t write or preach a sermon anywhere near as deep and helpful as this. As a matter of fact, not even in the same universe. But Edwards is Edwards, and I’m not. He’s brilliant.”
Then, there are some of us who think, “You know, I had to work really hard to understand that sermon. I wonder whether his own congregation understood his sermons? What a mind!”
When you finish a sermon by Edwards, if you’re at all like me, you may be overwhelmed by the brilliance of his philosophical mind. There’s a reason Yale has produced a critical series of volumes containing his oeuvre, twenty-six volumes so far with the most recent selling for $138. Few of us have to convince ourselves our minds don’t dwell in the same universe, so we don’t waste our time envying him. It’s similar with Turretin and Owen.
But Spurgeon? His intellect is not of Edward’s parading sort. It’s not nearly as pretentious. I might actually label it “accessible,” except for the fact that when I finished reading the sermon on the text I’d had a hack at, I felt like shooting myself. So many windows provided to take a different and helpful view of the text. So many illustrations perfectly placed and stated. So many humble helpfuls. An overwhelming number of humble helpfuls.
After reading this first Spurgeon sermon of my short life, I wondered why I would ever write my own sermon? I despaired of my usefulness, and began to wonder what would be wrong with my reading Spurgeon sermons from my pulpit each Lord’s Day morning the rest of my life? I tell you the truth.
Sorry, but I’m not going to continue down this path. I was demoralized, but I recovered and only read a Spurgeon sermon one Sunday morning in worship, following that awakening. There are reasons not to preach the sermons of the past giants of the faith, but I’m not going to go into it, here. Just don’t do it. God has called you to shepherd your sheep, and the shepherd who doesn’t select and prepare the feed for his flock is abdicating his responsibility.
Of course, this (shall we call it) Spurgeon awakening only led me to trust my county supervisor more. But, as Dad used to say, “Truth and time walk hand in hand.”
And nowhere is time more revelatory than in the matter of the souls of the sheep.
Ask any pastor who has loved a flock or two how many of his ewes, lambs, and rams have shocked him as the years passed, both positively and negatively, and he’ll tell you it’s one of the most sobering things about pastoral ministry. You can think one person is hopeless, and then God’s Holy Spirit acts and it is astounding! You can think one person is a spiritual giant, and then he withers and fades, after a while becoming Chesterton’s half-Christian who has gone mad and become the anti-Christian.
Sadly, our county supervisor ended up opposing God, His Word, and His Church. It happened this way.
In time, this series will begin to chronicle the battle against sodomy in our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA) back in the eighties (preceding our battle against sodomy in the Presbyterian Church in America thirty to forty years later). In the end, this battle was the cause of our churches leaving our denomination, transferring into the Presbyterian Church in America.
But a couple years before this cataclysmic moment in the life of our parish, there was an election in our county in which we were to vote for a judge to fill a judicial vacancy. Readers will remember this wealthy woman was a county supervisor, and naturally, I asked her what her recommendation was for this judicial position.
My inquiry came right after one of those running for the position announced that he was in favor of repealing laws against sodomy, and keep in mind that this was back in the mid-eighties. At the time, most states had anti-sodomy laws, so for a candidate for the judiciary to announce he was in favor of repealing these laws was the bleeding edge of Democratic progressivism (as they would call it).
It would be another fifteen years before the theology and ethics professor at the PCA’s Covenant Theological Seminary publicly called for the repeal of all sodomy laws across our nation in an interview published in Christianity Today.)
So what was her recommendation?
My most-esteemed county supervisor who had asked me to correct the Sunday school teacher who’d declared Mormons were Christians, and who had loaned me a volume of Charles Haddon Spurgeon sermons, responded to my inquiry by stating that she would vote for the judicial candidate who wanted to repeal sodomy laws.
This was one of the most disheartening things that ever transpired in my first call. It was devastating. I had so respected this woman, but now what? I asked her how she could support him while confessing Jesus Christ, and she responded that she thought “gays” should not be treated badly; that they should have civil rights, too.
I’m not going to spend time here responding to such inanities which have become constant across social media today, and which she would rejoice to see shared by the most conservative reformed and presbyterian Christians in North America now. Anyone wanting to read why such statements are faithless and unloving can find loads of instruction we have written over almost twenty years now, particularly in our book, The Grace of Shame: 7 Ways the Church Has Failed To Love Homosexuals, but keep firmly in mind that this was not 2023 or 2020 or 2015 or 2010 or 2005 or 2000 or 1995 or 1990.
This was the mid-1980s and my most-esteemed wealthy county supervisor was stating her considered position that “gays” should be allowed to do what they wanted, sexually; and that the law should not prohibit them doing what they wanted, sexually. That thing God says is an “abomination.”
As I said, I was demoralized. It was so discouraging to see this intelligent civil authority sitting under my preaching of God’s Word weekly, and yet caving to the rabid gay lobby. It was the end of my trusting her spiritually.
Sure enough, a few years later when our denomination turned to endorsing the acceptance of sodomites as church members and officers, and our elders called our yoked parish to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA), transferring into the Presbyterian Church in American, my county supervisor voted against the unanimous recommendation of the elders of the combined churches, and with a few souls she convinced by her magisterial influence and authority, she stayed back with the pagan Presbyterian Church (USA).
But more about that later. The thing to remember is that, concerning our Lord’s parable of the seeds and the soil, one in four of the seeds produces fruit.
Only one in four.
This is a rude awakening to those of us who serve as shepherds of God’s sheep. Pray for us. Encourage us. Love us. Hold our arms up when we grow weary. It’s disheartening.
(Nineteenth in a series.)
If you aspire to shepherd God’s flock, forget the legacy seminaries. Trust me. I have personal knowledge of most of their administrators and profs. They are not your friends. Come to New Geneva Academy. We feel the weight of responsibility for Christ’s sheep. We’ll train you to bear that responsibility. By faith. Your training will not be a head trip, but rather personal and spiritual and weighty. You don’t need to move. Contact us.
Why is Ford Vs. Ferrari a good movie for dads and boys? Plus, what can we guess about the new Indiana Jones movie based on James Mangold’s filmmaking here. We discuss all of that with Jeff Wright!
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Jake has read three books and we’re gonna talk about all of them, baby! Boundaries, the classic book about, you guessed it, setting boundaries. Outlive, the book about, you guessed it, living a long time. And The Unseen Realm, the book about, you guessed it, the unseen realm. So we get to talk about the occult, and para-spiritual stuff, and boundaries, and science, and more!
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Tim, Jake, and Nathan begin this episode with a seemingly simple question: how can you really know your sin and also have hope? As the conversation evolves, they try to get to the bottom of the difference between real conversion and fake emotional catharsis. Plus, some talk about Eastern Orthodoxy-why it’s attractive, and why it’s dangerous.
Aspiring pastors, check out New Geneva Academy!
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Here is a Chinese translation of Daddy Tried:爸爸盡力了_ 戰勝做父親的種種失敗
The translation was done by Mrs. Jason (Chen) Chen during all her free time while raising her three babies and toddlers, as she and her husband plant a Chinese church in Bloomington.
Chen did this as an act of love for her brothers and sisters in China and Taiwan. She wasn’t asked, but offered and completed what she offered. Quite rare today.
If you would like to thank Chen for her loving service to the souls who will be helped, send Pastor Jason Chen an email.
Chen’s work on Daddy Tried has been such an encouragement as I teach the class here in Taipei at China Reformed Presbyterian Seminary. The book is one of the texts for the class and it’s been very helpful to the students, two-thirds of whom are women, one-third men getting their MDivs, two-thirds online, one-third over in China, thirty-two students in all.
Eastern Orthodox Apologists have been drawing away evangelicals over the last generation with bait and switch tactics. They bait evangelicals by promising them the worship of the early church. If you bite on the bait, what you’re hooked with is quite different.
Eastern Orthodox Apologists (EOAs) claim that about half of their nearly 1 million followers are converts and many of those are former evangelicals. In 2017, the “Bible Answer Man,” Hank Hanegraff, joined them. Eastern Orthodox apologists on-line vociferously try to win evangelicals. Robert Arakaki runs the “Orthodox-Reformed Bridge” web-site which claims to “A Meeting Place for Evangelicals, Reformed, and Orthodox Christians.” Arakaki is himself a former student of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy and his site is, in fact, a repository of EOA propaganda, including two disingenuous attempts to respond to my 2018 Themelios article “Answering Eastern Orthodox Apologists regarding Icons.” Contrary to the claim to be interested in “dialogue,” my attempts to respond in the comments section were censored.
Nevertheless, some evangelicals are persuaded by the shell game. They are especially attracted to the Orthodox claims of historical roots back to the early church. That’s the first bait: the claim that the Eastern Orthodox have preserved the pristine worship of the early church. The Orthodox are attractive to evangelicals who are tired of the showmanship and the superficiality of some evangelical worship. Rod Dreher, who wrote The Benedict Option, himself originally a Methodist who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, claims, “Many evangelicals seek the early church; well here it is, in Orthodoxy.” That’s the bait.
But watch for the switch. As soon as they unveil their claim that they are the early church, then they uncover icons. Yet the early church strictly prohibited icons. I proved that in the 2018 Themelios article above and in a 2021 Westminster Theological Journal article, strictly on the early church: “The Early Church on the Aniconic Spectrum.” Recently, Gavin Ortland has been doing a spectacular job describing how icons arose after the early church on his “Truth Unites” YouTube channel.
EOAs claim archeology shows the early church using icons. One ancient church discovered by archaeologists in Dura-Europas, Syria has some images on the walls. But, tellingly, there are no images in the main room where the church actually met. More importantly, there is no evidence that the images that have been found are anything more than decorations, never becoming icons used in worship. They bait people with claims of archeology that actually hide the reality that the early church had no icons.
EOAs bait you with the claim that the “early church” theologian John of Damascus espoused icons. That’s true, except that he wasn’t from the early church. He lived around 675 to 749. The early church ends with either the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, or rounded up to AD 500. John of Damascus was a medieval theologian, as close to Christ as we are to the beginning of the 100 Years’ War in 1338. He’s bait.
A genuine theologian of the early church was Epiphanius (c. 310–320 – 403). He was bishop of Salamis, Cyprus, and is considered a saint by both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. As he was traveling through Palestine, he found a church that had a curtain on it with an image, of Christ or some saint. It may have only been a decoration. He tore it down and ripped it into shreds. He wrote to the local bishop, John, that such images are “contrary to our religion” and to instruct the elder of the church that they are “an occasion of offense.” While EOAs boast of having preserved the practices of the early church, they don’t want their prospects finding out about “Saint” Epiphanius and, if they do, will insist, without evidence, that the story was made up centuries later. The reality is that Epiphanius shows that the early church was so strict in opposing icons that they wouldn’t even allow images as decorations. Epiphanius’ action was in perfect harmony with the council of Elvira (c. 305), meeting at the other end of the Roman Empire, in Spain, earlier in the century. It concluded, “Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration.”
The bait that the early church shows the Christians using icons is switched to containing fiction, later pagan practices smuggled in, and the errors of a medieval theologian.
The second piece of bait the EOAs dangle in front of unsuspecting evangelicals is the claim that any image, like a decoration, is an “icon.” The Eastern Orthodox speak in two voices about icons, depending on who they are talking to. If they’re instructing their own people, they’ll insist an icon is “a sacred image.” It’s not any art. It doesn’t belong in a gallery. It’s a special image for a special purpose. The primary purpose of the icon is to aid in worship.” (That’s the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America teaching their own.) But, if they’re talking to people outside their sect who are questioning about their icons, whether they are idols, how it could possibly be acceptable in light of the second commandment (Exodus 20:4) prohibiting images in worship, they will claim that all images are icons; that the Greek word “eikon” means any image (technically true) and so respecting images is no more idolatrous than cherishing family photos. That’s the bait: all images (like the decoration in the Old Testament temple) are icons and since you have images, like the pictures on your wall or in your wallet, then icons can’t be bad. But if you bite, you’ll get hooked on the definition of an idol.
Watch for the bait and switch. Some will bait you with fake history. Some EOAs throw the names of early church fathers around that are foreign to most of us evangelicals. It can sound impressive, like they’ve preserved the worship of the early church, especially if we’re discontent with some shallow evangelical practices. But use your common sense. Since the Word of God says not to bow before images, then when someone says it’s fine because, supposedly, his church inherited it, he says, from the early church, realize you’re being baited. They will switch to a hook of icons, incense, and rituals that are, in reality, the concoction of superficially converted pagans flooding into the church in the Middle Ages, bringing their pagan practices with them. Don’t bite on the bait. Stay with the Bible.
Image credit: Dmitry Boyarin from Russia, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Nathan once again inadvertently drew the wrath of an internet mob. Even J. K. Rowling made fun of him. But maybe it wasn’t about the canceling. Maybe it was about the lessons we learned and the friends we made along the way.
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(Eighteenth in a series.)
The first or second Lord’s Day in Wisconsin, it was Sunday afternoon or Monday that I got a call from a woman who had served on the Search Committee and was a county supervisor. At the time, I trusted her.
A few months earlier, before we’d been approved by John Knox Presbytery for ordination and installation, Mary Lee and I flew out to meet the Search Committee and be interviewed. We arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, our old stomping ground back when we were first married and attended University of Wisconsin.
Checking into a hotel on Madison’s east side, we met the committee for dinner. Half the committee members were from the country church and half from the town church. One of the members had a van they’d all piled into, then driven almost an hour down to Madison to meet us. We felt comfortable with them, which was a relief. No pretensions or efforts to impress that night. After dinner and conversation, they left for home and we went to bed.
First Presbyterian Church
The next morning, they picked us up at our hotel and drove us an hour north to see the churches and their manse,1 followed by the long, sit-down formal interview. It was held at the home of this county supervisor and her husband, seated around their dining room table. At the center of the table was a very large bowl of chilled red raspberries. We were relieved the house was air conditioned because it was a boiling hot and humid day.
The previous evening had been relaxed, so there was no reason to expect anything negative in this interview. But one never knows, does one? New to them and they to us, many’s the slip twixt the cup and the lip, so Mary Lee and I were a bit on edge.
Then dear Sharon Dykstra let the cat out of the bag.
Shuffling around the table to find our proper seats, Sharon stood behind her chair with her hands on the back and gushed: “Oh Tim! I know I shouldn’t say this, but we already know we want you!”
Embarrassed, I responded, “How could you? You don’t even know us yet. I might have murdered my mother.”
Not missing a beat, our hostess responded, “Well, if you killed your mother, you must have had a very good reason.”
We all had a good laugh, then got down to business. Mary Lee began to munch on the raspberries. They’re her absolute favorite. They hadn’t known.
It was this hostess who called me Sunday afternoon or Monday morning several months later, just a few weeks into serving the two churches. Answering the phone, she said to me, “Tim, (Jane Doe) was teaching Sunday school this morning, and during her class she told the students that Mormons are Christians.”
This woman on the phone was quite tall and always stood erect. She and her husband had money. Her manner was dignified, bordering on imperious. The message was clear. This was my first test. I had the responsibility and authority to correct the matter and she expected me to do so.
Since she hadn’t told me what exactly she expected me to do about this, I considered the matter. Obviously, we couldn’t have any teacher in our Sunday school classes telling their students Mormonism was Christianity and Mormons were true Christians. Still, I was new to the church and I wasn’t the one who had heard the teacher say this.
Manse of Rosedale/First Presbyterian Churches
There was no small talk on the other end of the line, so I had to do my thinking quickly. It became clear that I was expected to talk to the teacher, correcting her error and asking her to correct it with her students, but then it occurred to me that it might be possible my search committee member had some personal issue with the teacher. Maybe the two of them or their husbands had a prior history? If so, I needed to be careful simply taking her at her word and confronting another woman without any corroboration of the accuracy of her account. It wouldn’t do for me to serve as a conduit for hostilities between the two of them, even if the reason for the correction seemed perfectly legitimate.
Asking a few more questions, it was clarified that, other than the young students (I think it was a junior high school class), no one else had heard the error. So it was down to two women, one testifying against the other and expecting me to handle it.
Surprisingly, given how wet behind the ears I was, I had the presence of mind to explain to my informant that it would be very awkward for me to speak to the teacher, Jane Doe, without telling her how I knew what she had been teaching. “Would it be possible,” I asked, “for me to quote you—to use your name—when I speak to Mrs. Doe? Could I please tell Mrs. Doe you called me about the matter?”
By God’s kindness, she didn’t hesitate: “Yes, that’s fine.”
I was so thankful. Responding to her agreement to having her name used, I assured her I was very concerned that God’s Word and Truth would be honored among us at First Presbyterian Church, and so I was thankful both that she had called to tell me, and also that she was willing to jeopardize her relationship with this fellow church member in order to correct the failure. I thanked her, then set up an appointment with Jane Doe and spoke to her about the matter.
Again I was thankful that this other woman was not offended, but received the correction with humility. It’s an indication of the instruction the church had (or did not have) the previous years that the teacher was shocked when I explained the Mormons were not Christians, and why. But again, she didn’t bristle at the correction, and thus my first significant test in defending God’s truth and sheep was soon over, and I was protected by the Chief Shepherd in it.
One more thing happened right at the beginning of our pastorate.
The first Sunday, I walked out the side door of our manse and back to the garage, then through a doorway that gave entrance to the thin sidewalk that ran over to the rear door of First Presbyterian Church. Walking up the stairs, I noticed a bunch of beer cans, along with an empty paper bag, spread around the stoop just outside the door.
Picking up the beer cans, I dropped them in the paper bag and put it in the trash can just inside the doorway, then went into my office and did final preparations for worship leadership and preaching.
The time for worship arrived and I left my office, walking toward the door at the front of the sanctuary providing me access to the chancel and pulpit. But just before opening the door, I was met by an elder who looked very concerned. Stopping me, he said, “Do you know what we found in the trash can?”
Forgetting the mess on the back stoop I’d cleaned up, I said, “No, what was it?”
“A paper bag with beer cans!” he announced triumphantly.
“Oh, yes. When I came over to the office earlier this morning, I found the bag and the cans on the stoop outside the door, so I cleaned it up and put it in the trash.”
Office of town newspaper
He looked shocked, then suspicious. Being the writer, editor, publisher, and distributor of the town newspaper, I suppose suspicion came to him naturally, as an occupational hazard.
“You found them on the stoop?” he asked.
“Yup.”
Quiet for a couple seconds, he then told me I’d better begin the worship service by explaining all this to the congregation. “Tell them you found the beer cans on the stoop, and that you were the one who picked them up and put them in the trash.” He was sure this would put everyone’s mind at rest.
“No,” I answered him. “I’m not going to begin my first worship service by assuring the congregation that I wasn’t drinking beer on the back stoop of the church and I wasn’t the one who threw my empties in the church trash. If you would like to reassure someone, please feel free to do so, but we’ll begin worship with our call to worship. But thanks for the suggestion.”
(Eighteenth in a series.)
If you aspire to shepherd God’s flock, forget the legacy seminaries. Trust me. I have personal knowledge of most of their administrators and profs. They are not your friends. Come to New Geneva Academy. We feel the weight of responsibility for Christ’s sheep. We’ll train you to bear that responsibility. By faith. Your training will not be a head trip, but rather personal and spiritual and weighty. You don’t need to move. Contact us.
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References| ↑1 | ”Manse” is what presbyterians call a parsonage. |
Our heroes are joined by Dr. Jared Moore for another entry in their fatherhood series, this one on everybody’s favorite Krasinski family monster movie, A Quiet Place (2018).
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Which is the name of a compelling book by Julie Salamon about the craziness and evil of Hollywood, and specifically an account of the production of Bonfire of the Vanities, which was a disaster. Nathan read it, and guess what? He also read Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner, which is about the CIA and its, shall we say, troubled history.
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It’s an update! With atrocious audio! Basic message: “We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive!”
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This post by a woman named Lisa Harris is making the rounds of social media. A dear sister posted it to my FB page and I quote it here to explain my lengthy response:
THIS HIT ME HARD.Have you ever noticed how in the scriptures men are always going up into the mountains to commune with the Lord?
Yet in the scriptures we hardly everhear of women going to the mountains.But we know why — right?Because the women were too busykeeping life going;they couldn’t abandon babies,meals,homes,fires,gardens,and a thousand responsibilities to make the climb into the mountains!I was talking to a friend the other day,saying that as modern womanI feel like I’m never “free” enoughfrom my responsibilities,never in a quiet enough spaceI want with God.Her response floored me,“That is why God comes to women. Men have to climb the mountain to meet God, but God comes to women where ever they are.”I have been pondering on her words for weeks and have searched my scripturesto see that what she said is true.God does in deed come to womenwhere they are,when they are doing their ordinary,everyday work.He meets them at the wellswhere they draw water for their families,in their homes,in their kitchens,in their gardens.He comes to themas they sit beside sickbeds,as they give birth,care for the elderly,and perform necessary mourning and burial rites.Even at the empty tomb,Mary was the first to witness Christ’s resurrection,She was there because she was doing the womanly chore of properly preparing Christ’s body for burial.In these seemingly mundaneand ordinary tasks,these women of the scriptures found themselves face to face with divinity.So if — like me — you ever start to bemoan the fact that you don’t have as much time to spend in the mountains with God as you would like.Remember, God comes to women. He knows where we are and the burdens we carry. He sees us, and if we open our eyes and our hearts we will see Him, even in the most ordinary places and in the most ordinary things.He lives. And he’s using a time such as this to speak to women around the world.
My response:
Been thinking about this and a couple comments. First, God comes to women and men both in the middle of the mundane responsibilities of their lives. He called the Twelve when they were working. He appeared to Peter and the others as they were fishing. He spoke to Moses while he was shepherding. Truthfully, I don’t think one can make any claim that God comes to men while they’re off doing their own thing but women while they’re bearing the weight of the world. To say so sounds sort of like humble-bragging.
What is true is that Moses and Jesus went off into the wilderness for a time of concentrated fasting and prayer. Likely the Apostle Paul, also. There are other similar seasons among the prophets—all male, and not female.
But it is such a rare thing that I would not want to make a worldview distinction with this as its basis, partly because Moses, some prophets, Jesus, the Apostle Paul are God’s prophets and shepherds of His people, and He always shepherds His people through men. Women are the one-in-a-thousand exception to the rule.
This is the meaning of male being created first, then female. Leadership and responsibility flow from the male of the species bearing His Father Image, as He decreed and created them to do.
There have always been women who resent this and complain that they are put upon to have to bear the weight of the world while men (say, for instance) get to go off and talk to one another, acting like they’re doing “something.” Or get to go off and talk to God. These women are well-represented by Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Woolf does, in fact, come close to saying what the above post says, but not concerning God speaking to woman. Not at all.
Really, the question for Christian women is whether you will content yourselves and grow in your love for the sex God made you, recognizing that the high privilege of your sex is childbearing. You were lovingly named in Genesis “life-giver,” and in what universe is this inferior or demeaning to the one gifted by God this way Who Himself decreed you would be woman—not man—at the moment of your conception?
Comparisons are odious, particularly when they are used to make out woman as good and man as bad (which is everywhere today). From the time of the Fall, both man and woman have been corrupted by Adam’s evil (not Eve’s) called “Original Sin.” There’s more than enough evil to go around concerning each sex.
What we all need to focus on is why the Resurrection gives us such great hope?
It is because we have so much evil which rightly condemns us to death now and eternally. But hallelujah, our Lord lived sinless, as a man, died, was buried, and now is resurrected so that we who put our sins on Him, by faith, are also raised from the dead and seated with Him in the Heavenly places.
Keep in mind that we are not saved as “persons.” We are saved as men or women, and we must observe and learn to love the weaknesses and strengths, the indignities and dignities, the prohibitions and duties that God has assigned to each of our sexes.
And yes, I know some would say this is all that the above post is saying, but I think not. This is why it took me some time to respond to it. I felt uneasy with the underlying possibility of it encouraging resentment among wives, sisters, and mothers.
Finally, reading the original post, I found myself thinking about the Apostle Paul’s statement of promise:
But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. (1Timothy 2:15).
In such discussions about the burden women bear, always keep this promise in mind. Who would want to despise the very duties Scripture promises that God uses to save our souls?
If you find the text confusing, listen to John Calvin’s explanation:
To censorious men it might appear absurd, for an Apostle of Christ not only to exhort women to give attention to the birth of offspring, but to press this work as religious and holy to such an extent as to represent it in the light of the means of procuring salvation. Nay, we even see with what reproaches the conjugal bed has been slandered by hypocrites, who wished to be thought more holy than all other men. But there is no difficulty in replying to these sneers of the ungodly.
First, here the Apostle does not speak merely about having children, but about enduring all the distresses, which are manifold and severe, both in the birth and in the rearing of children.
Secondly, whatever hypocrites or wise men of the world may think of it, when a woman, considering to what she has been called, submits to the condition which God has assigned to her, and does not refuse to endure the pains, or rather the fearful anguish, of parturition, or anxiety about her offspring, or anything else that belongs to her duty, God values this obedience more highly than if, in some other manner, she made a great display of heroic virtues, while she refused to obey the calling of God.
…Even “child-bearing” is obedience acceptable to God, only so far as it proceeds from faith and love.
May God bless us and our children with godly women who love their life-giving nature in all its torments and blessings, who will give themselves to this femininity as their husbands give themselves to the masculinity of their leadership and authority in all its torments and blessings, also. By faith.
Love,
Our heroes review a silly new fantasy flick with Chris Pine and Hugh Grant and talk about role playing games and post-Marvel cinema and more. Here’s a link to the article on Gary Gygax we mentioned.
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We can learn a lot from what happened in post-Soviet Russia society. They tried the whole cut-men-out-of-everything thing. It didn’t work. And it had repercussions. And we can learn what happens when we reject authority (hint: maybe we get Joe Biden for a while, but maybe we also get Stalin).
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It’s the proto-Indiana-Jones, Cary-Grant-starring Gunga Din.
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Jake started the book Habits of the Household by Justin Earley, which is about the work of creating patterns and practices in your home that let you disciple your kids in godliness. So we have a good conversation about that, PLUS a little more N.N. Taleb talk at the top of the show! Black Swan and Antifragile and the practical handles those books can or can’t give you.
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Recently, Mary Lee and I watched The Walk documenting Philippe Petit’s 1974 wire-walking between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The movie was pretty good. Petit was typecast accurately and much was made of his artistic pretensions repudiating any notion he was a mere entertainer. He was an artist.
The movie reminded me of a couple things.
First, this excerpt I’d saved from a 1989 piece in The New Yorker:
One night last summer, Petit gave a special performance at the cathedral, in honor of its centennial. The cathedral was plunged into darkness; then a spotlight shot a beam into the vaulting in the middle of the church, picking out a white-sheathed figure in the air, entwined in a rope and holding a lighted torch. In the religions setting, amid the bare stone walls and the stained-glass windows, the mysterious sight was galvanic. Slowly, the form slid from heaven to earth on the rope. His face strangely rapt, as though he were in a dream, Petit walked down the nave toward the narthex and climbed onto crossed poles fifteen feet high. From them a thin wire rose into the dim heights of the cathedral. Suddenly, Petit leaped onto the wire, his mop of pale hair flying, and rushed over the black-tie audience. The wild, youthful figure balanced a lily on his forehead and slid along the wire while a pianist played Stravinsky. He lay on his back, trickling gold dust to the floor, forty feet below. He sat up and rolled backward. The audience gasped. Flashing a devilish grin, he tangoed, his back arched. The feet, marvelously precise, touched down without error as they returned from space, though Petit never glanced at them. Then they ascended the wire in slow, sure progress. His figure grew smaller and smaller, the balancing pole making a cross against the rising wire. Eighty feet in the air, the wire was too thin for the audience to see. For one chimerical moment, he seemed to walk on air, an angel released from gravity. Then he sprang onto a shackle between columns over the transept, and bowed. The lights went on. Organ music sounded triumphantly.
And what was the religious significance—indeed, the Christian significance—of this showmanship high above the congregation?
Bishop Paul Moore is a man who is well known within the religious community for his daring defiance of the teachings of his denomination in his ordination of various people excluded from the pastoral office, such as avowed and practicing homosexuals. Moore presided over Petit’s performance and had this to say at the conclusion of the performance:
The Right Reverend Paul Moore, Bishop of New York, said, “I get flak whenever the church does anything other than evening prayer. But as soon as the performance began I forgot my worries and was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty: it was one of the finest moments in the history of the cathedral for beauty and deep religious meaning.”1
Second, this offertory presided over by Pastor Tim Keller in his own worship service almost thirty years later, also in Manhattan (sorry, but we didn’t save the video itself):
Screenshot of April or May, 2017, offertory in Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA), Manhattan.
The Right Reverends Moore and Keller both mistake entertainment for worship. Of course, Moore and Keller would protest their dancers are art—not entertainment. But pretensions aside, most would agree art is the entertainment of those higher social classes too good to pay attention to NASCAR and the Kardashians.
Art is the worship of decadent societies. Whatever they’re currently defining as “beauty” is their sacrament and the artist is their priest. Note Moore’s ecstasy over Petit’s wire-walking across the sanctuary: “It was one of the finest moments in the history of the cathedral for beauty and deep religious meaning.”
Keller’s ballet offertory is the same idolatrous decadence.
Whether wire-walking or ballet, the artistic expression is the sacrament presented to the congregation by the artist, their priest.
So far, few readers here will disagree since most of us aren’t Episcopal or Kellerites, but one more point before we stop.
The mantra at the heart of classical education today is “truth, beauty, and goodness.” After reading the above, I trust we recognize the danger within our decadent society inherent in this commitment?
Because we don’t personally identify with Manhattan and its forms of beauty at the heart of worship in Moore’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church does not absolve us of similar charges in our own religious worship.
We reject the gayness, the effeminacy, of Moore’s Petit and Keller’s ballet dancers, but the immodest effeminacy is not the worst of it. What we must note is the ease with which beauty insinuates itself into our religious experience, displacing the One Who made beauty and placed it on display across all His creation.
On social media a week ago, I noted Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s recommendation that we copy the Moravian practice of unison singing in worship,2 suggesting some churches might do well to try this discipline.
Immediately, the hue and cry were raised, with one man even claiming his musical preferences were Trinitarian in nature. To be sure, those complex harmonies in Reformed worship today may be said to be more virile than Moore’s Petit and Keller’s dancers, but we must recognize Moore and Keller’s effeminacy in worship was only in service to their idolatry in worship. Do we not recognize how those male cult prostitutes who served the people of God inside the temple of Jerusalem3 thousands of years ago continue to serve us today? The thing to keep track of is not so much the sexual immorality as the idolatry.
The Reformation restored truth to the worship of God’s people by restoring preaching to the center of worship and the Word of God to the center of preaching. A necessary correlate to the Reformers’ restoration of truth was the removal of most of Rome’s idolatrous beauty. Start with their beautiful Mass. Move on to their paintings, stained glass images, and statues of Christ, Mary, and the saints. Also there in worship were their ornate vestments and treasuries of gold. And yes, our Reformed fathers removed Rome’s complex and harmonious musical offerings.
This is not to say beauty was entirely absent in Reformed (as opposed to Lutheran) worship. No, some beauty was retained, but the discipline that beauty always had to submit to in Reformed worship was simplicity.
Note the Lord’s Table prepared for communion.
Most Reformed worship today, whether our sacramental liturgies lacking the fear of God, our preaching lacking the proclamation of God’s Moral Law and repentance, or our harmoniously complex musical offerings, has left the Reformation behind. Read the history of Reformed worship and ask why our children are returning to vestments, images, musical complexity, and banners? Why do we have so many Presbyterian churches hosting art galleries and spending a million or two on their organs? Can it be true we are less vulnerable to rendering worship to art and artists than ancient Israel and medieval Rome?
Has any man giving himself to idolatry ever thought he was giving himself to idolatry?
In the end, the problem with Redeemer’s ballet offertory wasn’t that it was ballet, and not four-part harmony. Both Moore and Keller’s failure was scratching the ears of their sheep by giving them beauty as objects of veneration in worship. That is idolatry.
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References| ↑1 | The New Yorker, June 15, 1987; pp. 37-38. | | ↑2 | ”Because it is bound wholly to the Word, the singing of the congregation, especially of the family congregation, is essentially singing in unison. Here words and music combine in a unique way. The soaring tone of unison singing finds its sole and essential support in the words that are sung and therefore does not need the musical support of other voices.With one voice let us sing todayIn unison both praise and praysang the Bohemian Brethren. “With one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1 5 : 6). The purity of unison singing, unaffected by alien motives of musical techniques, the clarity unspoiled by the attempt to give musical an an autonomy of its own apart from the words, the simplicity and frugality, the humaneness and warmth of this way of singing is the essence of all congregational singing” (Bonhoeffer, Life Together; pp. 59-60). | | ↑3 | 2Kings 23:7. |
It’s another bonus episode in our fatherhood series, this one with Pastor Toby Sumpter of CrossPolitic and King’s Cross Church talkin’ Warrior, the Tom Hardy fight movie that definitively proves that, yes, men cry.
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We talk about two books that Ben is reading—one a nifty takedown of R2K theology (we explain what that is), one a famous popular history. Also, Nathan talks about the book The Return of the Dragon, which is about psychedelics and religion, written by a Christian.
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Our heroes review the seminal documentary film, Gates of Heaven by Errol Morris. Who knew the story of some real-life pet cemetery owners could be so heartbreaking? We talk a lot about the good, the bad, and the evil of the documentary format. Is there really such a thing as non-fiction film?
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(Seventeenth in a series.)
The town church was steeped in pride and doctrinal and moral failure. We’d not known this when we took the call, but it wasn’t long until the facts were clear. As soon as we arrived, we noticed the people of the church avoiding any acknowledgement of what was immediately obvious to Mary Lee and me, which was the serious moral failure of people at the very center of the church and its leadership.
Last chapter I mentioned the case of the girl ordained and installed as an elder of the church when she was in high school, and her refusal to submit to the elders’ request that she meet with them to hear their admonition concerning her fornication now that she was off at college. But this was the tip of the iceberg.
Meanwhile, the rural church was growing in repentance and godliness. Earlier, I recounted Don and Evelyn Jerred’s repentance over Evelyn serving as a woman elder, after which Don himself finally agreed to stand for nomination as an elder (which for years he had refused to do). Too, I outlined the decision of the elders of that church to go out and visit those on their membership roll who never attended worship except at Christmas and Easter.
There were many other indications of spiritual fruit out in the country at Rosedale Presbyterian Church while First Presbyterian Church back in town continued down the path they had chosen of pride in the midst of doctrinal and moral degradation.
There are a number of things I could recount. The worst accounts I will not give here, but some may be told without discouraging the godly and repentant.
One day, the husband of one of the regular attenders called requesting a meeting. He was in his late fifties or early sixties, and although his wife was a faithful attendee, he rarely showed up. His wife was tall and he was taller. They had very tall sons who were already adults and never darkened the church’s doorway.
The day for the meeting arrived and we sat down for our talk in the pastor’s office. He was an imposing figure, both in stature and self-confidence. He quickly got to the point. He told me he (but by implication, also his wife and other church members) did not approve of my preaching. If you ask why, I would say because I preached Scripture and applied it to our consciences.
Having enumerated his objections to my preaching, he looked me dead on and asked, “How long do you think we’ll keep paying you if you keep preaching the way you are?” Keep in mind that he never attended worship.
He’d thrown down the gauntlet and I responded, “I don’t know, but you know what?”
“What?” he responded.
“Look over there in the corner of my office. You see what’s there?”
“What, the vacuums?” he answered.
“Yup, the vacuums. The school district had an auction last Saturday, and I won the bid on those vacuums. I love vacuums. In fact, until I arrived here, I worked cleaning carpet and upholstery, and washing windows. I love cleaning. I love stripping and waxing floors. I love painting. In fact, I’ve been missing that work. You know why?
“No, why?”
“Because when I finish washing windows and stripping and waxing floors and cleaning carpet, I can tell what I’ve done. I get to walk backwards and survey my work and see what I’ve done.
“I’ve discovered the frustrating thing about being a pastor is that you never can see what you’ve done. You never can take pride in it. You’re never able to step back and look at your sermon, for instance, and say ‘Oh boy, what a good job I did!’
“You know, I find that frustrating. And that’s why I went to the auction last Saturday and bought those vacuums. I’m missing my work. I want to clean.
“Honestly, I’d love to have an excuse to start cleaning again. Those are good vacuums. I can fix them up real quick and they’ll be like new. So if you and others in this church don’t like my preaching and stop paying me, I’ll be happy to start cleaning again.
“But I won’t stop preaching to you. It doesn’t matter if you pay me. I’m gonna keep preaching. I’ve been called and this is my responsibility before the Lord.”
You can imagine he was nonplussed. He bid his goodbye and left. No scene. He was just quiet. He never attended worship, and my recollection is his wife became infrequent, herself. I felt badly for her.
Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith. (Galatians 6:9-10)
A couple years later, this same man asked for another meeting. The day arrived and he was as imposing as before. Sitting down, once more he quickly got to the point.
“I know you are lying on your IRS forms.”
It was blackmail. He wanted me gone and assumed I was an IRS cheat (which I admit I’m entirely capable of being, save for the grace of God).
But by that same grace of God, I was able to respond, “Please report me to the IRS. I’d be grateful to be audited.”
Nonplussed for the second time, he left my office shortly, and I never heard from him again.
Twenty-five or so years later, though, one of his sons posted a nasty attack on one of my social media pages. Like father, like son.
Some readers may have been scandalized that I didn’t take my Dad’s advice and resign my call to this church after the session approved the church-house being used by the former pastor and our teenage elder living in fornication.
But remember, ours was a yoked parish and the rural church was repenting. They owned me body and soul.
It’s such a wonderful story of God I am allowed to tell!
Mary Lee says, “Yup.”
(Seventeenth in a series.)
If you aspire to shepherd God’s flock, forget the legacy seminaries. Trust me. I have personal knowledge of most of their administrators and profs. They are not your friends. Come to New Geneva Academy. We feel the weight of responsibility for Christ’s sheep. We’ll train you to bear that responsibility. By faith. Your training will not be a head trip, but rather personal and spiritual and weighty. You don’t need to move. Contact us.
Schafe können sicher weidenJ. S. Bach
Schafe können sicher weiden Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht. In a watchful shepherd’s sight.
(Seventh in a series.)
Part of the safety of the sheep and their pasturing, their feeding and watering, lies with how deeply their shepherd feels his responsibility for them. Sadly, few seminaries teach their students the weight of responsibility they will have for their rams, ewes, and lambs. And about seminary profs possessing the terminal degree, almost none of them teach their MDiv students what Jesus says concerning how to identify the hireling—that when the wolf attacks, he shows his true colors by fleeing.
I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.
He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. (John 10:11-13)
Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching the websites and social media pages of the hirelings who signed the protest against Pastor Steven Warhurst during the 47th (2019) General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America. Recognizing how necessary it is that search committees and elders choosing their next pastor (or deciding to retain their present one) understand that these men are false shepherds, a number of us have been researching and documenting the lives, alma maters, sponsoring churches, fellow elders, and organizational associations of these pastors who condemned Pastor Warhurst’s gracious Biblical witness against sodomy. Read the tragic story here.
The page documenting these hirelings now has 36,400 views, and the views climb at an average of thirty per day here two and a quarter years after it was originally posted back on December 23, 2020. At last count, the PCA only has 378,000 members, so the total views of this page are equal in number to about ten percent of the PCA’s members. (Yes, I know some have viewed this page multiple times.)
Why bring this up?
Because having done years of this research, what’s clear is that Reformed University Fellowship and Kellerite/Redeemer church planters funded by Mission to North America—as well as the Covenant Theological Seminary profs and trustees who have trained them—believes there are any thieves and robbers, let alone wolves, seeking to devour those precious souls purchased by our Savior’s Own blood whom they have been ordained to feed and protect.
These guys are smug. Confident. Cocky. They don’t lay awake at night doubting themselves. They don’t lose time grieving over and repenting for their sins. Every one of them is confident Jesus is mostly gentle and lowly. They love Dane Ortlund, as well as Don Carson and all the usual suspects who provided Dane his stellar blurbs.
Does a single one of them fear God? Go ahead and read the bios we have provided. Follow the links and ask yourself if these are the men you want your teenage daughter to be shepherded by when she goes off to college?
Honestly, the dividing line piercing the Christian church today separates those who still have some small and slight residual fear of God and those who have none.
The dividing line flows between those who feel the weight of defending their sheep from thieves and wolves, and those who laugh at such histrionics. And trust me: those who signed the protest against Pastor Steven Warhurst are ground zero of those who laugh at such histrionics.
Is there any danger in the Church of Jesus Christ today? Any true danger?
Tim Keller and his acolytes say yes, claiming the real danger is our “elder brothers,” our “tribalists,” and all those insecure ruling and teaching elders of the PCA who don’t recognize the superiority of Redeemerites’ cultural contextualization.
Nah. Listen to the warning given by our Lord’s beloved disciple, the Apostle John, two thousand years ago:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1John 4:1)
Until you, dear brother, make yourself stink, publicly, by warning your sheep away from guys like Keller and sidekicks like Sauls, Collins, Duncan (yup), and Chapell, you will remain a hireling. At the cost of your sheep, you have saved yourself. Your career. Your profession.
But why not simply repent? Why not humble ourselves and claim our Heavenly Father’s promise:
I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in fat pasture on the mountains of Israel. -Ezekiel 34:14
(Seventh in a series.)
Here’s more information about New Geneva Academy’s pastoral training curriculum and the men now in ministry who have been trained by New Geneva.
If you’re willing to join us in supporting New Geneva Academy, please get in touch and we’ll answer any questions you might have.
Image is “Jailoo” by CharlesFred, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Our heroes talk some more about Chat GTP, that Sam Smith devil thing, Roald Dahl books removing words like “fat,” Luke Skywalker being gay, the Kinsey Institute being defunded, new Lord of the Rings movies, AND MORE.
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Tim, Jake, and Nathan all love Russian history and Russian literature. And you should, too. Although … in this episode they begin a discussion of Russia and get sidetracked into talking about manliness and responsibility. Either way, we think you’ll be edified. More Russia next time!
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SOS talks about Tim Keller’s terrible article, Jordan Peterson, the Asbury revival, and so much more! Plus, planned communities are horrible!
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(Sixteenth in a series.)
If you’ve ever wondered what sort of things happen in a church that’s being reformed by the Holy Spirit, read the minutes from Calvin’s weekly elders meetings five centuries ago in Geneva. In Elders Reformed, we quote those minutes to provide readers an idea of the messiness of faithful pastoral care.
Geneva’s minutes reassured me about what we went through in the first years of our work in Wisconsin—fresh out of seminary.
In one of our session meetings in the town church during the first year or so, someone brought up the fact that one of the elders off at college was living with her boyfriend. Thus I found out the church had followed general assembly’s constant haranguing of churches to be sure to elect “representative leadership.” In this case, that meant electing a high school girl whom they ordained and installed as one of their elders.
She was now off at college, her father was also an elder, and the session was informed she was living with her boyfriend, without benefit of marriage.
We sent a letter to her expressing our concern and asking to meet with her the next time she came home to visit. She didn’t respond. Her father had nothing to say. We asked a second time (as I remember it), but again, she refused to listen.
We sat on it for maybe a year or so.
Then we received a request from the man who had preceded me as pastor of the parish asking if he could use the church to officiate at the wedding of this woman and her boyfriend?
The request was to come to the next session meeting. I was firmly opposed to the session granting this permission.
While, on the one hand, the wedding would regularize the relationship, her refusal to submit to the session in their attempt at admonishment concerning her fornication would be the context of the wedding, causing a public scandal. Remember, in a small town, everybody knows everything about everybody, and this sin was no secret in the church or community. My predecessor was aiding this woman in her contumacy.1
Prior to the session meeting, I called several older men for counsel. One was my Dad who suggested if the session granted permission it might be time for me to look for another call. This was not due to my call being tenuous or any absence of support for our work in either of the churches. Things were good in other ways, but Dad was pointing out how serious a failure to honor God it would be for the session to approve this wedding taking place in the house of worship under their authority, particularly given how visible the wedding would be at the center of the community both geographically and relationally.
An hour prior to the session meeting to be held in one of the elders’ homes a block from the church, the father of this college woman showed up at my office to talk with me about the matter. He was on the session and really had nothing to say about his daughter at any of the meetings we discussed her fornication, nor did he say anything this evening prior to our meeting. My recollection is he just said this and that and showed embarrassment. My sense was he wanted me to know he was sad about the position I was in, but he also wanted the church for the wedding.
The meeting was called to order. After preliminaries, the request to use the church was read, then moved, seconded, and came under discussion. There were six or seven of us and I was the only one to speak against the motion (to approve).
Not remembering my exact words, I would have pointed out this woman’s refusal to honor the elders’ formal summons concerning her fornication. She had not responded to their several requests, nor had she stopped living with her boyfriend. Her request to be married by the former pastor would have been fine, relationally. I had no objection to his coming back to take part in various official church matters where the souls of the church preferred him to me. This was natural given his closeness to many of them, but I went on to point out that he was certainly aware of the woman’s fornication and refusal to honor her elders’ attempts at admonishing and working with her to repent of this sin, and thus he too had become part of the scandal.
If our young sister had simply met with the elders and apologized for her past unresponsiveness, explaining to the session that she was now repentant and was getting married to correct things, all would be good. Then I would be in full and joyful support of granting her, her mother and father, and the previous pastor permission to use the church. But sadly, that wasn’t the context.
After maybe an hour of discussion, the vote was taken. There was only one vote against the motion, and permission was granted.
At this point, I should explain that this vote was one of maybe five or ten times, total, that I have voted in any session meeting of any of the sessions I have moderated (served on). It’s been my principle to vote only on matters that are so serious that I felt I had to have my commitment recorded, formally. This was usually in cases of great controversy where the honor of God was at stake. Otherwise, I felt my position as pastor/senior pastor was sufficient leadership without trying to add to it by voting.
Then it was time for tea and cake or pie, but I couldn’t. With tears in my eyes, I asked to be excused. There had been no angry words, no breach in relationships, but the decision was sinful and my grief was obvious to all. As I left, the father came up to the doorway and put his arms around me and gave me a long hug. He also had tears in his eyes.
That week, one of the elders told me that, after I left, they sat and discussed their decision, and regretted it. They told each other they’d been wrong to allow the wedding, but they did not reverse their decision or ask me to.
One point for pastors reading this chapter. Following this wrong decision of the session, I noted a growing authority granted me by them. In time, I came to realize it’s often the case that sessions vote against their pastor, and if he responds with grief and love, their respect for him grows.
This does not apply to a pastor whose session approves the marriage of two lesbians in the church, over his opposition. When a pastor votes against the other members of session in matters of basic Biblical truth, usually his vote is best understood as his last formal act prior to his submission of his letter of resignation. I myself cast such a vote, explaining to the session as I did so that I would be resigning my call to serve them, and thus I was voting so that my opposition would be recorded in their minutes.
Still, there are many times sessions go against their pastor’s wishes in secondary matters where he ought not to make a stink or resign over it. Instead, it’s best to be calm and take our blows, continuing to love the elders and the flock despite their personal rejection of you in this matter. If we do so, it’s normal for the respect of the elders and the affection of the sheep looking on to grow so that, in the end, the “no” we suffer becomes capital in the bank of our leadership.
So you want to know if I resigned?
Obviously not because the account of God’s work in our parish will continue.
(Sixteenth in a series.)
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References| ↑1 | ”Contumacy” is the word used in session meetings for pertinacious rebellion. It sounds more KingJamesish than “stubborn rebellion.” Regardless of the presenting sin, a large number of cases of formal discipline by church sessions end up being for “contumacy” due to the member’s refusal to respond to the session’s summons. |
As we’ve been reading through the whole Bible as a congregation, I have fielded a few questions about Scripture’s apparent references to divine beings other than God. The answer to the following question on that topic has a lot to do with worship, so I’m sharing it with you here.
QuestionIn Psalm 138, what does it mean by “I will sing praises to You before the gods” in verse 1?
AnswerThat’s a great question. The Hebrew word is elohim, which really can (in this context) be translated as gods.1 I think the simplest explanation is that David is expressing his complete commitment to worshiping the Lord, even when surrounded by other nations who worshiped idols. Israel lived in the midst of idol worship, and that worship often pushed its way into the land of Israel and proved to be a stumbling block to God’s people. But David declares that the presence of idols will not cause him to fear false gods; on the contrary, he strengthens his resolve to worship the Living God. This is fitting for us as we live in a culture which increasingly gives itself to the worship of idols. We should not be afraid to continue praising God’s name in the presence of the gods of our culture, nor should we be ashamed to do so in the presence of those who worship such gods.
I also think David had in mind the invisible demonic powers at work behind the nations’ idols. Many theologians believe (and I’m inclined to agree) that when the Old Testament refers to “gods” (or sometimes “sons of God”) in contexts like this, it refers to angelic beings, whether good or evil, who have been given real authority in the world in various ways. We get glimpses into this invisible realm of spiritual forces in passages like Daniel 10, which talks about Michael the archangel’s conflict with the “prince of Persia” and the “prince of Greece.”2
There are demonic powers at work in the world who seek to draw worship away from the one true God to themselves. While they are not gods in the way that God is, Scripture does refer to these spiritual beings as “gods.” Of course, when it does so, it always makes it clear that they are nothing like the one true God who alone is worthy of our worship.
For example, Deuteronomy 32:17–18 says,
They sacrificed to demons who were not God,
To gods whom they have not known,
New gods who came lately,
Whom your fathers did not dread.
You neglected the Rock who begot you,
And forgot the God who gave you birth.
“Gods” here is used comparatively to show why it’s foolish for Yahweh’s people to give themselves to worshiping any other so-called god besides Him. They are “gods” who are “not God.” Scripture often applies the word “god” to something which people do worship, even though that thing should not be worshiped. But we should also understand that spiritual forces exist and have real power and influence in our world. Some are obedient to God, and some have partaken in Satan’s rebellion. Either way, we should not worship them. Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. He alone is worthy.
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References| ↑1 | Elohim is a plural noun which can mean “gods,” but it is also used (the vast majority of times it occurs in the Old Testament) to refer to the one true God: “I am the Lord your God [elohim], who brought you out of the land of Egypt . . .” (Exod. 20:2). The context almost always makes it clear how the word should be translated. | | ↑2 | This is perhaps alluded to in Jude 1:9. |
What a weird movie. This was for kids? We’re diving deep into the beloved animated film, “An American Tail.” Will we wash up on the promised land? Join us as we explore the history behind the film’s creation, the actual Jewish immigrant experience it’s based on, the bizarre career of Don Bluth and his rebellion against Disney (right when Disney was getting good again), and just how dark a children’s film should be.
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Schafe können sicher weidenJ. S. Bach
Schafe können sicher weiden Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht. In a watchful shepherd’s sight.
(Sixth in a series.)
Back in 1992, I began serving my former church in Bloomington. The church-house sat in the shadow of Indiana University. It was the influence of an older couple whose lives had been that church and Indiana University that brought us there. This couple had wanted a reformed pastor. Maybe the most respected elder, the man had chaired the search committee for senior pastor and wanted me to be called (partly influenced by the fact he and his wife were Wheaton grads and thought highly of our parents’ reputations).
Over the course of a couple visits, I bonded with this elder. His love for his congregation and grief over its strife and division (which had caused the loss of several hundred souls the previous three years) touched me. Noting his tears as he prayed for his church and a safe trip for us as we set out to drive back to Wisconsin after one of the weekends at the church, truthfully, from then on, I only wanted to help him heal his church. So it was that, in time, Mary Lee and I agreed to stand for the call—and received it by the huge majority of 76% yes/24% no.
Yes, of course we accepted the call. Why would we do otherwise? Joke. Simple fact was everyone agreed that was the split of the church and no one would get any better percentage.
From the day we arrived January of 1992, the work was consuming. In the first weeks, a man got angry and walked out of the session meeting, resigning his office. The elders board had been at each other’s throats for years and this division at the top had spread throughout the congregation. Like parents and children.
The week we arrived, I preached the Sunday morning worship service. Tuesday, I received a phone call from the moderator of the elders board. He was an IU prof and he was calling to ask if I’d mind him beginning each session (elders) meeting with a time for the elders to critique my worship leadership and preaching the previous Sunday? (Session meetings were weekly.)
Foolishly, I said “sure.” Did my best to sound nonchalant.
The moderator had been opposed to my call. He was pro-abortion and had told me he hoped to lead the church to accept women elders and pastors. I’d told him I was firmly opposed to both, so when he asked if the elders could begin session meetings with a critique each week, I didn’t want to appear to be a wimp.
Four years later, I came to recognize my acceding to his request as foolish pride, copping a magnanimous posture that neither I nor the congregation could afford when this man’s wickedness had been destroying the church’s purity and peace for years. (In the end, four years later he won my removal and, in time, the church voted to approve the ordination of women.)
So beware of what you like to think of as magnanimity. It might be simple arrogance which opens the door to the sleek wolf.
Thus three days after I started serving the church, we had a session meeting which began with critiques of the senior pastor’s performance the previous Lord’s Day morning worship. The various critiques were given. One complaint was by the moderator. He didn’t like the declaration of the absolute authority of Scripture in my first sermon. Another complaint was from his sidekick who didn’t like my leading worship in a black suit. (He was an academic and sat at the table with us in a Harris Tweed with leather elbow patches.)
A couple minutes after the critiques were over, I excused myself saying I had a sudden terrible pain in my abdomen. I knew they’d think I was a malingerer, but after a couple minutes trying to grin and bear it, the pain became intolerable and I asked to be excused.
The next morning I was lying in bed in Bloomington Hospital recovering from an appendectomy. It’s the only time I’ve ever been hospitalized.
That should be sufficient for the good reader to understand how much I was counting on the wisdom and help of this older man and his wife who were the reason we’d agreed to serve this church.
Almost immediately upon our arrival, though, they left town. It shocked us.
We hadn’t known they were snowbirds who spent their winters in Florida, so the first four months or so leading the church staff and sitting for the critiques of the divided elders board, I felt my wise counselor’s absence acutely.
That first year during those months they were down in sunny and warm Florida, I learned they never missed the Ligonier Conference up in Orlando. For them it was the high point of their year. Lots of fellow Wheaton alums and friends also attended, so it was a sort of homecoming.
Knowing and sharing their reformed and presbyterian Biblical commitments, during those months of their absence I was conscientious in the pulpit ministry to proclaim God’s sovereignty in our salvation; His providence in our sufferings as well as blessings; the necessity of the sanctification without which no man will see God; and other precious truths of the Protestant Reformation. It was a jolt to the congregation when I fenced the Lord’s Table as the Apostle Paul does in 1Corinthians 11, but I was pleased that a sense of reverence in worship began to grow.
Of course there was immediate opposition. Still today I have a folder on my hard drive labelled “ECCCriticism.” It consumed my time having to respond to complaints while working to heal the prior divisions of the fellowship which had caused so many to move to other congregations. Then, of course, there was all the normal work of preaching morning and evening each Lord’s Day, teaching the new member’s class, showing up for committee meetings, leading the weekly staff meeting of the other pastors, music director, and secretarial help, counselling, and weekly session meetings which always went for many hours.
So again, this couple’s absence was hard to live with. They were unable to provide counsel and support the first months of the work, and we were all the worse for it.
Then, after a few months, they returned. And as in the succeeding years, that first year their return was announced by my receiving a call from the man asking if I had time to meet for lunch at Macris Deli?
Those post-snowbird meetings in the Springtime were always the same. This father in the faith would express concern about the way “things are going.” Some of his friends had complained about my preaching or leadership, and his counsel was always, “Tim, just love the people, and in time you’ll be able to do whatever you want.”
What he was requesting were shaggy dog stories. What he was directing me away from were any distinctively reformed emphases in the sermons. What was verboten was any preaching of doctrine and appeals to the conscience.
At first I was hurt. I’d thought I knew what he desired for his flock of sheep. I was convinced that, in time, the proclamation of God’s truth from God’s Word would bring some to depart (like the moderator of the session), but most would come to be reconciled to each other and grow together in unity and peace.
Only slowly did it dawn on me that this father in the faith for whom I had such deep affection actually wanted a pastor who shared his Biblical commitments, but only privately.
For him, his wife, and their friends, Biblical doctrine was a consumerist thing. They went and sat under RC Sproul at the Ligonier conferences, but wanted nothing to do with bringing Scripture into the light of day to reform and heal their own congregation in Bloomington. Biblical truth was a private pleasure that left them feeling superior. They loved sharing it with a certain group of Wheaton friends at the annual Ligonier Conferences, but they didn’t want it inside their church home. Biblical doctrine was to be reserved to the cognoscenti. It was a gnostic thing. A secret handshake, as it were.
Why didn’t their new pastor understand how divisive it was to preach God’s truth in a church pulpit? Florida conferences had people spending good money on registration. They knew what they would be getting and were willing to pay for it. But church was no place for truths which might be divisive. Any truth that was in any slightest way divisive was to be avoided at all costs.
As the years went by and I thought deeply about the difference between Ligonier in Orlando, and the church’s worship, I realized part of the reason Biblical truth wasn’t divisive when RC dispensed it to those who paid to attend his conferences was that he didn’t know any of them.
He didn’t know them. He didn’t know their wife. He didn’t know their daughter. He didn’t know their son. He didn’t know their parents or grandchildren. He knew nothing about them, so whatever he said went down easily. It never offended them because he wasn’t their shepherd. They never thought he was speaking to them personally.
In time, it became clear why books and conferences and radio shows and (eventually) podcasts were so popular.
The truths of God’s Word had become a consumer product and what was imperative was that these products be dispensed on a broad consumerist scale which was anonymous in the production and purchase of that product.
Pity the poor pastor who knows his flock, and then preaches to their consciences. How dare he! It’s not His job to convict anyone. That’s the Holy Spirit’s work.
Not his.
Thus was born the present church where shepherds don’t know their sheep; don’t visit them from house to house; don’t shed tears with them; don’t admonish them, personally; don’t say everything God tells them to; don’t blow a certain note on their bugle; and think they’re doing sufficient good work to show up Sunday morning with a lecture that proves they’ve read a book or two by an equally inane non-shepherd.
But a non-shepherd who’s universally revered because he’s a paragon of intellectual schmooze and the wielding of a scalpel of God’s word so very dulled when on his lips that never in a million years could it divide joint and marrow.
Forget Paul. What does he know about preaching today?
We know where our people need to be scratched and have practiced our technique to perfection. Our name is Ligonier. Our name is Willow Creek. Our name is Gospel Coalition. Our name is Tim, Al, Voddie, Apollos, Kevin, and John.
But once more, can we please humble ourselves and claim our Heavenly Father’s promise?
I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in fat pasture on the mountains of Israel. -Ezekiel 34:14
(Fifth in a series.)
Here’s more information about New Geneva Academy’s pastoral training curriculum and the men now in ministry who have been trained by New Geneva.
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Image is “Jailoo” by CharlesFred, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
It’s another Sanityshelves! What have the boys been reading? Find out!
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(Fifteenth in a series.)
Mary Lee and I had grown up in Philly and the suburbs of Chicago, but we knew nothing about small towns. If we were traveling somewhere in the evening and drove through a village at twilight, we’d look at the little homes with warm lights glowing from their front windows and comment how peaceful it all must be. Sometimes we’d even say we wished we lived there.
During seminary, we’d become friends with Robert and Phama Woodyard. We lived on the same floor in married student housing and we’d been assigned to the same advisee group. As we prepared to leave, Robert and I had both received calls to serve churches in the Presbyterian Church (USA) out in Wisconsin. Shortly before moving, Mary Lee and I were invited to Robert and Phama’s for pizza. Phama had grown up in a small Mennonite community in rural Ohio. During dinner, knowing Mary Lee and I were headed to a town of 1,500. Phama said, “You know, in a small town everybody knows everything about you.”
“Huh.”
It was a warning, but I thought, “What’s there to hide?” We had taken a trip out to Wisconsin for an interview and weekend with the Search Committee. They’d shown us the tiny manse at the center of town, just a block south of the business district (mostly bars), and we’d thought it picturesque. Our mailing address would be the prestigious 107 South Main Street. Now we’d received our call and been examined and approved by the presbytery for ordination, so it was time to pack up and leave Boston.
Our little family drove our little VW Rabbit out to Wisconsin and met the Bekin movers at the manse Friday morning. We had very little furniture, so the movers were gone by early afternoon. My first worship services were that Sunday and, wanting to be ready to begin my sermon prep right away Saturday morning, I decided to set up my library before I went to bed. Hours later, Mary Lee and the kids were long asleep while I was still at it carrying boxes of books across the backyard to the church, unpacking and setting them up in the bookshelves of the pastor’s office.
It had turned into the wee hours of Saturday morning when, returning to the house for the next box, I came around the back corner of the manse and found two policemen standing on the top of the stairway shining their flashlights into the house through our kitchen windows. Their squad car sat in the driveway with the engine running.
Surprised, I said “Hi,” then “can I help you?”
“We got a call that something was going on over here,” they said.
Identifying myself as the new pastor of the Presbyterian church next door, I explained I was moving my books into the pastor’s office. Assuring them everything was okay, it was clear my explanation hadn’t satisfied them because they kept shining their flashlights on me, then through our kitchen windows and around the interior of our house.
So I repeated myself: I was the new pastor and was moving my books into the pastor’s office at the church next door. This time, feeling the need to explain my apparently irregular behavior, I added this self-justification: “I’m moving my books late at night because I want to get a jump on sermon preparation tomorrow morning.” Said it chipper like.
The policemen responded to this second explanation by telling me they’d had a call that lights were on in the parsonage. They pointed out it was rather late for lights to be on in the parsonage. Didn’t I agree?
“Yes,” I admitted. (They had me there.) But again I tried to reassure them: “This is just a one-off thing. Normally I won’t be moving boxes in the middle of the night.”
That seemed to mollify them, but as they walked down the stoop stairs to their squad car, they provided some thoughtful advice: “Well, if you’re going to be up late again, it might be good to give the sheriff’s office a call. Just to let us know nothing’s wrong.”
As they pulled out of our driveway, it came to me that this was what Phama had tried to warn us of. In a small town, everyone knows everything about you.
After that night, when I got my son out of bed to use the bathroom, I was careful not to turn on the lights. Who wanted the county deputies knocking on the door and asking why our bathroom light was on so late at night? If I turned on the lights, I’d have to explain my wife and I were having trouble with our son wetting his bed. Then maybe they’d give us advice about this battery driven buzzer you could attach to his underwear that would let out a shrieking sound if it got wet and the sound would make the parents wet their bed while leaving the little boy scared half to death. But we already knew about that buzzer and it hadn’t worked, so then maybe they’d have another suggestion and pretty soon Mabel next door would open her window and join the discussion, saying one of hers had been a bed-wetter, too, and we shouldn’t let our son drink after dinner…
Those years in rural Wisconsin, we used the U.S. Postal Service to send out an annual Valentine’s Letter to our friends and loved ones, and each year Mary Lee started the letter with a story that began, “You know you live in a small town when…”
One of them was, “You don’t have to use your blinkers because everyone already knows where your’e going.”
(Fifteenth in a series.)
Schafe können sicher weidenJ. S. Bach
Schafe können sicher weiden Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht. In a watchful shepherd’s sight.
(Fifth in a series.)
There are many dangers that threaten the souls of the Church, and if we read the history of Acts, it’s apparent the worst enemies of the sheep are commonly inside the church. Augustine himself said “many wolves within.”
This truth reveals what is some of the most difficult work of the shepherd. Guarding the souls under his protection requires him to wake his sheep to the threat posed by mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers they sit next to in the sanctuary and eat at the same table with at church and home fellowship groups.
Of course this is scandalous to the sheep, as it should be. Yet this scandal is what pastors need to warn their sheep of, and protect them from.
Why is it a stumbling block to the sheep?
Because love always expects the best, after all. Because if the church isn’t a safe place, where in the world is one to be found?
Still, any slightest reading of Scripture makes it painfully clear how often the greatest danger to the sheep comes from God’s Own people. From within the covenant community.
There were the sacramentalists on the verge of destroying the souls of the Galatian church whom the Apostle Paul opposed in the most strident way. There were the incest, pride, and super-apostles ruining the church in Corinth. There were the scribes, chief priests, and elders turning their converts into twice the sons of Hell they were themselves. Our Lord warned His sheep against them in the starkest terms and it was these same men who were the officers of Christ’s church who finally succeeded in murdering the Son of God.
Now say again that it’s those on the outside of the church we must be on guard against—not those inside the church.
Christian consumerismMeditating on how opposed sheep and their shepherds are to any warnings against the church celebrities they’re clinging to, it popped into my mind that Christians today need to be woke to the fact that Western consumerism is one of the reasons we’re so vulnerable to false shepherds and hirelings.
Conferences, authors, podcasters, Bible versions, books, and churches aren’t so much the means of discipleship today as trademarks and brand names we conspicuously consume. Those Keller books splayed across our desks and coffee tables are similar to the eyeglasses we wear, the skinny jeans we pour ourselves into, our haircuts, and the non-ICE EV’s we park at the outer edges of our church’s parking lots. Think about how we brag about the colleges/unis our children got into, the foodie joints we take pics at for Instagram, the brews and cigars and ball caps we cop our pose with on our hipster church planting sites.
Take away a reformed baptist’s cigars and who is he? Take away a Presbyterian’s single malt and what’s left of him? Remove Keller’s books. Tell church planters they can’t use the words “passion,” “flourishing,” or “robust,” and oh my. What’s left of us?
We market ourselves to other Christians by our mustache, spectacles, brew, liturgy, podcast queue, and vocabulary. But especially names.
I’m of Apollos. I’m of Paul,
Oh yeah, buddy.
The Christian trademarks in vogue change regularly. At this point I could list the names year by year over the course of the past fifty years, but no one cares about the past. Consumerism religious and otherwise is only about the present.
Religious consumerism is aimed at clawing our way until we’re slightly ahead of the other schmucks we thereby prove aren’t as au currant as we are.
It’s high time we realize that the church’s theology and leadership mirrors scholars and their publications: as Chesterton put it, all the talk of what’s latest is nothing more than a giggling excitement over fashion.
Trust me, men like Tim Keller, Rusty Moore, Al Mohler, Rob Bell, Charles Stanley’s son, Carl Trueman, and (pick-your-current-name) are fads. Styles. Brands. Go down to Half-Price Books and watch as the shelves bend under the weight of their quickly-passing masterpieces. Soon they’ll be weighing the shelves down right there next to Gordon MacDonald, Robert Schuller, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Mark Driscoll, and Norman Vincent Peale.
Go back home and pray that the Lord will send a true and humble shepherd to pay you and your family a visit. At night. At your house. With tears. Someone you can love and trust for life. A real shepherd.
I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me.
In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ (Acts 20:29-35)
(Fifth in a series.)
Here’s more information about New Geneva Academy’s pastoral training curriculum and the men now in ministry who have been trained by New Geneva.
If you’re willing to join us in supporting New Geneva Academy, please get in touch and we’ll answer any questions you might have.
Image is “Jailoo” by CharlesFred, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
As we conclude our series on preaching, we talk a lot about discernment and manipulation.
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Our heroes talk about J.K. Rowling the TERF, Crowder vs Daily Wire, artists suing AI, and creativity theft in general. Then they talk about the downfall of movie music for some reason.
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My brother David just told me he’s despairing over the Evangelical church. I asked him why and he pointed to “CT’s hit job on John MacArthur.”
“What’s their ‘hit job?'”
“Oh, you know. They’re attacking him for how he handled domestic abuse cases in his church.”
Of course they are.
Christianity Today (“CT“) is Lord Protector of every vulnerable and disenfranchised people group. Especially women. How heroic. How selfless. What courageous investigative journalism. Julie Roys and Marvin Olasky, call home.
Reminds me of CT back in the day when Jim Dobson’s life was being threatened by the Mafia because of Jim’s national broadcasts taking on the pornography industry.
Sitting in a restaurant at a table with Jim and his wife, Shirley in Colorado Springs, I suggested to Jim that he do one broadcast per month aimed at the church and her pastors; one broadcast that would not focus on marriage, home, and children, but the Bride of Christ and Her failure to guard the good deposit and defend the sheep. In other words, one broadcast calling out the church’s unfaithful shepherds.1
At that table, my appeal landed with a thud. Silence.
Then Shirley stepped into the gap. She said her husband could handle it when the Mafia and Democrats hated and threatened him, but when Wheaton and CT attacked, he was devastated.
Back then, the guys running Christianity Today and CTi’s profitable stable of periodicals knew my dad and my wife’s dad. Many of them attended the same church.
People don’t get what a small and insular world Wheaton is. Back when CT decided to move from Washington D.C. to Wheaton, my dad criticized their move precisely because of this insularity. He thought CT should be an out-house—not an in-house—organ.
But no, they moved to Wheaton; to Wheaton’s north side called Carol Stream just a couple miles from the college and Crossway. Still today, a whole host of religious personages pass each other each week on Main Street, College Avenue, President Street, Schmale Road, and Gunderson Drive.
That evening in the Springs, knowing these Wheaton men, I was disheartened hearing how painful it was for Jim when they dissed him (which, being effeminate liberals, they loved doing).
Skip forward a quarter century. Now the year is 2023, and Christianity Today is doing an expose of John MacArthur’s pastoral failures in cases of domestic abuse from many years ago.
Look, I’m sixty-nine and grew up in Wheaton. I know many of these guys. So let me share my humble opinion that, although it’s well-known I’m not a part of his fan club, Pastor John MacArthur is not Evangelicals’ bad guy. Speaking from deep knowledge, the idea that CT has to go to California to find a bad guy to expose is laughable. There are rich and famous bad guys right there in Wheaton they have had every opportunity to expose. The movers and shakers have read the documents. They’ve known what’s gone down. But carefully guarded silence.
To do an expose of Wheaton’s bigwigs would risk money. It would threaten personal relationships.
Which, of course, they avoid at all costs. They do lunch and are fellow church members with Wheaton’s bad guys who have covered up sin worse than Pastor MacArthur has been accused of.
The real bad guys of the Church of Jesus Christ today are right there under the nose of CT, which is why CT goes out to California to find a good whipping boy. That and the fact that Wheaton is, as I’ve already said, effeminate and liberal—two things Pastor MacArthur is most decidedly not.
Did John MacArthur fail to protect his sheep two decades ago?
Sure, and this is a tragedy all of us grieve.
But now, ask if the scribblers and editors of CT would have done better?
Brothers and sisters, as our Lord put it, “Let him who is without sin among us, cast the first stone.”
Christianity Today would certainly claim to be above the sins they accuse others of, but they have no skin in the game. Christianity Today’s scribblers are not shepherds of God’s flock. They answer to their subscribers—not to God.
One day soon, Pastor John MacArthur will give an accounting to the Chief Shepherd for his care of His flock. On that day, Christianity Today will not be his accuser. Nor my accuser. Nor Jim Dobson’s accuser.
We all will stand alone before the Righteous Judge of all the earth. Wives and husbands will stand alone. Sons and daughters. Brothers and sisters. Editors and publishers. President and trustees. Colleagues in Wheaton’s terrible Bible department. Every last one of us will answer for whatever blood we have on our hands, and may God have mercy on us through the blood and righteousness of His Own precious Son.
Finally, let me say I abhor and condemn all the college administrators, trustees, and Bible professors who lead God’s lambs and sheep to stray from God’s Word and truth. Just as I abhor and condemn the constant failures of pastors, elders, and older (Titus 2) women of Christ’s church who refuse to defend those they know are being sexually and physically abused. Our congregation has spent decades bringing these crimes to light, and inevitably we end up hated by professors, sessions, elders, trustees who were covering these crimes up until we went to them privately (and sometimes publicly) and forced them to do what they had been refusing to do.
But our goal was never making a name for ourselves. Our goal was the protection of God’s sheep and fulfilling the ministry of reconciliation delegated to us by God through Christ Jesus.
Don’t read these men and women. I’ve refused to for decades now. The only reason I know about CT’s trashing of Pastor MacArthur is that when my brother David and I talked on the phone, I could tell he was discouraged and asked why?
CTi is so very deceptive, and always has been. You can’t trust them. The only constant in their work the past couple of decades is their insidious attacks on God’s Word and truth precisely at the gaps in the wall where the Evil One has made some progress.
As I said, Pastor John MacArthur is not Evangelicalism’s bogeyman. He has his sins and faults like the rest of us. All of us. Me. You.
But for CT to focus on John is laughable. It’s just a morality play.
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References| ↑1 | Readers might need to know that Jim and Shirley knew me as the son-in-law of Ken Taylor, the man who had taken a risk and published Jim’s politically incorrect Dare to Discipline, then fronted him the money to start his radio program, Focus on the Family. So, as the mafioso might put it, I was “family.” |
Mary Lee and I are looking forward to our second week worshipping with KB Riverside Church here in Yilan County, Taiwan, later this morning. We’ll be here through May. We’re living in an apartment adjoining the home of Rev. Dr. Joel Linton and his wife, Judy, along with their two youngest children still at home, Sarsha and Saran. We are enjoying their comfortable apartment; but even more, the friendship and fellowship with the Linton’s next door.
This past Thursday I taught for the first time at Chinese Reformed Presbyterian Seminary an hour or so northwest in Taipei. Good class. Twenty-eight or so students with three-quarters on Zoom and seven or eight in person. Half the Zoom students are asynchronous, meaning they aren’t online engaging with the class, but watch a recording later.
That as an introduction to this testimony from last week’s worship service. It was a great encouragement to my faith and I asked permission of Mr. Li to publish it here on Warhorn. He was kind and agreed. Mr. Li and his wife joined KB Riverside Church during the Christmas service back in December.
I am so honored to be here. All glory to God!
I’m from a traditional Buddhist family—all my relatives are devout buddhists. We worshipped our ancestors. We worshipped at all the temples.
At work, all my colleagues worshipped idols. I worked for a very advanced pharmaceutical company and as a company we worshipped idols and asked for peace.
My company sent me to Yilan County to set up a new factory. In order to establish a new factory, one of the very first things I did was to go pick out a nice piece of wood and I found a famous sculptor. Just as we read in Isaiah 44 this morning, I crafted an idol. It took half a year to sculpt that piece of wood into a Land god and we put it into a specially crafted temple. This was MY JOB.
It’s my major sin. Every morning I worshipped idols. Every new moon and full moon we worshipped idols.
Then my parents passed away and I started wondering: why aren’t my idols “working?” Are they for real?
We borrowed a Bible and my wife and I began reading it. Then we went to a church and slowly began understanding Christianity.
Then whenever we felt down or faced difficulties, we took out the Bible and read it. And my wife liked hymns. She liked to listen to hymns and cry. She’s a cry baby. [Mr. Li smiled and the congregation laughed.]
When we began considering becoming Christians, all the relatives began giving us pressure because it meant we would not be worshipping our ancestors anymore.
So we began researching and realized Christians do honor our ancestors. What’s more, we as Christians honor our ultimate Source…not just our ancestors in the last couple of generations. We are created by God. So we are really honoring our Source. So now we tell our relatives, we are honoring our ultimate Beginning Source. We tell them we won’t be worshipping our ancestors, but we worship the Creator of all things.
So we started attending a church for a year. It met on Saturdays. We began to see that what they preached was different from the Bible.
Then God took pity on us.
We weren’t sure what we were doing, but my wife and I started driving in a part of town we had never been to, and we ended up at the doorstep of the church elder here! The elder’s wife and their daughter Meeni came out and the child was sooo polite and we chatted and that’s how we were brought to KB Riverside Church.
On our very first Sunday here, we saw ALL the kids and they made such an impression on us. Why are these kids different from the children running around at the temples? So different. Such happy kids. And all the friendly brothers and sisters. It felt like Christians were a big family. The pastor and his wife were so friendly to us.
We believe the Bible is the Truth.
May God forgive me for sculpting idols.
I’m 60. I was in business for 30 years. In the past we felt like we were working for somebody else. Now I have quit my job and my wife and I have changed our religion. We forfeit our past. We will live totally different lives for the rest of our lives.
We have an unexplainable joy. We are really happy.
You are all still young. My regret is knowing God too late. So all you young folks, you’re so blessed because you haven’t had as much time to live a life of sin. We used to have insomnia. After believing in Jesus… we are at rest. We love the Sabbath.
People are asking us why are we so joyful? We broadcast our joy to others that they may see our faith.
It is the righteous that have true joy.
This past Wednesday (February 22, 2023), the Indiana House voted to remove taxpayer funding from Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute. The headline was “Indiana House Strips State Dollars from IU’s Sex-Studying Kinsey Institute.”
On social media, I linked to the article and commented:
Good work. Should have been done decades ago. Won’t hurt the so-called “institute” though because IU administration will just reshuffle finances. What should really be done is state assembly withhold our tax dollars from IU until Kinsey Institute is demolished. Completely.
In their article, the Indy Star claimed “allegations” against Kinsey have been “debunked.” This is just another blatant lie by a journalist (Arika Herron, to be specific) which her publisher couldn’t be bothered to correct (and maybe even required):
Rep. Lorissa Sweet, R-Wabash, introduced the proposal through an amendment to House Bill 1001, the state’s budget bill. Sweet raised long-held but largely debunked allegations about the work of Alfred Kinsey to explain her objection to its work.
Laughable. Everyone knows what sexual debauchery Kinsey gave himself to, personally, and promoted among his grad students and fellow faculty members. None of this is in any slightest way “allegations.” Never has been. In Bloomington it was common knowledge and has been documented over and over again. Kinsey’s data collection was even worse, depending on men who had committed the most awful crimes against children for his stats proving his thesis that sexual perversion isn’t perverse.
Twenty years ago, the movie “Kinsey” was released, and I took the occasion to publish this short oped in our local paper here in Bloomington, the Herald Times:
The Shame of Alfred KinseyThe late Allan Bloom was an Indianapolis native who served as professor at University of Chicago. In The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom lamented the destruction divorce caused his students. Noting that parents often used therapists to help their children cope, Bloom wrote, “Psychologists are the sworn enemies of guilt.”
If therapists are the sworn enemies of guilt, sex researchers are the sworn enemies of shame—with IU’s Alfred C. Kinsey leading the pack.
Although hired by IU as a zoologist, in 1938 Kinsey contrived to land a job lecturing engaged and married seniors on “biology.” He ended the course by taking his students’ sexual histories.
Kinsey spent the rest of his academic career conducting these interviews and disseminating the data. He was convinced that publicizing peoples’ private sexual lives would usher in a more peaceful age devoid of shame and inhibition.
But his efforts did not bring the dawn of Aquarian freedom. Rather, one set of negative consequences was exchanged for another. The fruitful discipline of true morality was exchanged for the fruitless bondage of false morality. The Biblical law codified throughout the Western world over many centuries was exchanged for infinitely smaller and petty laws.
So today, instead of community pressure being brought to bear against adulterers and sodomites, it’s brought to bear against those condemning such crimes. Freedom is shrinking as IU’s diversity advocates and the City Council’s Human Rights Commission use shame as a disciplinary tool against innocent souls caught in the act of expressing disapproval of sexual perversion.
Pity the poor widow who conscientiously declines to rent her upstairs apartment to an unmarried couple. She will soon learn what G. K. Chesterton warned of: “When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.”
Motivated by the love of their neighbors, godly citizens work to oppose the sin destroying homes, marriages, and souls, but find their convictions censored and their motives smeared as “hatred.” And the civil authority joins in the oppression by, for instance, using citizens’ tax dollars to provide support for the local baby-killing organization, Planned Parenthood. The biblical prophet, Isaiah, spoke of this day:
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; …who are wise in their own eyes (and) take away the rights of the ones who are in the right. (Isaiah 5:20 ff.)
Since Kinsey first began to expose men’s secrets, incest, domestic violence, divorce, the poverty rate of women and children, and deaths due to sexually transmitted diseases have all increased dramatically. But no one seems to notice. At the recent Bloomington premier of the biopic, Kinsey, partygoers making a donation of $1,000 were granted the privilege of hobnobbing with the filmmakers at a private reception where Kinsey was feted.
When the Kinsey Report was released in 1948, noted anthropologist Margaret Mead critiqued it:
In every society sex patterns depend on a careful and meticulous balance between ignorance and knowledge, sophistication and naïveté. (The Kinsey Report) has upset the balance …between the things we don’t mention, and the things we do. And it may be expected to have considerable effect in our society for that reason. Quite a good deal of our virtue has depended upon people not knowing what other people were doing… In the past, it was said, “It is better to marry than to burn.” Now we translate (the verse), “It is better to have an outlet of some sort, because you’ve got to have an outlet of some sort.” …so it’s just a question of which outlet and (Kinsey) suggests no way of choosing between a woman and a sheep.1
Two weeks ago the following invitation was circulated at IU:
SLAG is pleased to announce that Will Stockton will be presenting “The Normalization of Bestiality: Kinsey’s Analysis of Human Sexual Contact with Animals” …at the next brown-bag colloquium (Friday, November 19 at 12:10 pm in Indiana University’s Ballantine Hall, Room 221). (Stockton’s paper) explores Alfred Kinsey’s assertion that bestiality, rather than being “a strange perversion of human affection,” is actually “part of the normal mammalian picture” of human psychosexual development.
Kinsey was no hero. Those who think he was demonstrate no love, but hatred, of sexuality’s God-given beauty. So now we’ve arrived at the day when men no longer know why they ought to choose a woman instead of a sheep. And the band plays on.
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References| ↑1 | Margaret Mead, “An Anthropologist Looks at the Kinsey Report,” in Child and Family, vol. 18, no. 4, 1979; pp. 294-303. |
Our heroes review a (the?) John Wayne/John Ford classic, The Quiet Man, one of the most beloved classic films of all time.
Starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, The Quiet Man is a romantic comedy-drama set in rural Ireland in the early 20th century. The film tells the story of Sean Thornton, an American boxer who returns to his ancestral home in Ireland to reclaim his family’s land and start a new life. Along the way, he falls in love with a fiery local woman named Mary Kate Danaher, but their romance is complicated by Mary Kate’s brother, who refuses to give her the dowry she needs to marry.
Our heroes explore how the film portrays Ireland’s history and culture, as well as its commentary on sex roles and family dynamics. Just who wins the battle of the sexes in this movie anyway? The Answer May Shock You!Support us here!
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Schafe können sicher weidenJ. S. Bach
Schafe können sicher weiden Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht. In a watchful shepherd’s sight.
(Fourth in a series.)
Last chapter in this series was a warning of the dangers of pastors hankering after worldly power. We must not squander our precious calling to serve the Lord as fishers of men by turning and embracing the political illusion. This remains the real danger it’s always been.
The hive is angry. Here in America, we live in a post-Covid, post-Trump world in which the root of bitterness has corrupted many conservative Americans who belong to the Lord Jesus, leaving them determined to gain political power. Their determination is easily played by pastors seeking to grow their constituency.
In such a time, those who shepherd God’s flock must remind ourselves the sheep aren’t our constituency, but God’s. We serve the God Whose Name is Jealous. He shares His glory with no other.
Therefore, rather than leveraging the bitterness of the sheep in pursuit of our own glory, we would do well to hammer home to our flocks the distinction between the kingdoms of man and the Kingdom of God. We would be righteous to warn them against all the kingdoms of man, pointing out how these kingdoms of man and their leaders have always abrogated to themselves eternal significance. How these kingdoms have always sought social, political, and economic ends under the guise of bringing in “God’s Kingdom.”
What God’s people must forevermore be taught is that our Lord has commanded His kingdom be brought in by the foolishness of Gospel preaching. This is the pastor’s divine right. While pastors who are hungry for earthly power will not be content in their calling and will flip their preaching from the Gospel of Christ crucified to social and political criticism and power, those who desire to emulate our Lord Himself and His Apostles will turn the world upside down just as the Apostles did, by preaching, baptizing those who believe, and teaching them to obey everything He commanded.
In a time of angry hives, it takes faith and courage to stand at the battle station assigned us by our Master. If we forsake this station for the political illusion where our people’s ears itch, we are Aaron taking the jewelry and fashioning the idol. When he was confronted by Moses, remember how Aaron excused himself by saying he was afraid of “the people.”
God’s servants are not to give in to the people’s political and nationalistic idolatry.1
Jealousy for the flockMoving on, the sheep have another hunger that poses an equal danger.
Sheep flock together. Pressing up against each other reassures them.
Mary Lee and I were on Crete a couple months ago and went inland to eat at an outdoor restaurant. The parking was across the road and behind the small gravel lot was pastureland holding a flock of sheep. It was a beautiful day and the pasture was at least fifty acres, but all the sheep were pressed together in one spot by the fence. We went over to see them and, together, they moved away from us. But they only moved a short way down the slope where, again, they pressed up against each other.
God’s sheep, too, are comforted by numbers. They want to be part of a crowd. A crowd is safety. A crowd can’t be wrong. Although joining many of the crowds recorded in Scripture would have been sin, Scripture records the occasional crowd it was good to join.
For instance, when the Apostle Peter preached the Gospel on the Day of Pentecost and thousands believed and were baptized into membership in the Jerusalem church, it was a good crowd. A wonderfully safe herding. Joining that huge flock meant eternal life. But does this reassure us today in our bragging about our own church’s size or growth?
Before we give ourselves over to smugness and pride in the crowd we have built or joined, we should listen to what the Pentecost crowd heard and how they responded that day in Jerusalem:
Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”
Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” (Acts 2:37-40)
What caused the first believers in Jerusalem there in the Day of Pentecost to flock together was their anguish before the Holy God. The preaching of the Gospel leading them to join that church caused each of them to be “pierced to the heart.” They were united as a crowd in fleeing their “perverse generation.” Their deep conviction of sin led them to join the crowd of people whose common bond was repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
Can any of us today find the faith to admit this is not the nature of self-announced super-apostles drawing the big crowds and numbers today? We may sell our conference lineup as a “Gospel Coalition,” but when have these famous preachers and their famous conferences resulted in registrants being “pierced to the heart” and crying out “What shall we do?”
We must guard our sheep from these hucksters demanding their attention. They do not ever serve the needs of our sheep which their true shepherd sees and works to expose and heal. These shysters do not call our sheep to repentance. Like Dane Ortlund of Gentle and Lowly fame, they heal the sheep lightly—meaning falsely. How is it we so easily forget our Lord’s warning against those false shepherds who cry “Peace! Peace!” where there is no peace? I may be wrong in my judgment, but it is my deep conviction this is precisely what all the grace prattle and books like Gentle and Lowly are in the conservative church today. A word to the wise.
It is the method-of-choice of all hirelings seeking to build the number of their disciples (see Galatians for this charge made by the Apostle Paul) that they flatter the sheep. But honestly, do you or your sheep need flattering? Is flattering conducive to your sanctification, or is it detrimental? And if it’s detrimental; if flattery poses a clear and present danger to our souls, why are pastors silent about the danger? It’s true that growling and barking at the Gospel Coalition and Redeemerite braggarts won’t win you any points among the super-apostles, but whom do you fear, whom do you serve, and whom do you love?
The rich and famous religious leaders?
Our Chief Shepherd has entrusted His sheep to us. It’s not about us as pastors and elders. It’s about Him and the sheep He has bought with His Own blood. Remember what He said to Peter after he’d denied Him three times?
“Tend My lambs.”
“Shepherd My sheep.”
“Tend My sheep.”
What the sheep and lambs of God need today is shepherds who will protect them from those who have arisen among us and are devouring our sheep. Who use the Name and Word of our Lord to cloak their avaricious motives. Their greed for greater and greater numbers of disciples.
If we do not feel Godly jealousy over the leadership of the flock God has set us over and commanded us to tend; if we do not take it personally when the big-mouthed hirelings demand our sheep come and follow them; if we act magnanimous toward those famous podcasters who have the attention and respect of our young men—that attention and respect which God intended to belong to us, their true shepherd; if we tell ourselves there’s enough time and attention to go around, and we’re not going to object to sharing our sheep with gifted communicators; if we think it’s unseemly to caution developing minds and hearts concerning online scribblers whose specialty is muddying up waters we have worked hard to make pure and clear; if we don’t bother keeping track of the women calling themselves “prophetesses” who have our homeschooling moms’ attention because, truthfully, we can’t be bothered to do so (and anyway, it’s their husband’s job to know what they’re reading); if we fear the sort of accusations that would be made against us if we point out the false doctrine of this and that super-apostle; if we’d prefer to walk quietly and carry no stick; if we like our Sunday afternoons and Monday mornings peaceful; if, during the week, we are fine with our people feeding outside the green pastures and still waters we have chosen for them just so long as they come home to give us forty-five minutes of instruction each Sunday morning; if we tell ourselves we aren’t insecure, and we’re okay with our own sheep thinking such and such a preacher and author is more helpful than we are (because, of course, he himself never stops telling them this, and they believe every word he says); if we feel no threat from all the super apostles outside our flock who live off our sheep and relegate us, the sheep’s called pastor, to serving merely as those sheep’s country bumpkin chaplain; if it never occurs to us that the men influencing our young men online and through podcasts have never had their own homes in order—or that they don’t even confess faith in Jesus Christ; if we don’t have any confidence in our own leadership and feeding of our sheep, and are (truth be told) relieved to have other men compensate at the places of our inadequacy and laziness, promising they will fill in the gaps we’ve left in their diet; if some or many of the above things are true of us as shepherds, our sheep may be a part of a religious celebrity’s large herd, but they are not safe. They are in grave danger.
Here’s something every pastor should know.
The shepherd who admonishes, rebukes, feeds, protects, guards, encourages, and exhorts his sheep, each by name, slowing down for the nursing ewes, tenderly carrying the little lambs, and going out in the storm to reclaim the lost and straying, is the shepherd whose sheep love him and are immune to the blandishments of rich and famous hirelings. The more sheep love their shepherd, the less they are tempted to follow religious hucksters regardless of how glitzy and suave these hucksters present themselves as, and regardless of what universal acclaim they enjoy from massive numbers of wandering sheep.
God’s people need shepherds who know their flock by name and refuse to give over their care to anyone else. This requires God’s people to be under shepherds who stiffen, bark, and growl at all the thieves who hover around the sheepfold, looking to hop in and take a few for themselves.
That’s how you, dear sheep, are to think about the religious leaders perpetually proclaiming their brilliance and perceptivity and knowledge, clamoring for anyone and everyone’s attention. You already have a shepherd who knows you by name. Be loyal to him and he will be there to care for you and your loved ones each and every day and year and decade.
That’s how you, dear shepherd are to think about the religious leaders screaming for your sheep’s attention. You are the Apostle Paul among the Corinthians fighting for their attention and loyalty as the super apostles diss you, promising your sheep that what Jesus is more than anything else is gentle and lowly.
Now then, warn your sheep away from them. Warn them away from your sheep. Make it personal because it is. Very personal. God has called you to care for each of these sheep, and one day you will give an accounting for how jealous you were for their wellbeing, safety, and attention.
Let us claim our Heavenly Father’s promise:
I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in fat pasture on the mountains of Israel. -Ezekiel 34:14
(Fourth in a series.)
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Image is “Jailoo” by CharlesFred, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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References| ↑1 | For reading on this danger, two books would be helpful: first, the French reformed Christian, Jacque Ellul’s, The False Presence of the Kingdom; and second, this masterful standard work of history, Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millenium. |
Evangel Presbytery’s Abortion and the Church is now available in audio form here (subsequent parts to be released as they are recorded). You can get it online and in PDF form as well. Please read it! Please share it!
Here is what Pastor Tim Bayly wrote when we first released the document:
The following statement on abortion was written by members of Evangel Presbytery in response to a petition by the session of Sovereign King Church requesting that Evangel Presbytery address the sin of abortion. In response to that petition, at its stated meeting on October 8, 2021, Evangel appointed a committee to study and write a report on abortion. This report was presented to Evangel Presbytery for their action at the stated meeting held on June 2, 2022. The Presbytery received this report titled Abortion and the Church, voting to commend it to our member churches and the church catholic around the world.
When the committee began its work, there wasn’t a hint of the Supreme Court of the United States taking any action to reverse its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. Then, on May 2, 2022, Politico shocked the nation by releasing a draft majority opinion by Justice Alito in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Reading Alito’s draft opinion, it seemed apparent a majority of the court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States issued their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in which they did, indeed, reverse Roe v. Wade.
Evangel Presbytery thanks God for causing the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Roe’s forty-nine years of oppression represent a bloody rebellion against God’s Sixth Commandment, our nation’s Constitution, and the fundamental rule of law. The court’s 1973 ruling fueled the greatest denial of basic human rights in our history, as well as the most enduring and highest conflict our nation has experienced since its founding in 1776. The court’s formal repudiation of their former wicked decision is joyful news for the righteous across our nation, as well as those who fear God across the watching world.
Infinitely more important, though, is the hope this brings that the millions of little ones who have been slaughtered during the genocidal holocaust perpetrated against this class of defenseless persons may finally be recognized and mourned as victims of murder, so that, in time, our nation may come to full repentance for this bloodshed we have committed individually and as a nation.
We have addressed Abortion and the Church to “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15, KJV). It is our prayer that, first, the church herself will repent of her own murders committed against the little ones given her by God as His individual blessings placed in the wombs of His daughters. This statement does its most exhaustive work naming and proving the church’s own bloodguilt in this matter. This is only right given God’s words, “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner?” (1 Pet. 4:17–18).
Still, the end of all things is near and soon the King of kings and Lord of lords will return in power and glory to judge the whole earth. On that day, the Creator of all things will not render His judgments concerning only His own people, the Christian church. Rather, He will judge all men who will then learn the truth of Scripture that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God” (Heb. 10:31, KJV). Concerning our slaughter of many millions of little ones, we must face our Lord Jesus’ warning concerning those who harm children:
He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matt. 18:2–6)
The Father Almighty sees everything. Nothing can be hidden from Him who has warned us He hates the bloodshed of innocents. Whether the murder of His little ones is accomplished with drugs very early or surgically very late, every abortion is the bloodshed of innocents. Will the people of God repent? Will those who have no faith in Jesus turn and repent, fleeing to His cross for the forgiveness of their bloodguilt?
The reversal of Roe v. Wade may lead to some decrease in the slaughter, but it will not bring this slaughter to an end. The end of this horror will arrive only when God works among us to cause men to repent and turn to the Lord Jesus, restoring the love and honor of woman as the life-giver God created her to be. The bloodshed will end only when man once more receives with joy those little ones God blesses us with when He places them in woman’s womb.
Genesis records that Adam “called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20). To love woman is to love the fruit of her womb. In springtime, this is the beautiful opening and awakening cried out by all creation.
May God cause the heart of man to return to woman, the heart of husband to return to wife, and the heart of father and mother to return to the little child who is the fruit of their love, knit together by God in the secret place.
For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
(Ps. 139:13–16)
Why are cannibals so big in the culture right now? Should women in catonic states let their bodies be used for baby breeding? What’s with people using drugs to see demon? All of that and more in this episode…
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(Fourteenth in a series.)
Despite the past history of one of our churches disciplining a member who failed to observe the Lord’s Supper, that was then. It wasn’t now, and had I read that 1915 entry from the session minutes to one of our elders, it would have been shocking. “They excommunicated him for not attending the Lord’s Supper? You sure that was the real reason?”
In the American church today, the simple neglect of corporate worship is no burden on our consciences. We can’t imagine any session keeping track of who’s missing, let alone excommunicating him. Thus this decision of the Rosedale session to begin to visit our inactive members was no small thing.
The plan was to go out to the homes of those on our membership roles who never attended. There were maybe ten men needing a visit. If it was a family or older couple, the elders planned to speak to the man of the house. The elders felt they should be the ones to do the visiting. They understood the potential for the visits being resented and they wanted the pastor to be protected from this. So they divided up the names according to who knew this or that man best, and started the visits.
There were some whose immediate response was resentment and the news spread quickly.
Most of the Rosedale congregation lived on farms within a couple miles of the church-house. There’s a lot of back-and-forth between farm families. You share fencerows. You help each other put up hay. You share planters, rakes, and bailers. Waiting your turn at the co-op, you talk weather. After the tornado, everyone helps walk the neighbor’s fields picking up sheet metal blown off his buildings and silo. You rent fields from his sister and, if it’s not a schoolday, your son helps him milk. Neighbors come to mourn family deaths with you. After the funeral, they help carry the coffin out back to the grave where, following the committal and benediction, the men talk and take turns with the shovel while the women make lunch and the children play tag among the tombstones.
All the men go over to Cambria to have Chuck the barber cut their hair. Normally the talk flows freely. It’s a congenial place, but after you started your visits, when you walk in, the talk dries up. One of the men you visited said you were over at his place putting on airs, asking him why he’s not coming to church?
Sounds bad, but remember our purpose wasn’t to harass people or stick our noses into their private business. The elders were going out to ask the souls under our care if they had been hurt or offended in some way we didn’t know—was that why they never were in worship? Was there something we could do to help them return to church? The elders weren’t out to show their neighbors how much more religious they were. They were out visiting because faithful participation in worship is the main tool God uses to awaken our consciences and lead us to repentance and faith in His Son.
Concerning church participation and worship, nothing less than eternal life is at stake. How could we be faithful shepherds if we didn’t go out and find the lost, bringing them back home to safety? If a couple of the men resented an elder coming after them, why would that surprise anyone? The entire concept of our Lord’s story of the shepherd going after one lost sheep is that the sheep wandered—and sheep wander because they want to. Still, it is the shepherd’s job to redirect the straying and lost sheep regardless of his desire to be found.
Happily, most of the men we visited didn’t resent us. They thanked us for coming and reassured us that no one had offended them. They’d just fallen out of the habit. They admitted they really should come to church and said they’d try to do better, to which we responded, “Great, hope we’ll see you this Sunday,” and said our goodbyes. A few came back, but most didn’t.
Only one or two resented the visits, letting us and others know of their resentment.
That was the first year. We did the visits and one or two families returned to the sheepfold. The elders rejoiced that any at all had returned, and I remember what joy I had in the particular family whose response was so humble and who did, in fact, come back to God’s house.
A year later, it was time to review our membership roll once more, and we noted that seven or eight of the men we’d visited the year before had not returned. Six or seven of them had promised to, but failed in their promise, so we divided up the names again and set out to visit them a second time. Happily, these second visits were well-received by almost everyone, with only one man showing resentment.
Sadly, it was our clerk of session, Don Jerred, who took the brunt of that resentment. He was cursed. Don had been in favor of the visits from the beginning, so the cursing didn’t cause him to waver in his commitment to our fulfilling our duty with these men.
A year later, it was again time to review our membership roll. We noted that this man who had been so hostile the previous year had made no slightest effort to return. We discussed our next step. The elders knew the man well. In the end, they decided to change his formal status from “active” to “inactive” member. Don volunteered to go and inform him of this next step in the session’s admonitions of him.
(Fourteenth in a series.)
There are many good ways to preach a sermon, as we talk about in the third part in our series on preaching.
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Valentine’s Day beckons, our annual corporate celebration of eros, despite the fact we married folk can each celebrate our anniversaries without having to make single people feel left out. But we’re always willing to sacrifice for what we exalt most and in our culture few things are more exalted than eros. So, we sacrifice the feelings of the single. We contrarians may be tempted to react by decrying eros but the Bible, in its hundreds of pages, has a brief little book, about 0.6% of its pages, really a song, exalting eros: the Song of Solomon.
Immediately, we Christians start fighting on how to interpret it. Platonic philosophy, which pervaded Western culture, encourages an allegorical interpretation. It assumes that the body, and so sex, is degrading, at least unspiritual. So, in the Western church, the approach to sex is first to hush, then to blush, and then to bash. Without the assumptions of Platonism, Asian Christianity sees it differently. While living in Singapore I was tutoring two Korean seminary students in English. Once they asked me: ‘What’s the word for a woman with large breasts?’ Now, besides some slang, there is a proper word: buxom. But I knew that if I just taught them that word that they could very well come to America and greet some woman with, “You’re very buxom.” I didn’t want to be responsible for the slap that would ensue. So, I said, “Just don’t mention it.” They looked at each other puzzled and said, “Why? It’s natural.” “Yes, I know, but don’t mention it.”
In Western society, for centuries, Christians assumed that the Song couldn’t possibly mean what it appears to mean. So, for example, the “rose of Sharon, a lily among the valleys” was Christ Himself whom we are to desire. It sounds so pious. Who wants to argue with it? The problem, first, that’s not what the original author intended. Second, reading it allegorically is arbitrary. Christians say it’s about Jesus’s love for the church while Jews say its Yahweh’s love for Israel and individualists say it’s God’s love for them. Each little thing mentioned, each body part, they say, is symbolic for this or that. But who’s to say? It’s based on nothing other than the feelings of a sentimental interpreter.
In our highly sexualized culture, others have swung to the opposite extreme, so far as to interpret the Song as a sex manual, with, for example, 1:16-17 – “Our couch is green the beams of our house are cedar; our rafters are pine” – giving specific instructions on how you should decorate your bedroom – with cedar and pine. (By the way, they’re in a forest, that’s why their “couch” is green and their “house” is made of cedar and pine; they’re sitting on grass and looking up at trees.) The problem with the sex manual approach is obvious: who writes an instruction manual in poetry? Wouldn’t you be irritated if you got an instruction manual, like on how to assemble a bicycle, and it was written in poetry, with rhymes and symbolic terms? The fact is the Song of Solomon is not all about sex. It’s much bigger than that. It’s about the relationship in which sex is found; what C. S. Lewis calls “eros,” romantic love. In its celebration of eros, it reveals eight truths for your love life.
First, love is affirming; that is, it makes you feel prized, wanted, appreciated. The woman says, about herself, “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys” (2:1.) That’s how this relationship makes her feel about herself. We see why, “As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women” (2:2.) He’s saying about her, ‘You’re like a flower, a lily, compared to the rest of women who are, at least to me, like thorns. You’re the rose in this rose bush.’ And she responds, “As an apple among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men” (2:3.) Most trees in a forest aren’t much good; they only produce leaves or pine needles. ‘Ah, but then, to me, you’re like an apple tree, fruitful; you have what I want.’ If, instead of that, a woman is made to feel, ‘I’m fat, I’m stupid, I can’t do anything right and I’m just lucky he will put up with me,’ that’s the sign of a bad relationship. That’s not love because love is affirming.
Second, love is specific. The lovers speak of “whom my soul loves” (3:4.) She’s not looking for just any man; she’s looking for that one specific one, the one her soul loves. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Eros makes a man really want, not a woman but one particular woman.”
Third, love is a family affair. She wants to bring her man home to mother (3:4). Contrary to so much romantic fiction, all the way back to Romeo and Juliet, ideally love wants to include the family. Only a bad guy wants to take a woman out of a good social network, isolate her from family, friends, and church. Real love will want to keep you close to good families.
Fourth, wait a minute. If you’re single, you don’t need tips on a love life. What seems a bolt out of the blue in this exaltation of eros three times in the Song is sprinkled the warning, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (2:7; 3:5; 8:4.) In the midst of the celebration of love is a warning, interspersed in the Song, to the single people who are beginning to long for what the Song is about. (This is decisive evidence against the allegorical interpretation because the Bible isn’t going to warn us against stirring up love for the Lord before its time.) Be warned against the dangers of eros for the same reason we warn against the dangers of electricity. Don’t turn on the power in your home until it’s ready for it. Eros seems so inviting, the single are tempted to crave someone – anyone. But then this comes like a slap in the face: don’t awaken those desires. “I adjure you,” in other words, I make you swear; it’s important enough to make you take an oath to not arouse needs for eros until the time is right, when you are mature enough, in the right situation in life with the right amount of time, with the right person to love. Don’t feed those feelings until you’re ready. Don’t stoke your desires with romance novels, love songs, rom-coms, day-dreams and plans of that great relationship, pining for a Valentine. If you’re single, don’t read bridal magazines and plan your wedding. That kind of pining makes you vulnerable to the first person who comes along who looks like he or she can play the role.
The exaltation of eros in our culture, celebrated on Valentine’s Day, creates desperate youth who make finding it their priority, always playing the boy-friend/girl-friend, dating game, jumping at the first opportunity when they think they may have found love. So, they’ll give sex for it, change their beliefs for it, leave their family, lose friends and think they’ve made a profitable exchange because they’ve been stirring up their craving for eros. Instead, the single Christian should stir up his or her love for the Lord and dampen the fires of eros. “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised” (8:7.) That’s why you should not start that fire until you’re ready for it, otherwise you’ll be burned. It’s worth waiting for. So, wait.
Fifth, love is marital. Notice the term, “my bride” (six times from 4:8 to 5:1). They are married! That makes the Song different from so much Hollywood romance in which the action occurs outside of marriage. Here, this love has brought them into a commitment they dream of lasting until death do them part. C. S. Lewis wrote, “To be in love is both to intend and to promise life-long fidelity.” Someone who doesn’t have that intent has no love.
Sixth, love is sexual. “His left hand is under my head and his right hand embraces me!” (2:6.) That’s not symbolic for anything. Love wants to touch; it revels in an embrace. That’s why younger, unmarried couples need to be advised to hurry up and get married so they can touch all they want; sometimes older couples need to be reminded, touch. Don’t keep your hands to yourself! From 4:11 to 5:1, things start to get hot. There’s a building sensuality, with lips and honey and milk. The bride is a garden locked (4:12), that is, she is (or was) a virgin, until now that she’s married. That chastity is celebrated. She was a “spring locked, a fountain sealed,” in other words, no man got to enjoy the pleasures she offered until now that she’s married. Now he is enjoying those pleasures (4:11-16). Ah, there’s all kinds of pleasing aromas, refreshment like from a spring of fresh water and then . . . .
Here’s the great irony about the debate on how to interpret the Song of Solomon. Some say it has to be allegorical, symbolic language used to describe spiritual truths. They say that because they assume no truly inspired book would exalt sex, even just 0.6% of it. But it’s not usually allegorical. It’s mostly symbolic. There’s a difference. When he writes, in poetic comparisons that may seem strange to us, even funny sometimes, that her eyes are like doves, hair like a flock of goats, teeth like shorn ewes, and on and on, he means to praise her beauty (4:1ff.) He’s using analogies, not allegories. But, ironically, in 4:16 and 5:1, it is allegorical. The allegory is of sex itself, the thing the allegorizers think it can’t be about. “Let my beloved come to his garden.” The language is allegorical because they are not really gardening.
I’ll say it again for the Platonists in the back. Love is sexual. People sometimes need to be told this. I know of young women, getting married at 18, who are shocked that their wedding night included sex. No one told them. Sometimes married couples suffer for years with some kind of sexual dysfunction because they won’t talk about it. Serious marital problems, even affairs and divorce, happen because one partner decides the marriage won’t be sexual anymore and the other doesn’t know how to talk about it. Christians haven’t always been so afraid to talk about sex. In my doctoral research I found a Puritan church in which a wife took before the whole congregation the problem of a husband who was not having sex enough for her. That’s Puritanism.
Seventh, love is public. All through the Song of Solomon there are the “others,” a chorus, speaking up, encouraging the man and the woman to love. They are for this relationship. At the end, with the couple now safely in love, married, they mention another young girl coming along. They have a little sister (8:8.) Now this community wants to care for her. “If she is a wall,” that is, she is virtuous and wise, then we’ll help her, “we will build on her battlements of silver.” Is she’s a door, that is, easy to take advantage of; not necessarily immoral only that she’s vulnerable to seduction, taken in by the cute guy with smooth talk? Then the community around her will “enclose her with boards of cedar” (8:9). That is, the community will supply what she lacks in wisdom to preserve her purity. Of course, for that to work, she (or he) has to be committed to listen. If there’s no such commitment or no community, then we can’t protect someone from themselves when temptations come hot and heavy.
When my wife and I were dating in seminary in California, the elders of her church in Singapore sent a professor they knew at the seminary to talk to her, to make sure she was ok. They eventually asked her to come back to Singapore, leaving me in California. She obeyed. She was accountable. She knew they weren’t trying to deprive her of something good. About a year later those same elders performed our wedding. Love is public.
In our age, Christianity’s greatest rival may not be Islam or even materialism but eroticism, now meaning the love of sexual pleasure. Even more powerful than naked eroticism is the whole apparatus of apparent “love” it often comes in, eros exalted as a god. For that, nothing can be denied. It is to be honored unconditionally, obeyed without reservation. Depriving someone of eros is the cruelest barbarity, we think. The worst crime today, our culture imagines, is telling someone that their “love” is forbidden. Even the Lord Himself, some churches clumsily imply, exists to maintain this god, eros. Song of Solomon sermon series are popular, because they help us see how God serves eros. Eros over all. The tragic irony is that as great as eros is, it drives us to promise what eros itself cannot deliver. Romantic love makes us want to give something that it is not capable of making us give. It drives us to give our lives, to commit to death do us part. But it doesn’t enable us to fulfill those vows. Despite all the failed marriages in our day, people still want to get married. They’re “in love” and theirs will last, they believe with all their heart, in the trite phrase “until the stars grow cold.” What they lack is not eros. They have plenty of that. But it is famously fickle. It’s not that eros is bad. It’s simply not enough. It needs to be a jewel in a setting of untarnishable gold that holds it solidly in place: that steadfast love that God has, that covenant love in Ruth, on that road from Moab, where one (non-romantic) lover pledged to another, “where you go, I will go.” Now, for us, it is in the cross that we find a covenant love that is sturdy enough to hold our fleeting loves in place.
Romantic love is a great thing. But it’s not the greatest of things. Without the greater thing of God’s covenant love, eros becomes a god, a cruel god and then a demon. That’s the tragic irony of those who stoke the fire of that “love” while lacking the steadfast love that can hold it in place. In the end, they don’t get any kind of love. They just get burned. Instead, stir up and pursue the greater love of – and love for – the Lord. The greatest love is not found at the marriage altar (or bed) but, still, at the cross.
We continue our discussion of good preaching and we begin to get practical.
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Is it high art? As if! But it’s one of the best nineties rom-coms. Although, fair warning, it is more immodest than we remembered.
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We’re talking about more books we’ve read! Technically for the mouth of January, but who’s counting?
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(Thirteenth in a series.)
My own sin and repentance alongside the reform of Rosedale Presbyterian Church are central subjects of this series, but the path each chapter of the story takes will include other parts of our life together there in the dairyland of Wisconsin. The timeline won’t be perfect. Some chapters later in this series will go back and recount things that happened prior to previous chapters.
That said, two years after my ordination and taking up the call to serve Rosedale’s yoked parish, our session set about cleaning up our membership rolls.
Since everything today is subjective and deeply personal, particularly “spirituality” and “religion,” it hardly seems fair to put numbers to work in understanding the health or disease of any congregation.
- “So what if there are only seven people in Sunday corporate worship. Don’t those seven souls matter?”
- “So what if the congregation is all elderly people? Don’t elderly people matter?”
- “So what if the congregation hasn’t had an adult baptism in twenty years? Shouldn’t we be just as thankful for infant baptisms as we are for adult baptisms?”
- “Well yeah, our last seventeen pastors have stayed in our pulpit an average of one year, but that doesn’t mean we’re a pastor-killing church. Maybe our next pastor will stay seventeen years himself or herself? You can’t make generalizations about our church based on seventeen pastors. Maybe the eighteenth will love us? Numbers aren’t everything. Churches and their souls are more than numbers!”
In fact, though, church statistics (numbers) are filled with otherwise avoided or neglected truths.
In the second church I served, it never occurred to me to count the names of our congregation’s Nominating Committee over the decades, tallying up which families and individuals most frequently chose the names put up for the congregation’s approval as deacons and elders. Then, in the weeks just prior to my resignation, I went into the old church files and did the numbers, and wow! One family (out of many hundreds) controlled that Nominating Committee decade after decade, and it was a family no one would have suspected. Having finished up doing the names and numbers through the years, I saw how almost every single year this one unremarkable family had either the husband, the wife, the daughter, or the daughter’s husband as a member of this committee of eight, choosing the deacons and elders decade after decade.
The past twenty years or so, I’ve become increasingly interested in that discipline formerly known as “political economy,” but now simply “economics.” It’s seemed to have escaped some of the more awful declines in truly critical thinking the other departments in the humanities have embraced, and it’s my suspicion this is, at least partly, due to economists letting the numbers have their say. One recent summary of the history of the discipline celebrated the primacy of empirical research in its pursuit of truth.
Turning to church numbers, the past two decades, two close friends have been economists, and I’ve tried to get one of them interested in having his grad students design some research that would use church stats to predict congregations’ Biblical orthodoxy, elders’ involvement in pastoral care, active instruction by older women of younger women, and Gospel preaching aimed at the conscience, calling for both repentance and faith. He’s been sceptical of the proposal but I’ve told him I think no one wants to know how predictable the religious enterprise is now among us.
Our Lord did something like the numbers when He warned the disciples, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you” (Luke 6:26). It’s telling to think of the almost-entire denial of this truth in our celebrity church culture. Or again, note our Lord’s warning:
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14).
Back to Rosedale. One numerical fact distinguishing mainline from Evangelical churches back in the eighties was the ratio of membership to average worship attendance. Evangelical churches tended to have worship attendance significantly higher than their membership whereas it was not uncommon for mainline churches to have worship attendance somewhere between a quarter and half their membership. (This was, of course, back in the day when Evangelical churches hadn’t yet given up membership vows and discipline, trying to ape the awesomely successful parachurch organizations which were successful largely because of their avoidance of the drama membership and discipline inevitably entailed.)
The membership rolls of both Rosedale and First Presbyterian churches were laden with Christmas and Easter Christians. The only other times you saw these folk were funerals and weddings, and that was just the way things were.
Soon after moving into the parish manse next door to First Presbyterian, I was playing with the kids in the yard when a baby blue Camaro pulled into the driveway. There was a young blonde in the passenger seat, a scruffy dude behind the wheel, and a pair of large velvet dice hanging from the rearview mirror. They stopped near me and the passenger window went down, so I walked over and leaned down to ask if I could help them?
The driver sized me up, then said, “Are you the reverend?”
“Yup, I’m the pastor,” I answered.
“Me and the girlfriend is fixing to get married and want to know if you’d do the wedding?”
Turned out she was the daughter of one of our Christmas and Easter members, so I was her pastor, and being her pastor, she’d told her boyfriend “the reverend” would do their wedding. I realized there and then that, being an Evangelical from Wheaton, I’d just moved to a foreign mission field. Quickly I learned a good way to tell the difference between active and inactive members of my congregations. Inactive members called me “the reverend.” Active members called me “pastor” or “Tim.”
My conscience began to bother me about these souls. My first year there, I was opening the mail at the beginning of January and found an envelope from some woman I’d never heard of who had carefully written on the outside of the envelope, “Membership Dues.” The check inside the envelope was the price of her continuing to be a member in good standing of First Presbyterian Church, and it rankled.
If I asked the session of First Pres. to begin to visit their inactive members for the purpose of raising the matter of those members’ absence from worship, it seemed very unlikely the elders would like the idea. Visiting friends and neighbors in a village of 1,500 in order to remind them of their membership vows, going on to encourage them to begin attending worship, was almost as much a violation of the social contract as asking someone, “Are you a Christian?”
Still, it’s interesting that, when we’d arrived in town, I’d been reading through the session minutes going back into the nineteenth century, and there I’d found the record of a disciplinary case in which, somewhere around 1915, a man had been excommunicated because, the minutes stated, he had not been faithfully “attending the Lord’s Supper.” Across the intervening years, the meaning of membership vows had changed.
Rosedale was a different church, though. It had brought in a lay mission years earlier and the laymen’s gospel preaching was still bearing fruit, spiritually. So I had hope as I brought up the membership roll with the elders, asking if we couldn’t start visiting our inactive members?
They showed sensitivity to the appeal concerning our duty to these souls formally associated with our flock. They readily agreed to begin to visit them, and thus the work began.
(Thirteenth in a series.)
Schafe können sicher weidenJ. S. Bach
Schafe können sicher weiden Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht. In a watchful shepherd’s sight.
(Third in a series.)
Previously, I stated our thesis: “Today’s fathers and mothers need shepherds every bit as much as the fathers and mothers gathered around our Lord when He pitied them for their lack of shepherds, and taught them.”
Note that well: Jesus looked out over all the fathers and mothers who were “harassed and helpless,” and He taught them. Mature adults need the protection of shepherds, the feeding of pastors.
Much of the four Gospel accounts of our Lord’s ministry is simply recounting how and what He taught them: out in the valleys and hills of Galilee and on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, He fed them parables, many warnings, the Sermon on the Mount. And yes—food-food; bread and fish.
Pulpiteers hadn’t taken over the church’s preaching and teaching yet, so the fare was forthright and personal. After all, the backbone of his troupe of disciples was fisherman. The highly educated religious leaders of the time referred to them dismissively as “unschooled, ordinary men.”
Jesus kept His feeding basic and aimed it at the conscience of the sheep, warning, encouraging, rebuking, and warning them. He never stopped calling them to embrace the Kingdom of God—through repentance and faith.
In our day when nationalistic fervor brewed by heated eschatology has taken over much of the Church in North America, justifying itself by pointing to the Kingdom of God, we must be careful here. Jesus didn’t bring in His Kingdom by growing a beard, smoking cigars, drinking bourbon, and throwing out streams of provocations eliciting jeers and cheers from his acolytes. Jesus did not train His Twelve to be provocateurs, calling the rabble to rouse and kick out the tyrants.
Jesus preached the Kingdom of God and His method was directly opposite to the utopian millenarians who have been preaching their political revolutions for two millennia, now. All of them, of course, doing so while declaring to their fellow pitchfork rebels that it is Christ’s Kingship they are bringing in.
Never forget that Jesus’ preaching didn’t rouse His followers to march on Herod or the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. It was His followers’ consciences Jesus awakened and the fruit of their repentance and faith He sought.
Yes, He was King of the Jews. He admitted as much to Pilate, but then said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
Some of the present-day millenarians try to sidestep this by claiming Jesus simply meant His kingdom didn’t originate here on earth; that it wasn’t given to Him by “this world.”
But when we add in all the other evidence of Jesus’ rejection of worldly power including telling Peter to put up his sword, reminding His disciples of the armies of Heaven He could have called down, and paying His tax from money pulled from the mouth of a fish, it becomes humorous listening to the millenarians’ attempts to maintain the opposite. They preach to their followers that Jesus’ Kingdom IS of this world—that it just doesn’t COME from this world.
Ideologues twist Scripture. It’s always been so and correcting their lies is a never ending work. Still, when so many of our millenarian brothers are promoting this dishonest explanation of Jesus’ words in service to their own worldly aspirations, let us submit ourselves to that great Reformed exegete, John Calvin.
He says this about Jesus’ words to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36):
By these words …he declares, that there is no disagreement between his kingdom and political government or order; as if he had said, “I am falsely accused, as if I had attempted to produce a disturbance, or to make a revolution in public affairs. I have preached about the kingdom of God; but that is spiritual, and, therefore, you have no right to suspect me of aspiring to kingly power.” This defense was made by Christ before Pilate, but the same doctrine is useful to believers to the end of the world; for if the kingdom of Christ were earthly, it would be frail and changeable, because the fashion of this world passeth away, (1 Corinthians 7:31;) …the kingdom of Christ, in which we ought to seek tranquillity, is separated from the world.
Away then with all those taking the Name of Jesus in vain as they hunger and thirst for political power. We too grieve over the state of rulers and authority today. We too grieve over the moral dissolution taking the Western world by storm; but more, our own beloved United States of America. We too see all the lies and oppression and bloodshed. We too fight against them.
But we do not fight against the evil by preaching the millenarianism that is a steady stream through the twenty centuries since our Lord denied His Kingdom was of this world; our Lord Who, instead, planted His Church, promising that the gates of Hell would not prevail against Her.
However, since Jesus didn’t call down His ten-thousand angels, was He powerless? Did having no worldly, earthly aspirations leave Him no threat to the rulers?
Not at all. In fact, the proof of the power of His preaching was the religio-political leaders consistently opposing Him, then plotting against Him, and finally murdering Him. Awakening of consciences followed by repentance and faith was a much greater threat to the authorities than the constant stream of zealots trying to scare up rebellions against Rome’s tyrannies.
The preaching of repentance and faith in the Name of Jesus has always been the Divine conspiracy that shakes the pillars of earthly power; that demonstrates the mighty power of God and that actually brings in the Kingdom of God.
Our Lord didn’t call for rebellion against the authorities of the time. He did something much more dangerous. He fed the sheep so they were awakened to the state of their own souls, thus leading them into the green pastures and still waters of the Kingdom of God.
And the door to our Good Shepherd’s green pastures and still waters has always been repentance and faith in the precious blood of God’s Own Spotless Lamb.
(Third in a series.)
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Image is “Jailoo” by CharlesFred, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
“Emma” by Jane Austen is considered a great novel due to its sharp wit, complex characters, and insightful commentary on societal norms and human nature. Austen’s writing is known for its irony, subtle humor, and ability to draw readers into the world of her characters. The novel also explores themes of class, romance, self-delusion, and the dangers of interfering in the lives of others. Additionally, the novel’s protagonist Emma Woodhouse is a strong, independent woman whose flaws and mistakes make her relatable and endearing to readers.
The above description was definitely NOT written by a Chatbot.
We loved talking about “Emma” again. Is it Jane Austen’s best work? Is Mr Knightley a g-word for shaping the character of a 13 year old girl until she’s old enough to marry? Other questions!
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Our heroes talk about how tech evolves and what’s scary about that and what’s not. Plus … bear cannibalism!
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Translations are like women. Si elles sont belles, elles sont infidèles, mais si elles sont fidèles, elles ne sont pas belles.1
(Fifth in a series.)
For several decades now, Evangelical Bible scholars translating Scripture have proven themselves women lacking the male capacity to stand the heat of battle, and fight. This is true of Zondervan’s New International Version (2011), and too often it’s also true of Crossway’s English Standard Version.
Zondervan’s New International Version 2011The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) is paid to produce all translations bearing the name “New International Version” which translations are then licensed and sold by the News Corps publishing company, Zondervan. CBT’s members typically include2 men like Craig Blomberg, Gordon Fee, Dick France, Doug Moo, Bill Mounce, Mark Strauss, and Bruce Waltke, all spossessing the terminal degree.
Being scholars, we may safely conclude it’s not out of ignorance of Hebrew or English that their Bible product, the New International Version 2011, mistranslates the Hebrew ishshah (אִשָּׁה) as “weaklings” in each of the texts… below (w/thanks to Andrew D.):
In that day the Egyptians will become weaklings. They will shudder with fear at the uplifted hand that the LORD Almighty raises against them. (Isaiah 19:16)
A sword against her horses and chariots and all the foreigners in her ranks! They will become weaklings. A sword against her treasures! They will be plundered. (Jeremiah 50:37)
Babylon’s warriors have stopped fighting; they remain in their strongholds. Their strength is exhausted; they have become weaklings. Her dwellings are set on fire; the bars of her gates are broken. (Jeremiah 51:30)
Look at your troops—they are all weaklings. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has consumed the bars of your gates. (Nahum 3:13)
When God made Eve from Adam’s rib and presented her to Adam as his wife, Adam exclaimed: “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman (ishshah; אִשָּׁה), because she was taken out of Man (ish; אִישׁ)” (Genesis 2:23). So in the hands of Doug Moo and his colleagues, why has this verse not been translated, “She shall be called Weakling, because she was taken from Weak”?
Even readers who know nothing of Hebrew easily understand that the name Adam gave his wife is pregnant with meaning: ishshah indicates derivation from ish. So also in English, ‘woman’ indicates derivation from ‘man,’ and it’s for this reason some feminists change the spelling of “woman” to “womyn.”
What the Holy Spirit does in each of the texts above is to shame fighting men, pointing out their weakness and cowardice by calling them “women.” Will our highly educated translators let the Holy Spirit say this to us in English?
No.
And why not?
We all understand it’s not politically correct to shame weak and cowardly men by calling them “women.” As the CBT men see it, such a usage is beneath the Holy Spirit. It’s unworthy of Him, so they correct Him lest anyone today disinclined to honor the Holy Spirit read His inspired words here and think less of Him for it. It would not be right to put such a stumbling block in readers’ paths, so these men delete it.
Of course, the real issue is not the Holy Spirit. These men of the Committee on Bible Translation are worried about themselves.
Translation is an aspirational vocation. Translators use their work of translation to demonstrate their own sophistication. What sort of sophistication would people think they possessed if they allowed such a statement into their translation associated with their own name?
So it is that thousands of words throughout the Holy Scriptures are changed by men who tremble at offending feminists and being thought rubes.
Rupert Murdoch3 needs to fire these guys and hire himself some real men who are able to stand the heat of battle, producing a genuine Bible that says what the Holy Spirit Himself inspired. Do any of our readers know Rupert Murdoch? Can someone bend his ear for those who tremble at God’s Word?
But beyond the aspirations of CBT men running roughshod over the text of Scripture, almost as distressing is how many of these men officially claim to hold to the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. They sign statements of faith declaring their allegiance to the “plenary verbal inspiration” of Scripture, and then turn right around and replace the word ‘women’ with ‘weaklings.’
But what of…
Crossway’s English Standard VersionAgain, translation is an aspirational vocation that’s heavily influenced by what the translator wants his colleagues to think of him.
Some years back I wrote the ESV men pointing out how bad a job they’d done on 1Timothy 4:7. The Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to command Timothy to have nothing to do with γραώδεις μύθους—literally “old women’s fables.” But note how the ESV men gagged Him:
NASB95: But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. (1Timothy 4:7a)
KJV: But refuse profane and old wives’ fables… (1Timothy 4:7a)
NLT: Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales. (1Timothy 4:7a)
ESV: Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. (1Timothy 4:7a)
What’s with these guys? I mean really…
Just like the NIV’s Committee for Bible Translation, the men paid to produce the ESV also felt keenly how gauche it is to refer to “old women’s fables.” What would people think of them if they allowed such an archaic construction into their own text of their own translation of their own Bible? Their peers might think they were hicks living in double wides!
It’s not difficult understanding what they’re doing. This temptation is constant among translators whether of Scripture, Twain, or Gogol:
High-flown, pompous, elegant, or regal forms of language in the source are generally represented by terms of corresponding social rank in the target. Real difficulties arise only when the class register is low, and especially when the language of the source represents the speech forms of uneducated folk.
(T)ranslators shy away from giving …uncouth forms of language in the target text. The reason is obvious—grammatical mistakes, malapropisms, and other kinds of “sub-standard” language must not be seen to be the translator’s fault.
(David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything, p. 194-195.)
Sadly, Crossway has issued two updates4 to the ESV, and they still refuse to allow God’s Holy Spirit to say “old wives’ tales.” How faithless!
Recently, preaching through 1Corinthians, I’ve come upon another place where the ESV translators placated feminist sensibilities. (While I don’t use the ESV myself, a few in our congregation do and they alerted me to this.)
In 1Corinthians 11:3-16, there is an extended presentation of the doctrine of the Creation Order. Here the Apostle Paul applies this order of Adam first, then Eve, to length of hair and men’s and women’s head coverings. This text is an extended presentation of the doctrine of sexuality—the meaning and purpose of God creating man and woman.
The two Greek words aner and gune (and cognates) are used throughout this text. Normally, these words are sex-specific—referring specifically to a member of the male or female sex. As subsets of the male or female sex, on occasion the context in which these Greek words aner (ἀνήρ) and gyne (γυνή) are used indicates the proper translation is not “man” or “woman,” but “husband” or “wife.” In rare cases, aner may also be used to refer to all men—that is, as a male inclusive of both men and women just as the Hebrew adam (אָדָם) is often used in the Old Testament as God’s chosen male inclusive for the entire race bearing His image and likeness.
So then, see how the NASB95, KJV, and ESV translate this passage:
NASB95: But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man (aner), and the man (aner) is the head of a woman (gyne), and God is the head of Christ. 4 Every man (aner) who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. 5 But every woman (gyne) who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved. 6 For if a woman (gyne) does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head. 7 For a man (aner) ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman (gyne) is the glory of man (aner). 8 For man (aner) does not originate from woman (gyne), but woman (gyne) from man (aner); 9 for indeed man (aner) was not created for the woman’s (gyne) sake, but woman (gyne) for the man’s (aner) sake. 10 Therefore the woman (gyne) ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. 11 However, in the Lord, neither is woman (gyne) independent of man (aner), nor is man (aner) independent of woman (gyne). 12 For as the woman (gyne) originates from the man (aner), so also the man (aner) has his birth through the woman (gyne); and all things originate from God. 13 Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman (gyne) to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man (aner) has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, 15 but if a woman (gyne) has long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair is given to her for a covering. (1Corinthians 11:3-15)
KJV: But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. 5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. 6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. 7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. 8 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. 9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. 10 For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. 11 Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. 12 For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God. 13 Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? 14 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? 15 But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering. (1Corinthians 11:3-15)
ESV: But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, 5 but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. 6 For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. 7 For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. 11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; 12 for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. 13 Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, 15 but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. (1Corinthians 11:3-15)
Some readers may find the above translations confusing. They may get lost trying to trace which aner is translated “man,” and which the translators switched to “husband;” which gyne is translated “woman,” and which the translators switched to “wife.” They may find themselves asking the question why? What was the translators’ rationale for leaving this gyne “woman” while changing this other gyne to “wife?”
Let’s simplify matters by pulling the curtain back a bit. In their footnotes, the ESV men claim the proper translation of gyne (and by extension, aner) is determined by the context of headcoverings. They assure us headcoverings were only for married women, and so any time the word gyne is used in connection with headcoverings, it must not mean “woman” but “wife.”
Is our patience with professional scholars wearing thin?
As soon as the reader examines what the translators did with each aner and gyne in the text above, it becomes painfully clear the translators’ decisions had everything to do with their embarrassment concerning God’s Order of Creation of man and woman, and nothing to do with headcoverings.
But then each vocation has its temptations, doesn’t it? Princeton professor and award-winning translator Bellos again:
(There is a) general tendency of all translations to adhere more strongly than any original to a normalized idea of what the target language should he. To put that a different way: translation always takes the register and level of naturally written prose up a notch or two. Some degree of raising is and always has been characteristic of translated texts—simply because translators are instinctively averse to the risk of being taken for less than fully cultivated writers of their target tongue.
(Ibid. p. 195.)
“Translators are instinctively averse to the risk of being taken for less than fully cultivated writers of their target tongue”—in this case English. No surprise, then, that the men paid to translate the ESV balked at the Holy Spirit’s declaration,
But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. (1Corinthians 11:3).
How humiliating it would be for one’s name to be attached to such a troglodyte construction. They couldn’t—they simply could not—allow readers of the ESV to see their own revered names attached to such a self-evidently patriarchal and sexist declaration from the ancient world. Why, they’d be taken for rubes by their sophisticated contemporaries reading their work in the target tongue of contemporary English.
Thus “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ” was silenced and replaced by “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of a wife, and God is the head of Christ.”
At what cost?
At the cost of the world and God’s people being taught and led to understand that man first, then woman, is the universal law of God for all time in all places among all men. It is the warp and woof of manhood and womanhood, unconstrained in its splendor. It is the cornerstone of sexuality and man will either build his happiness and contentment upon it, or be crushed by it.
This is true Christian faith.
Tragically, this is not part of the Christian faith of the men who got paid to revise the Revised Standard Version into the English Standard Version. They flinch and cower at the thought of confessing this Biblical faith.
This is the reason they gag the Greek words of 1Corinthians 11:3-15. They tremble to think of being salt and light in our desperately wicked generation, and so they refuse to allow the doctrine of sexuality to be given expression here in this text, pronouncing from their great eminence as modern-day scribes:
We tell you: it’s husband and wife—not man and woman!
But of course, they’re wrong. What the Holy Spirit actually inspired the Apostle Paul to write here is,
But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man (not husband), and the man (not husband) is the head of a woman (not wife), and God is the head of Christ. (1Corinthians 11:3).
What is dealt with here is man and woman as man and woman—not husband and wife. His source being Scripture’s record of God’s Creation Order there in the perfection of the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall, the Apostle Paul here teaches truths that are universally applicable to the two sexes, to every last man and every last woman until the end of time.
Thus Calvin writes:
It is asked, whether he speaks of married women exclusively, for there are some that restrict to them what Paul here teaches, on the ground that it does not belong to virgins to be under the authority of a husband. It is however a mistake, for Paul looks beyond this — to God’s eternal law, which has made the female sex subject to the authority of men. On this account all women are born, that they may acknowledge themselves inferior in consequence of the superiority of the male sex. (On 1Corinthians 11:10)
Good readers, in this statement by the great reformer, John Calvin, you see everything our venerable scribes paid to produce the Bible product known as the English Standard Version refuse to say. You here read everything they fear, believing that allowing this part of God’s Word to make it through their translation to modern readers of Scripture would cause them to be taken for less than fully cultivated speakers and writers of their target tongue which is their native tongue. So they refused to translate it.
Poor Church. Poor world.
(Fifth in a series.)
(NOTE: This post titled “The womanish translators of the NIV (2011) and ESV…” was originally published January 25, 2013, on Baylyblog.com. It has been edited slightly.)
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References| ↑1 | Loosely, “If they are good-looking, you can’t trust them to be faithful, and if they stick by their mates, it’s because they’re old frumps.” | | ↑2 | Back in 2012. | | ↑3 | CEO of News Corp, which in turn owns Zondervan. | | ↑4 | Keep in mind this post was written and published in 2013, at which time there had been two ESV revisions issued; first in 2007 and second in 2011. |
Finding the time to write regular monthly content in this way has proven to be a challenge; it’s been several months since my last post. One reason for this is that I’ve been writing more material for our local church. In particular, my fellow pastors and I have given an open invitation to our members to ask any question related to our regular reading of Scripture together. (Our church is currently following a two-year adaptation of the classic M‘Cheyne plan.) This has created wonderful opportunities to study and grow in my own understanding of Scripture, and then to help our people grow in theirs.
Of course, that study takes time, and I’ve considered giving up writing to this email list. But after talking with my senior pastor Joseph Bayly, we thought it would be worthwhile to reproduce content here from what we’ve been giving our church. That way, if I am unable to get to writing a new article on worship for this list, I will plan to share with you something I’ve written for our church members. Considering the all-encompassing nature of worship, whatever I send will likely have something to do with worship anyways.
Here’s one of our recent “Ask the Pastors” questions and the answer we gave. May it strenghten your devotion to worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ.
QuestionIn Hebrews 6:19–7:3 (though really the whole of Chapter 7), a comparison is made between Melchizedek and “the Son of God” in that “he remains a priest perpetually.” First, I am ignorant of who exactly Melchizedek is in the Old Testament. Also, I would like to know more about the significance of the comparison between Melchizedek and Jesus. It seems like there is so much significance in this passage and my brain is only kind of scratching the surface.
AnswerWonderful question. The author of Hebrews obviously wants his readers to understand that this connection between Jesus and Melchizedek is very significant. And you’re right that the significance has many layers!
Mysterious MelchizedekHistorically speaking, there really isn’t much to know about Melchizedek. He only shows up in one very brief episode in Genesis 14, just after Abram defeats Chedorlaomer king of Elam and the alliance of other kings who had captured Abram’s nephew Lot. Melchizedek appears and does three things:
- He dishes out bread and wine (v. 18). (Sound familiar?)
- He pronounces a blessing on Abram (vv. 19–20), the faithful father of all God’s covenant people.
- He receives a tithe from Abram (likely a tithe of everything Abram owned) (v. 20).
Then, as quickly as he arrives on the scene, Melchizedek disappears without a trace.
We may find it disappointing that we don’t get more information about this mysterious man, but the mystery surrounding him is actually part of the point. Hebrews 7:3 tells us that he is “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually.” This could mean that Melchizedek had some sort of supernatural origin, and perhaps that he literally bypassed death like Enoch or Elijah. However, I find it more likely that God intentionally concealed information about Melchizedek’s lineage so that he would appear to us as having no origin and would thus stand as a type of Christ the Son of God in the Old Testament. Here’s how John Calvin puts it:
For since the Scripture, by assigning no end to his life, leaves him as if he were to survive through all ages; it certainly represents or shadows forth to us, in his person, a figure, not of a temporal, but of an eternal kingdom.1
We could speculate about whether or not Melchizedek really had parents, and about whether or not he died, but those questions are beside the point. The fact that he is presented to us in God’s Word as having no traceable lineage is in itself enough for him to prefigure Christ’s supernatural origin. And God’s withholding any record of Melchizedek’s death typifies for us the Son of God’s eternal existence and power over death.
Psalm 110 and the Priestly MessiahMelchizedek is only mentioned in one other Old Testament passage: Psalm 110. This messianic psalm carries much significance in the New Testament, especially in demonstrating that Jesus is the Christ (Messiah, Anointed One). Jesus Himself quotes Psalm 110 (v. 1) when He challenges the scribes and Pharisees with this question:
How is it that they say the Christ is David’s son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms,
“The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at My right hand,
Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.’”
Therefore David calls Him “Lord,” and how is He his son?
Luke 20:41–44
(The answer is that Jesus is the Christ: the promised Son of David who came after him, as well as the promised Son of God who existed eternally before him.)
It’s this same psalm which is cited in Hebrews 7:17, 21:
The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind,
“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek.”
Psalm 110:4
What does it mean for Jesus to be “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek”?
Melchizedek as PriestIf we go back to Genesis 14:18, we see that Melchizedek was “a priest of God Most High.” This is significant because it is the very first place in the entire Bible where the word “priest” (Hebrew kōhēn) occurs. In other words, Melchizedek’s priesthood is the first formal priesthood we are made aware of in all of Scripture’s accounting of human history.2 In particular, it’s a priesthood which far predated God’s establishment of the priestly tribe of Levi for the nation of Israel, which is what the author of Hebrews focuses on.
As God’s apostles began to proclaim that Jesus was a “great high priest” (Hebrews 4:14), the natural question from the Jews would have been: How could Jesus be a priest? “For it is evident that our Lord [Jesus] was descended from Judah, a tribe with reference to which Moses spoke nothing concerning priests” (Hebrews 7:14). Every Jew knew priests were supposed to come from the tribe of Levi.
The answer is that Jesus is of a priesthood which transcends the priesthood of Levi, a priesthood which existed long before Levi was born. This teaches us that the levitical priesthood was never intended by God to be an ultimate priesthood. In truth, it existed to point to an even greater priesthood, one that lasts forever. And when Jesus came and fulfilled His superior priestly calling by sacrificing Himself for the sins of His people, the levitical priesthood faded away and became unnecessary.
Abraham, the ancestor of Levi, demonstrated his allegiance to this superior priesthood when he paid a tithe to Melchizedek. The author of Hebrews even claims that Levi, in a manner of speaking, paid tithes to this great high priest while he was still in the loins of his forefather Abraham. And thus even Levi—who was designated by God to receive tithes under the Mosaic law—paid tithes to demonstrate the preeminence of a greater priesthood: the priesthood of the Christ as prefigured in Melchizedek.
So preeminent was Melchizedek’s priesthood that he himself is considered “greater” than Abraham. The author of Hebrews argues for this comparative greatness by highlighting the fact that Melchizedek was the one who bestowed a blessing upon Abraham, not the other way around (Hebrews 7:7). This is amazing if we think about it. Greater than Abraham? How is that possible? It’s hard to imagine someone “greater” in the Old Testament than Abraham, the “friend of God” (James 2:23), the one who himself was set apart by God to be a blessing to the nations. And yet, Hebrews teaches us that Abraham recognized his own subjection to one greater than he was, and thus he made an offering to the priest of God Most High. And in doing so, he testified to the truth of Jesus’ seemingly paradoxical statement of His own eternal greatness: “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). (Even as Jesus is both David’s son and David’s Lord, He is both Abraham’s descendant and Abraham’s Lord.)
When we’re told that Jesus is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, we’re not to understand that Melchizedek is the head of a priestly line that has been handed down to Jesus in some way that makes Jesus subordinate to Melchizedek. No, even Melchizedek’s priesthood was a shadow of Christ’s perfect eternal priesthood.3
Melchizedek as KingHebrews 7:2 tells us that Melchizedek means “king of righteousness.” This is because the name is literally a combination of two Hebrew words: meleḵ, which means “king,” and ṣeḏeq, which means “justice, rightness, righteousness.” Furthermore, as he is identified in Genesis as the “king of Salem,” and Salem comes from the Hebrew word for peace, we are told that he is the “king of peace.” It is generally accepted that there is some connection between this place Salem and what would become the city of Jerusalem, which further intensifies Melchizedek’s foreshadowing of Christ who Himself would ride into Jerusalem as its coming King.
In Melchizedek, we have a glorious joining of the offices of priest and king, something that would wait hundreds of years to reach its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Priest-King who redeems His people and reigns over all things. Through Melchizedek God reveals Himself and a shadow of His plan to His friend Abraham, and through Melchizedek God gives us a glimpse of the riches of His kindness and wisdom in sending Jesus Christ to be our Great High Priest.
Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. (Hebrews 8:1–2)
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References| ↑1 | John Calvin, comments on Genesis 14:18 (1554), trans. John King (1847), in Commentary on Genesis (Books for the Ages, 1998), 267. | | ↑2 | Many see Adam as fulfilling a priestly role in the garden of Eden; nevertheless, he is not explicitly called a “priest,” so Melchizedek still stands out in this respect. | | ↑3 | Unless, of course, Melchizedek was—as some would suggest—a pre-incarnate manifestation of Christ Himself; but that’s a topic for another day. 😄 |
(Note from TB: A dear brother I’ve gained a deep trust and affection for over the many years we worked together in the PCA recently passed on to me this devotional he once gave to his fellow PCA stated clerks. I asked if we could publish it here, and he kindly agreed. The Chalmer’s quote concerning Bolton was particularly striking.)
When I think about moving to another congregation, either wistfully or with a serious opportunity in front of me, I take an old post-it note from my desk drawer. The glue no longer sticks, but I need the message that has stuck in my heart over the years and at times is a check on my potentially wandering spirit. I don’t recall where I read this line, but the note reads “Thomas Chalmers said of Thomas Boston ‘He so understood the covenant that he found his greatest reward among those who knew him best; so he never desired to leave.’”
I hope someday, someone might say of me something along these lines: “He so understood Presbyterianism that he found his greatest challenges and rewards, maturing and satisfaction, among the ruling and teaching elders who knew him well.”
God has used the Presbyterian form of church government as it is believed and followed in our churches, presbyteries, and general assembly to work in me meekness. I read somewhere that, in Latin, meekness has to do with being “used to the hand.” Like a tamed and trained animal. For me, meekness has come as I have understood and functioned within the structures and strictures under which God has placed me in the PCA. I have had to learn not to kick against those goads. Much of this growth has come in the context of my Presbyterian accountabilities.
Matthew Henry wrote about gentleness and meekness. He drew four images from the Bible. He said a meek Christian is as the air is when it is quiet from the winds; as the sea is when it is quiet from the waves; as the land is when it is quiet from war; and as the weaned child of Psalm 131 on its mother’s breast.
These thoughts were prompted as I noticed we would be discussing a theological controversy within our presbyteries and denomination. The Lord has been gracious to teach me that He has purposes in allowing error in the church. In my younger days, I did not understand that. In a comedy movie a while back, the bumpkin character would often use the expression “that’s gonna leave a mark” when something bad happened. I know in my younger days, in my zeal for truth (as I understood it), I left some marks.
Then I read another Puritan, Samuel Bolton, The Arraignment of Errors. It’s an excellent book. Without diminishing the importance of truth and orthodoxy, he explains that God allows error in the church to sift His people. Here I began to learn how to do handle disagreement. I am committed to two things: our differences are not between enemies, but brothers; and if neither group is proud and contentious, but all are humble, holy. and peaceable, we can experience the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.
In John 17, the Lord spoke of truth, telling us God’s word is truth. He also spoke of unity, in verse 21 affirming His prayer that we may all be one. Luther wrote to the ministers of Nuremberg (quoted in Bolton) “There is no danger in your difference, but there is much danger in your dissension.” Thomas Watson, still another Puritan, preached a sermon on Matthew 10:16, “be wise as serpents and harmless as doves”. He spoke of the prudence of the serpent and the innocency of the dove being seen in this: to reprove the sin, yet love the person. He gave three suggestions how:
- Take a fit season to reprove another, that is, when his anger is over.
- Tell him plainly of his sin, yet in mild not provoking words.
- Take as your end in reproof, not to revile, but to reclaim.
In Zephaniah 2:3 we are told to seek meekness.
In Colossians 3:12 we are told to put on kindness, humility, and meekness.
In 1Timothy 6:11 we are told to pursue gentleness.
In 1Thessalonians we are told to aspire to gentleness.
Galatians 5 informs us a fruit of the Spirit is gentleness.
Paul wrote to young Timothy in 2 Tim. 2:22-26 words I needed to hear and take to heart:
So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.
God has used the Presbyterian system to begin to develop this grace in me. At the end of a hard session or presbytery meeting, I know I must hang in there, continue to stand with and work with the brethren, and attend the next meeting.
I know I’ve left many marks over the years—no major ones that I know of still un-mended. If I’ve left a mark on any of you, please seek me out. May we as stated clerks be voices and examples of meekness in the midst of controversy.
Schafe können sicher weidenJ. S. Bach
Schafe können sicher weiden Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht. In a watchful shepherd’s sight.
(Second in a series.)
It must be said repeatedly that the souls of the Church need to be protected from predators and thieves. Teaching on His Own character as The Good Shepherd, our Lord took this for granted in pointing out that, when predators attack the sheep, the hireling flees whereas the good shepherd protects them. Thus His summary statement that the Good Shepherd gives up His life for the sheep.
It’s long overdue for God’s people to return to choosing pastors on the basis of this distinction our Lord Himself taught us. This is a deep distinction of eternal consequence. This distinction bears no resemblance to the inconsequential distinctions our pulpit committees have been gaga over the past five decades seeking a new “senior minister.” The richer and larger the church, the more these committees have valued some snooty doctoral degree or Downton Abbey accent.
They utterly disregard our Lord’s plain warnings.
Going past the acute danger of wolves though, the safe grazing of sheep also necessitates constant care on the part of their shepherd to lead and keep their charges feeding in green pastures, drinking from still waters. There is never a day when the shepherd doesn’t have to be watching over what his sheep eat lest they stray and start nibbling poisonous weeds and drinking polluted waters.
The good shepherd is jealous over what and how his sheep eat and drink. The sheep may think it’s none of their shepherd’s business, but he knows otherwise. He remembers he will answer to the Chief Shepherd soon, and if he’s chosen a life of ease over vigilant watchcare concerning his sheep’s eating and drinking habits, he will answer to His Master for their sickness and death.
We undershepherds live with the temptation to think our Lord won’t return anytime soon, so there’s no danger taking a little time to eat, drink, play, and sleep. We must not give in to this temptation.
The temptation is intensified by our knowledge of the reaction we can expect from our sheep when we warn them, or use our staff to yank their leg out from under them as they plunge downhill toward the ravine. Warning and obstructing the paths of wayward sheep has always been difficult.
Today, it’s made much more difficult knowing this thankless work is always in danger of getting us written up on women’s gossip blogs as an abuser of the sheep.
The Church has her own cancel culture and every pastor is tempted to fear it more than His Master. He knows discipline is never appreciated. He knows it will give him a bad reputation in neighboring sheepfolds (even if it doesn’t do him similar damage within his own).
Add to the ubiquitous women’s gossip sites the fact that the internet is all about the latest news, and we have a perfect storm. The internet is our modern-day Athens which Luke described in Acts, explaining to whom the Apostle Paul was preaching repentance:
(Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something newer.) -Acts 17:21
To be sure, the internet is a useful tool for feeding our sheep. In fact, our ability to bypass the gatekeepers who own and run parachurch organizations and publishers has been a wonderful gift to faithful shepherds. We now have a direct path to men of goodwill that is a quite similar blessing to the pamphleteering the invention of the printing press made possible for the Reformers five centuries ago. The internet is another democratization of mass communication we thank God for (and thank you very much for using it to read this instruction Warhorn Media is publishing here online, I might add).
But McLuhan was wise to point out “the medium is the message,”1 and the medium of the internet is a very mixed blessing. It levels the playing field for faithful shepherds seeking to teach the harassed and helpless sheep who are without shepherds, but it also humiliates the Word of God and its servants, mocking and shaming those who teach and confess God’s truths at the many gaps in the wall today.
For this reason, many godly shepherds refuse to be active on any social media, stating that these mediums are nothing but corruption. Others of us respond that most of our sheep are on the social media site of their choice, and on these sites in droves, so we do what we can to bring them to our pages where they may safely graze. The debate goes on…
Pornography may not be the worst of the evils the internet has rained down on us. In the economy of truth, it’s at least arguable that the most toxic fruit found online is not images, but words. Lies are the internet’s stock-in-trade and our sheep feed on them constantly. We get their ears an hour and a half every Lord’s Day and it feels hopeless when we stop to consider all the poisonous weeds and polluted waters our sheep have been feeding on day and night the other 166 hours a week.
So we add home fellowship groups, Sunday evening worship, and weekly discipleship groups that meet early in the morning or during a weekly family night. Yet this does little to abate our sheep feeding on weeds and pollution 150 hours a week.
So we start a classical Christian school for our children which leaves evenings, nights, mornings, lunch hours, and weekends for our children to sneak a peek at poison and pollution. Meanwhile keep in mind that Dad and Mom aren’t under the supervision and instruction of their children’s Biblically informed and conscientious classical Christian educators.
If the teachers protect the children, who protects the teachers themselves? Maybe the school is good and principals and board members protect the teachers, but who then protects the principals and board members?
When the children go home each day and weekend, they’re protected by their father and mother, but who protects the fathers and mothers? Do we assume anyone committed to classical Christian education needs no protection?
If we’re honest, we’ll admit it’s our latent thought pattern that the adults of the church need no protection. Just children. Isn’t the book of Proverbs Scripture’s testimony to the vulnerability of youth and their need of careful discipline and instruction? Pertaining to adults, doesn’t Proverbs contain this promise: “Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6)?
- As men say, the apple never falls far from the stem.
- Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.
- The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
- The child is father of the man.
If we acknowledge the truth of these statements, does this require us to believe the man who has fallen from a good tree and been nurtured in the fear and admonition of the Lord with his own sons and daughters, now, is capable of choosing his own food and drink? His own pasture?
Is straying over into poisonous weeds and polluted waters unique to children and adolescents? Are fathers and mothers immune to such dangers?
The thesis of this series is that today’s men and women, fathers and mothers, need shepherds every bit as much (if not more) than the fathers and mothers gathered around our Lord when He pitied them for their lack of shepherds, and addressed their pain and helplessness by teaching them.
The unstated truth today is that the Reformation was a revival of love for all the sheep Rome had left without shepherds, enticing them to feed on the Papacy’s own poison and pollution perfectly represented by Rome’s preacher, Tetzel, who promised them salvation for their loved ones mediated by the payment of certain sums by which they could avail themselves of what Rome claimed as their own treasury of merit.
He was Rome’s false shepherd out selling indulgences to provide the capital for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
It’s always about money, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, our Heavenly Father promises:
I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in fat pasture on the mountains of Israel. -Ezekiel 34:14
(Second in a series.)
Here’s more information about New Geneva Academy’s pastoral training curriculum and the men now in ministry who have been trained by New Geneva.
If you’re willing to join us in supporting New Geneva Academy, please get in touch and we’ll answer any questions you might have.
Image is “Jailoo” by CharlesFred, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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References| ↑1 | https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf |
Schafe können sicher weidenJ. S. Bach
Schafe können sicher weiden Sheep may safely graze and pasture
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht. In a watchful shepherd’s sight.
(First in a series.)
The meaning of “pastor” is “pasture.” Paintings that depict rural scenes where cattle and sheep are grazed are called “pastoral,” and the flock’s health depends on the safety of their grazing.
Of course the shepherd is to protect them from predators. David told Saul he could handle giant Goliath because, while keeping his father’s sheep, he’d slain the bear and the lion:
Thy servant kept his father’s sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock and I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him. -1Samuel 17:34-35
This is instructive for our selection of pastors.1 Those we call to serve as our shepherds must be the sort of men we have a realistic hope can defend us—but also our ewes and lambs. We should be confident that, when the inevitable wolf invades our flock, our pastors and elders will grab our little one out of his mouth (or die trying).
This simple fact of the constancy of predators in the church is the reason most of us in Evangel Presbytery are choosing to train our future pastors in New Geneva Academy. We’re done with legacy seminaries such as Covenant, Southern, Reformed, and Gordon-Conwell. It’s been our consistent experience that legacy seminaries remove their students’ male principle.
Repeatedly we’ve warned those considering a call to pastoral ministry that legacy seminaries’ core curriculum is not theology, hermeneutics, or Old and New Testament exegesis, but rather this warning communicated in all classroom instruction and every hallway exchange: “If there’s ever any conflict in your church, you’ve failed.” Seminaries long ago stopped believing in wolves. What they believe in is church growth and the wealth it produces, so they run academic assembly lines credentialing perfectly unobjectionable pastoral leadership.
New Geneva Academy, on the other hand, trains men to recognize and deal with predators even if this work scares some of the congregation’s ewes and their spouses.
Safe pastures, though, are more a matter of providing green grass and still waters than killing wolves. Poisonous feed is a daily and hourly threat to the flock whereas the wolf only shows up now and then. So again, the meaning of “pastor” is “pasture.”
The church’s pastors and elders, along with the “older women” of the church, must provide good feed to their flock, and this is a daily and hourly work. The church’s shepherds must never stop watching their flock. We must not neglect our sheep’s constant need for us to provide them good feed and protection from bad feed.
While doing so, we also have to teach our flock this is their need and our responsibility. We don’t assume our children know their need of their father and mother’s protection. It’s not enough simply to protect them. We must also teach them to look and come to us, trusting us to shepherd them tenderly in just the manner and direction they need.
Proverbs is a book repeatedly teaching that there are only two kinds of sons: the foolish one who refuses correction and the wise one who receives correction. There is no third kind of son—the son who doesn’t need correction. Everyone needs correction.
This basic Biblical truth must be taught repeatedly to our rams, ewes, and lambs. It is the job of their shepherds to be jealous over their grass, their pasture, their grazing. At the time they may not have realized they set us over themselves for this very purpose, but honestly, where is there a sheep who thinks about this on his own, without being reminded of it? These things are not normally spoken of in churches today, so we must be even more vigilant to speak of them.
Our sheep don’t see this truth incidentally, in their day to day lives. They’re not taking walks in Scotland’s fells, England’s Lake District, or America’s dairyland. So we must restore to the church’s knowledge bank the truths set out above, including the constancy of Scripture’s testimony to the sheep’s life being dependent upon their pastor’s work providing them safe pasturing, and guarding them from straying into poisonous weeds.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. -1John 4:1
“Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture!” declares the LORD. Therefore thus says the LORD God of Israel concerning the shepherds who are shepherding My people: “You have scattered My flock and driven them away, and have not attended to them; behold, I am about to attend to you for the evil of your deeds,” declares the LORD. “Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their pasture, and they will be fruitful and multiply. I will also raise up shepherds over them and they will shepherd them; and they will not be afraid any longer, nor be terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the LORD. -Jeremiah 23:1-4
“I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in fat pasture on the mountains of Israel. -Ezekiel 34:14
When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things. -Mark 6:34
Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. -1Peter 2:2
Men’s great fantasy is to prove ourselves brave and mighty warriors. It’s obvious to anyone—even those with no more contact with video games than seeing all the ads—that men’s entertainment is all about war whereas women’s is all about love and children. (If you’re angered at this observation, please pity me and every pastor. We all know what I wrote is true even if most Christians today refuse to state such truths out loud. One of the pastor’s most important responsibilities today, given the gagging of Scripture’s truths in the public square, is never to stop repeating out loud what everyone knows to be true deep down in his heart of hearts.)
Men fanfasize about being that guy who protects his wife, children, and nation, and we’ve seen above that sheep need shepherds who will die fighting off wolves.
Still, the life of the sheep will depend much more on the shepherd’s feeding than his fighting. Pastors can’t warn sheep too often that they are what they eat. No good mother is dismissive about the food her children eat, and the good shepherd of God’s sheep realizes his watchcare over their feeding is eternally more important.
(First in a series.)
Here’s more information about New Geneva Academy’s pastoral training curriculum and the men now in ministry who have been trained by New Geneva.
If you’re willing to join us in supporting New Geneva Academy, please get in touch and we’ll answer any questions you might have.
Image is “Jailoo” by CharlesFred, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
[+]
References| ↑1 | Also weighing our own calling to the pastorate and eldership. |
Plenty to talk about in this episode of January in 1984 (Part 1). The FBI/CIA in Twitter ranks, sologamy (the practice of self marriage), and ectolife baby-making pods…
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(Fourth in a series.)
One objection I want to respond to in connection with this series is the scandal readers may experience when reading that our modern Bible products “gag God” and “delete God’s Words.” Why put it so harshly? Isn’t this merely a scholarly debate and wouldn’t it be better to keep it private? Doesn’t publicizing it harm the sheep’s trust in the Bible they read? How is that helpful?
A couple conversations in the past made me think carefully about this matter.
First, back in 1997, a group of us had flown out to Colorado Springs for a meeting Jim Dobson had called to confront the International Bible Society’s1 Translation Committee and the CEOs of the International Bible Society and Zondervan over their plans to neuter the NIV.2 The evening before the scheduled meeting, our working group met at the Marriott where we were staying, and discussed strategy. We began with a discussion of the merits of joining together to produce a new Bible version. (A short time later, we began the work to produce the ESV, inviting Crossway’s CEO, Lane Dennis, to be its publisher.)
For weeks leading up to the Colorado Springs meeting, I’d personally been pushing our working group to turn our attention to producing this new Bible. It would not neuter God’s Words and might become the new standard among Evangelicals, replacing the NIV.
Making my case by email, Wayne Grudem responded negatively saying he didn’t want to do it because he was too busy. Paige Patterson said the men of the SBC were producing their own new version, so he’d not be able to help. Others in the email chain were simply silent.
That evening in the Springs, though, I persevered, pressing the men to consider the need. There was simply no other way to protect the Scriptures from the removal of all the male inclusives—thousands of them—throughout Scripture. There were seven or eight of us that night, and early in our discussion we went around the group, identifying and explaining which Bible translation we each used.
As it turned out, several of the men used the RSV. But what I distinctly remember was John Piper saying he wouldn’t use the NIV because, as he put it, “I’d have to be explaining to my congregation all the time that this is not what the original Greek says [and] this would harm my congregation’s trust in Scripture.”
This shocked me. At the time I preached from the NIV, and despite my firm commitment to the historic doctrine of Scripture’s plenary verbal inspiration, I had not thought about how inaccurate it was as it currently stood, even without any neutered revision. (From that time on, I switched to the NASB95, which I’ve used since.)
The second thing that helped me to consider this danger of causing scandal among the sheep by discussing the failures of Bible translators and publishers was a conversation with Evangelical theologian and longtime editor of Christianity Today, Carl Henry. The last book Dad told me to read was Henry’s autobiographical Confessions of a Theologian, and Henry was likely the most respected theologian among American Evangelicals the last half of the twentieth century.
This too occurred during the neutered Bibles conflict. It was 1997 and Dr. Henry was living up in a retirement community in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I’d called to ask his help. At the time, the conflict was hot. World magazine had done the first article, but the story was taken over by mainstream media and it went viral across the country. Would Dr. Henry join us in opposing the neutering of Scripture?
Dr. Henry responded, “Tim, is it really necessary to broadcast this debate? Can’t it be kept private? Why does it have to be made public? I think it would be better for these things not to be argued about publicly.”
My answer was something like this:
But Dr. Henry, when has the Church ever tried to hide the battles in defense of God’s truth? Did the Apostle Paul keep his battle against the Judaizers private? How would we ever have known what was at stake with the controversy over circumcision if we didn’t have the report of the battle in Antioch and the resultant Council of Jerusalem? And what about the book of Galatians?
Then there’s Calvin and Luther. What if they’d tried to hide their battle against Rome? If they’d tried to keep it private?
After saying a few more things in that vein, I was silent. Dr. Henry sort of answered with a corresponding silence. He wasn’t going to get involved. Whether it was because he thought it was good to neuter Scripture or simply that he was tired, I don’t know. But the author of God, Revelation, and Authority was not interested in opposing the neutering of Scripture, publicly or privately. He never showed up for the battle.
What have I concluded?
There’s no way to fight for the integrity of the text of Scripture privately. The Bible belongs to the Church. It is the Church the Holy Spirit worked through to declare the canon of Scripture. It was not the academy.
What is at stake today in the bowdlerization of Scripture carried out by scholars and their publishers is the doctrine resident and communicated through God’s very words. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. All Scripture is God-breathed.
When men add to and delete God’s words, the church must be warned. Repeatedly. Publicly. Loudly.
Across the Western world today, there is an intense battle over language, and this battle is eternally more important than any battle over economics, public health policies, the right to bear arms, free assembly, immigration, and all the other abuses of power by civil authorities that (often rightly) cause God’s people to gnash our teeth. When teachers, profs, corporate communication policies, and big tech censor Christian speech and confessions of Biblical truth, we must fight. We cannot give in.
We must continue to confess man’s federal headship over woman through our use of the male inclusive. We must continue to name our race “man,” and not give in to their attempts to force us to speak of the race of adam using neutered words such as “persons” and “humans.” We must continue to refer to the LGBTQ… perversions as moral “abominations,” just as God Himself names them in His Word.
Never forget how Scripture concludes:
I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen. – Revelation 22:18-21
It is hard to learn we can’t trust modern Bible products, but we must have faith to teach the Church the difference between what God spoke and what scholars themselves speak. We must trust God to use our teaching and preaching to build greater trust among the sheep for His very Words in His very Word.
Yes, there is a clear risk the sheep will refuse to heed our warnings and will throw up their hands, justifying their complacency by repeating Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” But the alternative to warning the sheep is refusing to blow the bugle of warning God has delegated to His pastors and elders.
Do we really want the sheep’s blood on our hands?
(Fourth in a series.)
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References| ↑1 | Renamed Biblica in 2009. | | ↑2 | Susan Olasky, wife of World’s editor Marvin Olasky, had publicized this plan to neuter the NIV in her “stealth Bible” article a few weeks earlier. |
The post All Scripture is God-breathed (4) appeared first on Warhorn Media.
(Twelfth in a series.)
You may notice I’ve changed the picture heading this series of posts. I thought it would be good for readers to be able to see the church-house of the congregation I’m describing.
At times in this series, I’d like to tell other stories about my introduction to pastoral ministry which might be helpful in ways other than church reform.
Ruth Lindert and her husband, Glen (with their children), were members of Rosedale Presbyterian Church. Glen is a sheetrocker with rough hands to prove it. He’s a gentleman and his wife is a gentlewoman. Neither of them are proud or pushy, but teachable and wanting to be fed and taught and cared for, always expressing their appreciation to their pastor.
For her part, Ruth was a timid pianist who occasionally filled in for the veteran ladies who ordinarily played accompanying our worship. Those other women would not be fearful, but Ruth would be.
Because I served a yoked parish, my first duty Sunday morning was leading worship, preaching, and caring for the congregation eight miles from town, out in the middle of the fields of the Cambria dairyland. The church-house sat just off one of the main state highways going east and west in the middle of Wisconsin. The building was landlocked on three sides, surrounded by the church graveyard, so we parked in the right of way of Highway 33 eight or ten miles east of Portage, just southeast of Friesland.
Since I had to hightail it to the town church immediately following the benediction, I’d greet the souls of the church as they came in the entryway, rather than doing so after morning worship as I was able to do in the town church later each Sunday morning.
One morning as I greeted the souls of Rosedale, I heard Ruth playing a Bach piece. She was playing it perfectly, and it strengthened me for the work ahead.
At the conclusion of her prelude, I walked up to the front of the sanctuary and, taking a detour from my normal route directly to the podium, I crossed over to the opposite side and, leaning over to whisper in Ruth’s ear, thanked her for her prelude. She was a timid soul, and I wanted to encourage her service to the church, and to me.
The next morning, I was still in bed when Mary Lee came into the bedroom and woke me up with the words, “Ruth wants to talk to you. I told her you’d call her back.”
“What does she want,” I asked.
Mary Lee said, “She told me she wants you to know she forgives you. She was listening to Dr. Dobson talking about forgiveness, and she knew she needed to just forgive you.”
“What?! What does she need to forgive me for?”
“I don’t know. That was her message.”
Racking my brain for what I had done to hurt Ruth, I called her and listened.
“Tim, I love you and I just wanted to tell you that I forgive you.”
“Thank you, Ruth, but for what are you forgiving me,” I responded. I was only half awake and trying to figure out what I’d done now. Because, you know, young pastors make a lot of mistakes and hurt their sheep when they don’t intend it.
Answering, Ruth said, “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to say I forgive you.”
“Thank you for forgiving me, Ruth. But would you please tell me what I did?”
“You know what you did.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t remember. Would you please remind me?”
Ruth responded, “I forgive you for what you said to me at the piano Sunday morning, right before the service began.”
“I’m sorry, Ruth, but I don’t remember what I said. Would you please tell me?”
“You said ‘P. U.'”
“P. U?”
Thinking very hard, I tried to figure out what I had actually said because I knew beyond a doubt I hadn’t said THAT.
Then I remembered. “No, Ruth. I didn’t say ‘P. U.'”
“I said ‘BEEUTiful’. I loved your prelude and told you so. It was wonderful and I wanted to thank you as worship began.”
Silence. Long silence. Then, “Oh, no.”
I asked her, “What do you mean ‘Oh, no?'”
“Well, I was so devastated by your telling me P. U. that I spoke to Anita and Claire, telling them what you had said to me.”
“But I didn’t say it to you,” I said. “I complimented you!”
“Yeah, I know that now, but they think you said ‘P. U.'”
We laughed and I asked her to clean it up with them, but the damage was done. Young wet-behind-the-ears pastor fresh out of seminary had insulted a timid young mother about her prelude, and isn’t that what every young pastor does? Inconsiderate and rude, he walks across the platform to insult the accompanist just before reading the call to worship. No one has any trouble believing the pastor is such a jerk.
When Ruth told me what I’d said to her, I asked, “But Ruth, does that sound like me? Do you really think I would go out of my way just before leading worship to insult you?”
She hesitated a second, then responded, “Well no. It didn’t make any sense.”
“Well then, I probably didn’t do it,” I responded.
Dear Ruth cleaned it up, and yet I knew it wouldn’t be entirely cleaned up because, in my judgement, one of those two women would be susceptible to judging me entirely capable of being such a cad.
Congregations live only by mercy, repentance, and forgiveness. And I’m thankful to record here that neither Anita nor Claire hardened their hearts against me. Also that, to this day, Glen and Ruth express their love to us each time we visit their church in Wisconsin.
(Twelfth in a series.)
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It’s topical! And horrible!!
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What does it take to make a godly preacher? Pastors Tim and Jake begin to open it up with Nathan in this episode, the first in a four part series.
Note: for anyone paying attention, we goofed and referred to the cathedral of Bonn, when we meant Cologne.
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We didn’t meet our fundraising goals this year. What does that mean for various projects? Here’s an update on where we’re at and what we’re thinking and how you can help.
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(Eleventh in a series.)
In the last account of the kindness of God that led to my repentance and the reform of Rosedale Presbyterian Church—my first parish out of seminary—I wrote that my wife Mary Lee and I noted and took great joy in our new elder, Don Jerred, being in a new place, spiritually. He had a newfound fear of God and determination to trust and obey His Word. What was most singular in that connection was his discipline of his sixteen-year-old son Danny for speaking disrespectfully to his mother (which I recounted in the previous post).
After the discipline of Rambo, he turned back into just normal, loveable Danny. One of the indicators that Danny changed was my memory that Danny’s younger brother, Douglas, became the one I found irritating.
When I first came to town, the owner of the local True Value Hardware store, Curt Coddington, invited me to help him lead the community youth group. Curt and I became very close through that work, although we were at different churches (Curt was Baptist). Since this youth group served churches from several towns, young men and women from ten to fifteen local churches attended. We spent a lot of time with them each week, so we got to know them well—especially those from our own congregations.
Danny’s change of heart was immediate, and his change was a harbinger of wonderful blessings yet to come from God.
Following Don’s wife, Evelyn, resigning as an elder and Don himself agreeing to serve, my conscience began to suffer acutely. As I said earlier in this series, when I sought ordination within the Presbyterian Church (USA), there were some good reasons for doing so, but my conscience had never been right because I knew I was entering a denomination that was constitutionally committed to the ordination of women, requiring each of its congregations to have women ordained and serving as elders proportionate to the balance of women to men in the church’s membership.
It should be crystal-clear to readers by now that I knew this was a most basic sin against God’s order of creation of Adam first, then Eve. I knew from memory this order’s meaning and application stated by the Apostle Paul in 1Timothy 2:12-13:
But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.
So how was it I went into the PC(USA)?
Sin. But more on that later.
Fact is I woke up each morning burdened with guilt, and felt it more acutely after Mrs. Jerred resigned her eldership, and her husband then agreed to serve himself as an elder (which he’d been unwilling to do until his wife resigned, herself).
My memory is distinct of getting into the shower each morning and being overwhelmed with this sin of mine. There was no question I had gone into the PC(USA) against my convictions, and no question my convictions were Biblical. It was overwhelming and it grew day by day, month by month.
In time, I could no longer bear it, and I talked it over with dear Mary Lee. To this day she remains intransigent in her conviction it was all for the good. Look at the fruit of our ministry. It was beautiful, and even in Mrs. Jerred’s resignation of her eldership. Was that not an indication that God was working in and through us despite our sins?
Yet my conscience remained, and it was intolerable.
One day, it became too much to bear, and we called Don and Evelyn, asking if we could come out to their farm after dinner, and talk?
Always gracious, they said “yes,” and after dinner, Mary Lee and I drove ten minutes to their farm, pulled up to the side of their house just outside their picture window next to their dinner table (where they could see us), and parked. We’d been fighting and weren’t ready to go in, so we sat there and argued. For at least fifteen minutes we sat there, ashamed knowing they could see us sitting there and not coming in. Knowing they were on tenderhooks wondering what was up with us?
Finally, without any resolution in our marital conflict, we despaired and went inside, where Don and Evelyn welcomed us warmly, without mentioning the embarrassing fact of our delay. Then it all came out, like the tide unrestrained, rushing in.
“I can’t serve the churches any longer. My conscience is intolerable. I have to resign.”
Explaining how I had sinned coming into the PC(USA), going directly against my conscience, but also Mary Lee’s judgment that by God’s providence it was all for the good, I said I had to resign my call and leave. My guilt was unbearable.
It took an hour or so to get it all out, and there it sat in the room with four witnesses—stinking to high Heaven.
After a long silence, Don cleared his throat and said quietly, “You need to trust the elders.” That was it. No explanation. I’d unburdened myself and now I needed to leave it to the elders, and trust them.
There was no further talk about the problem. We didn’t leave right away. There was small talk I can’t remember, and we left a while later, but we left with my conscience salved that I’d confessed my sins to “one another,” in this case to my elder and his wife, and now I could rest in the knowledge that God would work through my elders to solve my anguish. It was such a relief.
Mary Lee and I drove home, went to bed, and slept soundly. The next morning, I took my shower without once again drowning in self-recriminations.
(Eleventh in a series.)
The post The kindness of the Lord: a pastor’s life (11) appeared first on Warhorn Media.
How do you spot a fake leader? Out of Our Minds may be out of our minds, but we have some thoughts!
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(Third in a series.)
Let us begin this third in the series by stopping to ask ourselves whether we love God? If the answer is “yes,” let us ask, do we love to listen to Him? Do we love His Word? Do we love His Words in His Word? Do we believe each of His Words are profitable to us?
But maybe more to the point, do we believe and trust that each of His words are profitable to our children who are tempted to think His Words are antiquated? The high school and college students who grew up in our church and don’t like how politically incorrect God’s Word is? Our sons and daughters who are tempted to think Scripture is homophobic and embarrassing? That Scripture contains what could be read as hate speech? That God’s Word is anti-Semitic and racist? That it’s terribly sexist?
Do we trust that God’s Words are still necessary and profitable to all the new believers and sons and daughters who prefer the new Bible products modernized by scholars in order to placate their progressive moral sensibilities?
Maybe we’re going wobbly and find ourselves thinking all this talk of gagging God is over the top? What harm is there changing God’s Words when it’s in order to facilitate people finding it easier to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus, to get to know the Bible, and to come to church and become more aware of their greed, selfishness, elder-brotherism, and tribalism?
What good is a Bible that people don’t read?
Good questions, all of them.
Before we turn to answering these questions, let’s rehearse the Words of God that Bible scholars and publishers have deleted from their Bible products, going on to explain their motivation as “accounting for the concerns of the modern audience.” Here are the main ones:
- Ἰουδαῖοι (Greek “Jews”): They have removed (or changed) the word “Jews” in the Gospel of John. This is in response to intense campaigns by influential Jewish leaders such as Irwin Borowski who claim anti-semitism is the fault of the Apostle John who, in his Gospel, attributes the murder of Jesus to the “Jews.” Back in 2000 in an article in Jewish Weekly, Borowski announced, “I see major breakthroughs coming within the next few years [in the removal of] hateful anti-Judaic passages.” His campaign has been successful in changing the text of Scripture so that, where the original Greek was “Ioudaioi” with the direct correspondent “Jews” in the English language, our Bible scholars and publishers have deleted it, replacing it with the word “they” or “the people.” Otherwise they relegate the word by adding the English word ‘leaders,’ so that where the text read “Jews,” it now reads “Jewish leaders.”
- μαλακοὶ (Greek “effeminates”): They have removed the word “soft men” or “effeminates” in 1Corinthians 6:9. This is in response to influential gays and lesbians who say the gay aesthetic, identity, and lifestyle of effeminacy is no sin. These gays and lesbians have infiltrated the church through movements such as the Presbyterian Church in America’s Revoice and the UK Anglicans’ “spiritual friendship” project promoted by Gospel Coalition types. These gays and lesbians promise not to marry or have same-sex intercourse, asking to be accepted as gay men and women in their lifestyles. There are now multiple Bible products used by conservative Christians in which the sin of “soft manishness” or “effeminacy” is no longer mentioned as disqualifying one from the Kingdom of Heaven.
- γραώδεις (Greek “fit only for old women”): They have removed “fit only for old women” from 1Timothy 4:7. This is in response to the Apostle Paul here seeming to be demeaning, not just of women, but older women. So the English Standard Version cleaned it up by deleting it.
- δοῦλος (Greek “slave”): They have removed “slave” across Scripture. This is in response to America’s extreme polarization over race flowing directly into the twenty-first century from the slavery and Civil War which ended it back in the nineteenth century. Over the past forty years, an army of scholars have accused Christians’ Scriptures of promoting racism and slavery—as well as patriarchy and homophobia. Thus Bible scholars have sought to hide or remove anything in Scripture which leaves God and His Word vulnerable to these charges, so that the original word,”slave,” is minced into “bondservant” and similar circumlocutions.
- אָדָם (Hebrew “man”) ἀδελφοὶ (Greek “brothers”): They have removed “man,” “brother,” and thousands of other male inclusives used across the Old and New Testaments. This is in response to feminists who reject the male inclusive and have now largely succeeded in banning this usage formerly so common in the English-speaking world. Feminists have decreed that it is linguistic oppression which inevitably reinforces the father-rule or patriarchy they hate, and they are intensely focussed on annihilating this usage across the world.
In each of the above cases, it’s entirely natural for us moderns to be understanding and sympathetic to Bible scholars and publishers who are gagging God at these places. Who wants the Bible to give moderns an excuse to judge God or His Word as anti-Semitic, homophobic, demeaning of older women, pro-slavery, and sexist? Again, as these Bible scholars and their publishers themselves would put it:
What people really need is to get into a personal relationship with Jesus and get to know the Bible. Who’s going to get to know the Bible if they’re reading some old version that uses a bunch of archaisms and throws up constant roadblocks?
“Just lighten up, okay? Give them a Bible they’ll actually read, you know? Is that such a terrible thing? So a word is changed here or there—big deal.”
The deletions protecting God from charges of sexism are a good case in point.
The argument is that the male inclusive is sexist. That it’s demeaning to women to be included with men by the inclusive “brothers” or “men.” Thus “brothers” is deleted and replaced by “Christian friends” or “siblings;” “adam” is deleted and replaced by “human beings” or “persons.” These and similar deletions of the male inclusive are done thousands of times in these new Bible products.
What’s the problem? Many or most of these deletions have the merit of signalling to women that they are included, and isn’t that important today when we’re repenting of sexism and patriarchy?
Years ago I was in conversation with a brother in our church who had an MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, had taught in a theological college in Africa, and was well aware of all the battles over Scripture’s doctrine of sexuality. In point of fact, he was completely in agreement with Scripture’s doctrine of father-rule.
Speaking with him about the terms “brother” and “brothers” in the New Testament Epistles, I asked him if he thought “siblings” was an accurate substitute for the inclusive “brothers” used for centuries in English Bible translations?
He said “yes.”
Following up, I asked whether, if I was able to demonstrate that an important meaning component was left behind by deleting “brothers” and replacing it with “Christian friends” or “siblings,” would he still think they were good translations?
He responded, “no.”
“Well, consider the male meaning component of ‘brothers,'” I said. “The familial meaning component of ‘brothers’ is removed when we translate it ‘Christian friends.’ In the same way, the male meaning component is removed when we translate it ‘siblings.’ Now do you still think ‘Christian friends’ and ‘brothers’ are faithful to the original text?”
“No,” he said.
It really is that simple.
But right here we’re left with the question whether the male meaning component of “brothers” is insignificant or significant, because if it’s insignificant, maybe it does no harm to lose it.
On the other hand, what if it’s significant?
Having now asked the question, we see that “brothers” is significant because each time women are included in a male inclusive, everyone is reminded that “in Adam all die” (1Corinthians 15:22). That “by the transgression of the one the many died” (Romans 5:15). That “by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one” (Romans 5:17). That “through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men” (Romans 5:18). That “through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19). That “by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead” (1Corinthians 5:21). And that “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1Corinthians 15:22).
God has made males to be our representatives. God ordained that men, not women, are our federal heads.
This is not complicated. Look at the name God gave our race:
He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them adam in the day when they were created. -Genesis 5:2
God named our race, both male and female, “adam” or “man,” and this same name is used over 500 times across the Old Testament. This male inclusive is used hundreds of times in the New Testament, also. “Brother” and “brothers” (“adelphos” and “adelphoi”) as well as the Greek words “aner” and “anthropos.” Together these words and their cognates have a crystal-clear male meaning component inspired by God and used over 1,000 times in the New Testament, and this male meaning component had been translated faithfully into English Bibles for many centuries now.
But our Bible scholars and publishers are ashamed and have relegated or deleted it from their latest Bible versions.
Again, this is not complicated. What we have decided to do is remove the male meaning component because it’s politically incorrect, and it’s politically incorrect because the feminist rebels hate it, and they hate it because they are rebels against the federal headship of Adam as opposed to Eve, man as opposed to woman, that has been decreed by God our Creator.
Each time a male inclusive “adam,” “sons,” or “man” in the Old Testament and “brother,” “men,” or “man” in the New Testament is deleted, Adam’s federal headship is diluted that much more. Each time another male inclusive is deleted, the theological doctrine of the Fall, that God tested our race through the male of the species and not the female of the species (who, in fact, sinned first), is by that deletion once more undercut. And it’s all done because of our shame at God’s Words.
Are we crazy? Do we really think now is the time to hide, dilute, and deny the responsibility God has placed on the male of the species? Do we really think now is the time to deny God’s delegation to the male of the species His authority resident in His eternal Fatherhood? This is what is at stake with the deletions of male inclusives in our Bibles today.
Make no mistake. We’re all ashamed of Jesus and His Words. Ashamed of His maleness and Sonship. Ashamed of His Father’s Fatherhood writ large across the race He Himself named “adam.”
(Third in a series.)
The post All Scripture is God-breathed (3) appeared first on Warhorn Media.
One brother responded to the first article in this series saying he thought I was open to the charge of being naïve about the work of translation. He pointed out translation is moving the meaning of words into the receptor language, and thus always interpretation.
Which is true.
Still, we need to keep in mind that translators across the centuries have taken many Hebrew and Greek words from the text of Scripture and simply ported those same words into English. The process is called “transliteration” and it’s one of the many acceptable tools in the translator’s tool box. In Bible translation, English examples include “sabbath,” “manna,” “apostle,” “baptism,” “angel,” “deacon,” and hundreds more. (In fact, there’s a book in my library with hundreds of words of the KJV which are merely transliterations from the Hebrew and Greek.)
Bible translators have often moved Hebrew and Greek words directly into English, choosing to transliterate the words rather than protecting those words’ semantic meaning components by selecting English words with comparable meaning.
Transliteration to the side, though, all translation is, indeed, interpretation. No translator can escape the work of interpretation. We have no expectation otherwise, but the question needing to be focussed on is what the translator’s ideological and doctrinal commitments are which inform and control this interpretive work?
Then, once more, we point out that these men producing their modern Bible products are changing the words of Scripture to be more politically correct, and this process has left inerrancy behind. Examine their work—even sometimes how they describe it:
The English language changes constantly. An obvious recent change is in the area of gender-inclusive language. This creates problems for modern translators of the ancient biblical text, which was originally written in a male-oriented culture. The translator must respect the nature of the ancient context while also accounting for the concerns of the modern audience. Often the original language itself allows a rendering that is gender-inclusive… There are other occasions where the original language is male-oriented, but not intentionally so.1
This is how these men think, although admittedly they normally avoid stating it so explicitly.
It is undeniable they are intentionally leaving behind meaning components of the Hebrew and Greek words they are translating into English. The most obvious example is the thousands of words modern Bible versions have removed from Scripture in order to protect Scripture against the charge of being “hopelessly patriarchal” or sexist.
Every time Hebrew and Greek male inclusives are removed from the English text of Scripture, the translators have made the decision to leave God’s inspired words behind, substituting what they themselves judge to be His “real,” “true,” or “accurate” meanings behind His words. The typical statement these men would make justifying what they have done is to say, “The meaning is all people, not just men.”
Point out to them that the actual Greek word has a clear male meaning component and they become irritable and dismissive. “That’s not significant.” Or “Gender isn’t meaning.” Or “That’s just how they spoke in ancient patriarchal cultures.” Or that old standby, “All translation is interpretation. You can’t escape it. I would have thought you would know that.”
If you respond, “So you decided to separate the meaning of the word you judge to be essential from the meaning of the word you judge to be nonessential?”
“No! I’ve simply made it clear all people are included—not just men!”
We may suggest this rejoinder:
Uh, sorry. I do get it. You don’t like your scholarly work to be questioned, but it’s obvious the Greek word “adelphoi” translated “brothers” across the New Testament epistles for centuries now has a male meaning component you remove when you change “brothers” to “brothers and sisters” and “siblings.” That’s what I mean when I say you no longer believe the words are inspired. It seems obvious you are choosing one meaning and leaving behind another meaning. You claim you have better communicated God’s meaning behind His Words than if you actually used His Words. Is that not a fair representation of your work? Thus words God inspired have been abandoned for this or that meaning behind the words which you choose to privilege in the receptor language.
And may I be so bold as to add that, among your scholarly colleagues, this makes you look good? Award-winning translator and Princeton prof David Bellos talks a lot about this peer pressure translators face—and often succumb to—in his work, Is that a Fish in Your Ear. Have you read it?
In the past, the most common motivation for separating Scripture’s words and meanings was the denial of the Biblical doctrine of Creation. Men would cop the posture of affirming what they described as the “very deep, spiritual truth” that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But then they would add that God did not create in the way and in the time frame recorded in the first chapters of Genesis. Such men said (and still say) Adam wasn’t the first man, but only a representative name for an early tribe of hominids from which the first man and woman evolved. Then (and still today) they cavil at the specifics of the Fall documented in Genesis. The snake was “mythical,” the woman was “mythical,” the fruit was “mythical,” the woman’s husband was “mythical,” and the spiritual disease he contracted was merely one ancient people group’s method of explaining the problem of evil.
They would say there was death in the Garden prior to the Fall.2 They would pronounce that carbon dating tells us this and the fossil record tells us that. They would lower their voice and share with us that they think this and that. They would suggest to us it might be like this and it might be like that. They wonder this and they wonder that. It’s all so very interesting to them and their colleagues.
The end of the project is never stated or admitted, but when their deconstruction is done, inevitably the Bible has been stripped naked of authority.
Trying to meld God’s Words with scientism’s words, they declare Scripture’s record “mythical” or “poetic”— the pseudo-intellectuals’ euphemism for “wrong.”
Proud of their brilliant suppositions, such men don’t hesitate to assert in each other’s company that they understand Genesis better than the sheep. Yet they’re quick to reassure any of the sheep’s shepherds who might raise a concern that they know how (and will be careful) to phrase things in such a way as to avoid frightening the sheep. Usually, this “way” takes common words and twists them so the sheep think they mean one thing while the scholars’ colleagues know they mean something else.
This normally pacifies pastors who have concerns. After all, if it’s only the fears of the sheep that are problematic, and there’s no serious danger, word games are sufficient to avoid controversy and schism. It’s not uncommon for the pastor himself to take a certain pride in knowing these rules of the game and having his seminary profs throw the occasional wink and nod in his direction.
How do such men decide which of God’s Words are true and which false?
The fact of the words being in Scripture is not sufficient for them to submit to those words. The words must also strike them as accurate, but what they mean by “accurate” is that those words must be helpful, as they see it.
Note carefully that word “helpful.”
Of course they agree “for God so loved the world” is accurate and helpful. But go on and ask them if these words themselves are inspired, or if it’s merely the truths behind these words?
They’ll balk at your question. They’d never want to say it’s the truths behind the words of John 3:16 that are inspired, and not the words themselves. If they put their deconstruction to work on John 3:16, you can bet they’d lose their seminary professorship. They only want to deconstruct God’s Words in Scripture they don’t like, but who on earth dislikes John 3:16?
In fact, when we come right down to it, across the vast majority of Scripture, such men would not want to argue that it is the meanings behind the words of Scripture that are inspired, and not Scripture’s very words. That’s such a blunt-force instrument, and it leaves them so very vulnerable to the accusation that they’re really not orthodox, but neo-orthodox.
Only simpletons fail to se where this is headed. Such men deny all the words of God’s Word are God-breathed so they can depend upon themselves, and not God. So they can be the judge, the wise one. So they can say “yes” to what they want to say “yes” to, and “no” to what they want to say “no” to.
When I pastor such men, I inquire of them whether Scripture’s words are true. Is it still right that “God is true” though “all men are liars”3? Or is this here one of the many places where they believe God’s Words are…
Wrong.
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References| ↑1 | Introduction to the New Living Translation, 1996 edition. | | ↑2 | I listened to James Jordan say this at an Auburn Avenue Conference I attended. | | ↑3 | John 3:33; Psalm 116:11. |
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It is a foundational doctrine of the Church all Christians have confessed with one voice down through history that the Bible is infallible. We believe and confess that when the Apostle Paul declares in 1Timothy 3:16 “all Scripture is inspired by God,” this is an inspired statement made to us by God Himself that His Word is without mistake or error. This is necessarily God’s inspired meaning through the Apostle Paul, making His categorical declaration that all Scripture is “God-breathed”—the literal translation of the Greek word1 rendered above, “inspired.” Thus to this day the “plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture” is the settled expression of any orthodox confession of the Church’s doctrine of the authority and inspiration of Scripture. “Plenary verbal” which is to say “every last word.”
Now though, there have arisen among us a growing number of men who deny “God-breathed” requires God’s actual Words be used in their Bible versions. Among conservative scholars formally signed on to statements of faith that require their affirmation of “inerrancy” as a term of their employment, it has become acceptable to claim God’s Words themselves need not be translated into English because it is not the words He inspired, but the meaning behind His words. These men don’t tell anyone they’ve changed their doctrinal commitment concerning the authority and inspiration of Scripture. They’re still signed on to “inerrancy” formally, since the institutions and publishers who pay them require it, but examine their work and their departure from the church’s historic doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture becomes painfully obvious.
These men from among our own number have removed and replaced thousands of God’s words and phrases that violate the present (but ever-changing) rules of political correctness. They’ve deleted from their modern Bible products/versions Hebrew and Greek words inspired by God because those words make them squirm in discomfort. They are ashamed of Words of God and think nothing of deleting or replacing them with words that don’t embarrass them—words that will go down easier with the people who buy their new Bible versions.
These men have done it now in their NASB20 just as they’d previously done it in their NIV and ESV (as well as all the lesser-known Bible products released over the course of the past forty years). Ten years ago in Daddy Tried, I produced this table showing how Bible scholars and their publishers have spent the past forty years removing the word “father” and its cognates from Scripture:
| Year | Translation | # of father-words | | 1611 | King James Version | 1,720 | | 1973 | Revised Standard Version | 1,830 | | 1984 | New International Version | 1,727 | | 1989 | New Revised Standard Version | 1,185 | | 1996 | New Living Translation | 1,122 | | 2002 | The Message | 1,022 | | 2011 | New International Version | 1,338 |
Likely most readers would expect this of Bible products like the NIV and The Message. We remember the NIV was ground zero of the battle over the neutering of Bibles some of us waged twenty-five years ago, so who’s surprised at its deletion of “father” words?
Meanwhile, the ESV and NASB/Lockman Bible products have a much better reputation and this better reputation is largely deserved—if one is satisfied merely to know the ESV and NASB texts have fewer deletions and replacements of God’s Words in His Word than the Message, NRSV, and NIV.
To say the ESV and NASB20 are better, though, is not much of a commendation when these Bibles have been produced by men and their publishers who also have given in to PC censorship. Thus today, choosing among the Bible versions being marketed has become a matter of finding the lesser evil. The ESV and NASB20 only retain some degree of trust because, as the saying goes, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
There are web pages documenting the ESV’s many departures from God’s Words, but here are some of the more egregious:
ESV deletes “effeminate”1Corinthians 6:9-10 (μαλακοὶ)
KJV: Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
NASB95: Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
ESV: Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.=ESV changes “sons” to “people”Exodus 3:14 (בֵּן)
NASB95: God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
ESV: God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”ESV changes “men” to “humans”1Corinthians 15:39 (ἀνθρώπων)
KJV: All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.
NASB95: All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish.
ESV: For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.ESV deletes “old wives'”1Timothy 4:7 (γραώδεις)
KJV: But refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.
NKJV: But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness.
ESV: Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness.
Indicative of the growing hostility today to the male of the species and the desire of Bible scholars and publishers to placate that hostility, the words “man” and “men” are used in the ESV 496 times fewer than they’re used in the NASB95 and 924 times fewer than they’re used in the KJV. Only simpletons could fail to understand what’s going on here. The scholars possessing the terminal degree would multiply arguments and words justifying their removal of “man” and “men,” but even they know full well what’s going on because they’re the ones doing it. They want it themselves and they know mtheir customers want it, too.
Of course, when they delete and replace words God inspired, they never admit they’ve deleted and replaced words God inspired. The ad copy they write for their present and prospective customers is always the same: “Our Bible is absolutely and certainly and completely accurate.” “Accuracy is what we are and always have been about.” “We have no higher commitment than accuracy!”
These scholars and their Bible publishers say the same things:
Our Bible is absolutely and certainly and completely faithful to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words. Trust us. We believe in giving our readers the very words God inspired. We would never ever do otherwise, and that’s why you can trust us. That’s why you should buy our new Bible translation which is, we remind you once more, completely accurate and completely faithful to the literal Greek and Hebrew words, the very words inspired by God.
Take, for instance, the ad copy for the recent NASB20:
[The purpose of our NASB20 is] to increase accuracy… The result is an accurate translation… Accuracy will always and forever be the unmovable cornerstone of our translation philosophy. (Our Bible is) accurate… [Our] translation approach… is accurate and precise.
The NASB has been produced with the conviction that the words of Scripture, as originally penned in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, are inspired by God. Therefore every word must be accurate and precise… these words are the living and eternal Word of God… We firmly believe the NASB provides an accurate and precise English translation… The NASB was translated with accuracy and precision to ensure every reader is experiencing an incredibly accurate translation from the original languages.
The NASB 2020 …further improves accuracy… These refinements maintain faithful accuracy to the original texts…
[In our NASB, we] accurately translate the inspired Word of God from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts into modern English… enabl[ing] the reader to study Scripture in its most literal format
[T]the literalness of the original manuscripts is not sacrificed. (emphasis added)
From Bibles such as the New International Version and English Standard Version released the past couple of decades to the New American Standard Bible (2020) and most recent Legacy Standard Bible (2021) released in the past two years, all these Bibles have the same ad copy claiming the same highest view of Scripture and the same highest accuracy. But remember Emerson’s dictum, “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” How do they justify their claims that their highest commitment is to the original Hebrew and Greek words inspired by God? Have Bible scholars exchanged some secret handshake and taken some secret oath of submission to the club of deconstructionists holed up in higher ed’s English lit and philosophy departments?
But more importantly, why does the Church not demonstrate any ability to expose and oppose the lies of higher education infiltrating Her Own faith and practice? Why does the Church continue pouring money in the coffers of these men and their publishers, refusing to say a simple “no” to their PC deconstructions of Scripture?
The man who affirms that Scripture is “God-breathed” while denying it is God’s Words themselves that are “God-breathed” is the man who wants the appearance of godliness while denying the power thereof.
Men who separate the infallibility of God’s Word from the infallibility of God’s Words do so for reasons we’re all well aware of. Only a few of us have refused to adopt the neutered PC language mandated by worldlings. Christians hide among the worldlings, adopting their words and phrases, changing the way we speak and write so that we leave behind those truths of God we’re uncomfortable with. Those words the authors of Scripture and the God Who inspired them got wrong. Those words the authors of Scripture and the God Who inspired them were unaware would be offensive to us today. Those words the authors of Scripture and the God Who inspired them used simply because they weren’t able to see how, two-thousand and more years later, the world would be extremely concerned—or should we say militantly concerned—about slavery and racism and sexism and cisgenderism and speciesism and anti-Semitism and… But no, I’ve wearied myself and will stop here. There’s no end to it.
So Scripture is in the hands now of insecure men scurrying about trying to clean up after God and His Apostles. And yes, most certainly, this work requires that we separate God’s words from God’s meanings, thereby also separating the God-breathededness and man-breathedness of Scripture.
We’re all PC now. Who among us still uses “men” to refer to any mixed-sex group? God named our race “adam” or “man.” God did not name our race “eve” or “woman.” God did not name our race “adameve” or “eveadam,” “manwoman” or “womanman.” And God certainly never named our race “persons” or “humans.”
The name God gave our race has an explicit, easily recognizable semantic meaning component that is male, and that is what all of us now gag, silence, delete, forget, and refuse to teach our children. In other words, these men who dare to remove God’s Words from His Word only do so to appease and please us, their customers.
After all, we’ve been doing so ourselves for decades, now—and requiring it of our preachers and teachers, also. So I guess it would be accurate to say we have the Bibles we want. The Bibles we have demanded our Sorbonnists produce for us. The Bibles we want our publishers to keep printing and selling us.
(To be continued.)
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References| ↑1 | θεόπνευστος |
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What are the top 25 movies we’ve ever done on this podcast? We’re gonna do this every year. It will be fun.
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In this episode, we uncover the awful truth—thanks to the tireless work of the Gospel Coalition—that mansplaining is happening in conservative pulpits. Other awful man-related truths are also uncovered about the church. Yes, this one was recorded in December, but we had a Holi-delay! Listen to find out more!
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Your hosts talk about the continuing expansion of assisted suicide programs in Canada—the news of widespread riots and unrest in China—the Balenciaga scandal—and lots more.
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A brother looked to by reformedish people for wisdom in how to live and think in our pagan culture just sent his supporters his Christmas letter with three points.
Dad used to say there were only three articles in the Reader’s Digest:
- Oh, the wonder of it!
- Oh, the horror of it! And just
- oh…
The first and major part of his letter was a well-documented enumeration of all the horrors of our cultural degeneracy which was sure to inspire disgust in the hearts of conservative supporters. Finishing it, we were relieved to know there was someone just as disgusted out there as we are. We’re grateful, though, that he is educated and articulate.
The third (ending) part of his letter was “Oh, the wonder of it!” You can’t leave the congregation with bad news. He ended his letter by announcing that Christmas is here and isn’t it wonderful everyone is celebrating it!
So what was the middle of the letter?
just oh
Short and sweet, he gave a few helpful pointers for constituents feeling some need to take the Gospel into our sexually debauched world he’d just described so thoroughly.
His pointers:
- In denouncing (sic) gay ideology, Christians must find a discourse that avoids emotionalism, moralism, hatred or bigotry
- no contempt for gay individuals
- [the] homosexual or trans-person deserves respect and love
- the] homosexual or trans-person [is] a unique and complex fellow human being
- every human being …is tainted by sin
- many have known much suffering and hurt …from heartless, dismissive expressions of judgment from misguided believers
- We must love our homosexual friends
- Millennial Christians are leaving the church in droves over this issue
- we need to hear not a judgmental, but a holistic, ontological account of what the Bible says about sexuality
What’s wrong with this?
Start with the obvious. It’s a gospel message that is utterly unobjectionable.
But when across Scripture and Church history have any Gospel proclamations been unobjectionable? Noah before the flood? Moses at the end of Deuteronomy? Nathan when he preached to King David? Isaiah whose Gospel message the Apostle Paul tells us was “very bold.” Amos? Hosea? Malachi? John the Baptist? Jesus? The Apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost? The Apostle Paul to the Areopagus? The Apostle John to the Seven Churches? Cyprian? Augustine? Peter Waldo? Martin Luther preaching in St. Mary’s? John Calvin? John Knox? George Whitefield? Billy Graham? Bill Hybels? Rick Warren? Tim Keller? Andy Stanley?
Uh, wait a second. I think I went off-track there. Backup. Maybe something’s happened to our Gospel preaching recently.
What is it?
There’s no enemy. Never any enemy.
But yeah, there certainly is evil, although no one’s ever responsible for it.
“Gay” is an “ideology,” but never any specific man. Gay is an evil out there, but without flesh and bones. Without names and personal sin. Just words.
Those wicked, awful, destructive “ideologies” take men captive and we all see and agree about the horrors those ideologies have caused in the lives of our loved ones and neighbors. But make sure you reserve your anger and indignation for the ideologies—not any man or woman. Wicked ideologies taking souls captive and sending them to Hell are spontaneous combustions. No one is responsible for them. No one is wicked. No one is a false shepherd. Certainly no one in the Church caused any of it. Certainly I’m not responsible for it through the way I present my morality plays each month, then tell my readers to cool it and just love all the victims of this horrible, no-good, very bad ideology.
He’d done such a good job describing the wickedness of that horrible gay ideology that he needed to dampen down the anger his long first section naturally aroused. He needed to remove any possibility of readers taking the horror seriously and preaching God’s “no” to anyone in particular. Preaching sin and judgement with authority was what Jesus did, but we’re not Jesus. Don’t you ever forget that.
So, for starters, no “emotionalism.”
Whatever that is…
Next, no “moralism.” Meaning no Westminsterian exposition of the Seventh Commandment trusting it to serve as the schoolmaster leading souls to the Gospel of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
No “moralism.” Doesn’t that say it all about the impotence of the preaching of the conservative Protestant church in the Western World today?
Then, following the condemnation of “moralism,” he condemns “hatred” and “bigotry.” Let the reader understand the close association of these three boogeymen. It is the man who preaches the moralism of the Seventh Commandment, calling for the repentance of the souls committed to the LGBTQ perversions, who must be warned against “hatred” and “bigotry.” That’s why he does it. The moralizing naturally issues from his constituents’ hatred and bigotry. Moralism always is birthed by hate and bigotry.
Do any of us miss where all this stuff is headed?
There is to be “no contempt for gay individuals.”
Whew! Glad he said that because his supporters tend to be contemptuous of gay individuals, so they need his warning.
The “homosexual” and “trans-person deserves respect and love.”
Whew, glad he reminded his supporters to love and respect homosexuals and trans-persons because they tend to diss and hate those types of people.
Remember that the “homosexual” and “trans-person” is “a unique and complex fellow human being.”
Whew, so glad he said this! His readers do tend to be rigid and simplistic in their moralistic condemnations of others’ behaviors. They treat them like animals, not fellow human beings. Maybe his warning will help them begin to think deeply about sinners. Maybe he can get them to have some empathy.
So then:
- every human being …is tainted by sin
- many have known much suffering and hurt …from heartless, dismissive expressions of judgment from misguided believers
Yes, sinners don’t exist today. There’s no rebellion against God. They’re simply victims.
Now then, the inevitable, “We must love our homosexual friends.”
Not love them by preaching the Seventh Commandment, Leviticus, Romans 1, 1Corinthians, and 1Timothy, calling them to repentance. That would be moralism.
The ending of our brother’s pointers for constituents agreeing with his “Oh, the horror of it” documentations and warnings of our culture’s sexual debauchery are these final two warnings:
- Millennial Christians are leaving the church in droves over this issue
- we need to hear not a judgmental, but a holistic, ontological account of what the Bible says about sexuality
The church is in danger of losing our children. They’re leaving in “droves!”
Listen up! We must not alienate our kids by being judgmental. Rather, we must be holistic. We must do our ontological explications of Biblical sexuality.
The humble man thinks to himself, “Ontological? That’s deep. That’s above my pay grade. I’ll leave it to this man who declares this need. He’s educated. He’s articulate. He knows what ‘ontological’ means. Actually, I’m so relieved for him to do the work because he’s articulate and I know he’s on our side. I’ll just sit by and await his deep ontological explication of what the Bible says about sexuality.”
So the job is finished. No reader in his right mind will try to say anything at all. Given all the dangers he’s warned them against, his supporters will leave the minefield alone. They’ll be happy to send his excellency money to continue his good work.
Who wants to run the risk of being a moralist, a hater, a bigot?
We may be inclined to welcome such letters, but do the letter’s warnings bear any resemblance to what we read in Scripture? Does Scripture aim to leave us in a paralysis of self-doubt? Does it intimidate us such that we leave Christian confession and Gospel proclamation to experts schooled in the nuances of holism and ontology?
Let us trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to work through us simpletons. Let us call men and women to repentance and faith through our simple and direct proclamation of the Seventh Commandment as well as all the New Testaments texts which build on it. Let us warn sinners of the coming judgment. Let us use the words of Scripture:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. – 1Corinthians 6:9-10
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(A modern Christmas story by Joe Bayly, printed in The Gospel Blimp (and other parables.)
He arrived at Chicago’s O’Hare airport onTWA flight 801 from Israel. The plane was two hours late, but the delay made little difference, since there was no one to meet him. It was December 23, a Friday afternoon. The terminal building pulsed with people coming home for Christmas, relatives meeting people coming home, businessmen and students trying to get on flights for Cleveland and New York, Seattle and Atlanta, so they could be home for the holidays.
The Israeli had gone through immigration and customs in New York. He had no baggage, only a small airline bag with a broken zipper. Christmas carols issued from concealed speakers the length of a long corridor into the main building, interrupted only by announcements of arriving flights, departing flights, boarding areas now open, passengers being paged. He walked down the corridor listening, watching people.
In the main terminal building a massive, white-flocked Christmas tree, decorated with golden balls, stood in a corner beyond the telephone booths and rows of seats. He turned aside to examine the tree, then stepped onto an escalator marked “Down to Baggage and Ground Transportation.”
“Excuse me,” he said to a pretty girl at the Avis counter, “can you tell me how to get to Wheaton, Illinois?”
“Easiest way is to rent an Avis car and drive there,” she replied. “Only thing, we don’t have any available. I’m sorry. Unless you have a reservation, that is. If you don’t, you might try Number One over there.”
“Thank you, but I don’t drive. Is there a bus?”
“I don’t think so. You’ll have to take a cab.”
He repeated his question to aman in uniformwho stood near the door of the terminal, explaining that he didn’t think he had enough money for a cab.
“Take the bus to the Loop,” the man said. “Get off at the Palmer House, walk back to State Street, down State to Madison—get that? On Madison, get a bus to the Chicago and Northwestern Station. You can get a train there forWheaton. Bus is loading now.”
The young Israeli murmured his thanks and walked outside the terminal building. He shivered as the sharp wind whipped through his light topcoat. It was snowing.
“Please tell me when we get to the Palmer House,” he asked the bus driver.
“First stop,” the driver said.
The bus cruised down the expressway. Lights and signs and thousands of cars. Trucks and shopping centers and Christmas trees and lights. Signboards in green and red, “Merry Christmas” in letters two feet high.
“Palmer House,” the driver called.
The Israeli left the warm bus. A blast of cold air off the lake hit him as he stepped down to the sidewalk. His teeth chattered; he turned the ineffectual collar of his coat up around his neck. At the corner he hesitated, then stopped to look at the jewels and expensive ornaments in Peacock’s window. Then he hurried on, after asking a policeman which direction Madison Street was. Almost running because of the cold wind and driving snow, he covered the three blocks to the other bus quickly. It was crowded; he stood between an elderly woman who kept sneezing into the elbow of her ragged coat, and a teenage boy, his arms full of packages.
At the Chicago and Northwestern Station he bought a ticket to Wheaton, then sat in the waiting room for half an hour. Once he went over to the newsstand to buy a paper. The front page had stories about war, politics, and crime; a photograph of a wan child with leukemia, slumped in a wheelchair beside a smiling actress and a Christmas tree at Children’s Hospital; a reminder of “One Shopping Day Left Before Christmas.”
Finally he boarded the train. It was so hot inside, and he was so tired from his trip,which had started the previous day in the Middle East, that he fell asleep.
About an hour later the conductor shook him awake. “You want to get off at Wheaton, this is it.”
The young Israeli stepped down onto the snow-covered station platform. He almost fell as his foot slipped on the smooth surface.
“Careful there, young fellow.” The conductor clutched his arm.
He crossed the tracks to the sidewalk. As he looked hesitantly in both directions, a young woman smiled at him. She was leaning against a green Vega.
“Hi,” she called.
“Hello,” he answered. “So this isWheaton.”
“It is, for better or for worse.”
“Is there any worse?”
“Yes. Me, for instance. You look cold.Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It’s darned cold talking out here. How about coming up to my apartment?
It’s only a few blocks over—I’ll drive you.”
“Thank you. Do you live with your mother or someone?”
“No, I live alone. Say, are you from around here? Or maybe Glen Ellyn? I saw you get off the train.”
“I’m from Israel.”
“You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m Jewish. And you’re Mary.”
“How did you know? Did someone tell you about me?” An edge of belligerence showed in her voice.
“You had to be Mary.”
“What do you mean, I had to be Mary? Why couldn’t I be Judy or Jean or Connie?”
“Because you’re Mary.”
“If you’re from Israel, you’re a long way from home. Do you have any friends here? I mean, is anyone expecting you?”
“Nobody’s expecting me. And I haven’t a place to stay, so I’m in the market for one.”
“You can stay with me for a few days.”
“Thank you, Mary. Any other suggestions?”
“I mean it. It’ll be nice having company over for Christmas. You won’t put me out.”
“Mary, I do appreciate your invitation, I do. But are there any other possibilities?”
“Well, there’s a house over near my apartment building, where the lady takes roomers. She’s really old—and safe. Maybe she’d have a room for you.”
“Would you drive me there so I can find out?”
“Sure. Get in the car—you must be freezing.”
“I am. This coat was made for Jerusalem, not Chicago.”
“Or Wheaton. This is a cold place too.”
The elderly lady had a room, which the Israeli took. He had barely enough money for one week’s rent.
Mary saw him count out the bills, and saw how little was left in his wallet.
“Look,” she said, “I just got paid. Let me give you something to tide you over.”
“Mary, you’re generous. I don’t think I’ll need it, though. After all, I’ll only be here over Christmas.”
“Well, as long as you don’t forget that I’m ready to help you—no strings attached.”
“No strings attached.”
“Hey, it’s almost seven o’clock and I haven’t eaten yet.”
“We had a big meal on the plane from New York, so I’m not hungry.”
“Good. In that case I know where we can get enough to eat without having to pay for it. This Christian publishing company is having a sort of Christmas open house this evening. The public’s invited to see their new building.We can go and fill up on cookies and punch.”
“Sounds interesting. Let’s go.”
Mary drove several miles, then parked her car in the parking lot of a rather imposing one-story building.
“Look here,” she said as they closed the car doors, “we don’t have to stay very long.”
“All right, Mary. By the way, what are those other buildings?”
“That one’s Christian Youth headquarters, the next one’s Sunday School, the one down the road there is Congo Missions. Let’s go in out of the cold.”
Inside the building, a table was placed in front of a Christmas tree. The tree was decorated with hundreds of little Bibles, about the size of a child’s hand, hanging from the branches. The table was covered with a white cloth and decorated with holly. A poinsettia plant in the center was surrounded by sandwiches, Christmas cookies, a silver coffee service, plates, cups, napkins, and spoons. An empty punch bowl stood at one end of the table.
“I’m sorry we’ve run out of punch,” said the lady seated at the other end of the table. “May I pour you some coffee?”
“Yes, please.” Mary extended her hand for the cup.
“Could you get me some water, please?” asked the young Israeli. “Maybe just fill up the punch bowl.”
“Oh, we won’t need to do that,” the lady replied. “That many people won’t be wanting water tonight.”
“Why don’t you do like he says?”Mary asked. “Maybe he’s really thirsty. Or maybe some other people will be. It’s hot in here, you know. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“Certainly,” the lady said. “Bob, could you come here a moment? Will you please fill the punch bowl up with water?”
Bob returned after several minutes, carrying the large bowl awkwardly because of its weight. “Strangest thing happened,” he said in an excited voice. “When I took it out in the kitchen it was empty, except for some ice. But when I turned the faucet on, and began filling the bowl, it wasn’t like water at all. Look, it’s dark red.”
“Let’s have a taste.”
“I can’t believe it. I really can’t. There’s—yes, I’m sure it’s wine in that punch bowl. Bob, tell us the truth.What really happened?”
“Just like I said. When the water from the kitchen faucet ran into the punch bowl, it turned to what’s in there now. Honest it did.”
“I haven’t tasted that stuff in fifteen years, not since I was saved. But there’s no doubt about it—that’s wine, and it’s the best.”
“Bob, will you please take it back out in the kitchen and pour it down the drain?We can’t have word get around that we served an alcoholic beverage here at our open house.”
“I’m sorry about what’s happened, Sir,” she said to the Israeli. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No, thank you. I’ll just have some of these sandwiches and cookies.”
A few minutes later, Mary suggested they leave. And they did.
“That was great,” she said as they drove away in her car. “I don’t know how you did it, but it was just great.”
“I’m tired—I guess it must be the time change form Israel to here. You won’t mind driving me back to my room now?”
“Of course not. And I won’t even try to get you to stop at my apartment first.”
Next morning the young Israeli slept late. When he left the house, he saw Mary waiting in her car at the corner. It had snowed all night, and the heavy flakes were still coming down.
“How long have you been waiting here?” he asked as he opened the car door.
“Oh, ten—maybe fifteen minutes. That’s all.”
“It would have taken a lot longer than that for the windshield to get this covered with snow.” As he sat down in the warm car, he brushed the snow from his thin topcoat.
“Hey, I have something for you,” she said.
“What is it, Mary? Say, will you please turn that radio down? I can hardly hear you, and I feel as if I have to shout to make myself heard.”
“Sure. That’s WLS, by the way. Here’s what I got for you.”
“A heavy coat and earmuffs! Mary,Mary. You knew how cold I was, and you bought me some warm clothes. Do you mind if I put them on right now?”
“I’ll mind if you don’t.”
As they sat at breakfast in a small restaurant, Mary and the Israeli were silent for a long time. Finally the Israeli spoke.
“Mary, you’re sick of it, aren’t you?”
“Up to here.” She put her hand to her mouth.
“Things will be different.”
“They already are. I know you now. Please stay for a while.”
“Not for long.”
“Long enough to make sure the change is permanent?”
“It will be. I don’t need to stay around here for that, Mary.”
“Long enough to change this town?”
“No, I can’t stay that long. Just until tomorrow night.”
“Christmas night.”
“Christmas night. Then I must leave.”
“It’s funny, having you here in Wheaton for Christmas. And funnier that I’m the only one who knows you’re here.”
“You were there at the Northwestern station to meet me.”
“Am I glad I was!”
“Let’s finish our coffee and leave.”
“Look, I have to work this afternoon. You take my car. You can drop me off, and maybe pick me up around six o’clock. Or I can walk home. It’s not far. But you can use my car to get around in today.”
“I don’t drive. Thanks anyway, Mary. But I’ll manage without transportation today. Especially with this warm coat.” He smiled at her.
“Do you like it? I hoped you would. Now I’ll have to get to work. How about meeting me for supper tonight? I’ll stop by your house for you at six-thirty or seven. Then later we can go to the Christmas Eve service at church. I haven’t been there for a while, but I’d like to go again.”
“Fine, Mary. I’ll be looking for you around six-thirty.”
He walked all over town that afternoon, stopping at the county jail, a convalescent home, and the church parsonage.
A middle-aged, worried-looking woman answered the door at the parsonage.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’m a stranger here, from Israel. I thought I’d stop by to meet the pastor.”
“He’s very busy today—the day before Christmas, you know, and Christmas on a Sunday this year. But step inside. I’ll call him.”
He waited inside the door for several minutes. Then the pastor came downstairs with his wife.
“James, this is a man from Israel who wants to meet you. I told him how busy you are this afternoon.”
“Never too busy to meet one of the Lord’s people. Welcome!” He gripped the younger man’s hand. “Are you here for long?”
“Just through Christmas. I’ll leave tomorrow night.”
“Well, it’s great to meet you. Will you be in church tomorrow? We’re especially interested in Israel—our church supports two missionaries there. Israel General Mission. Know it?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“‘To the Jew first,’ I always say. Maybe you’d share something with us at our morning service tomorrow. Our missionary conference is coming up in February and it won’t hurt a bit to have a word about Israel and missions on Christmas Sunday morning.”
“I’ll be glad to speak.”
“Just briefly, you understand. Five minutes at the most. We’ll really be pushed for time tomorrow—special music, you know. Probably you have the same problem with time back home in Israel.”
“Perhaps things are a little more simple there. Yes, I’ll stick to the five minutes.”
“Good. The Lord bless you. Is it still snowing out? I’ll see you tomorrow—don’t trip on the raised sill.”
The Israeli returned to his room in the house where he was staying.
A little after six-thirty he saw the green Vega parked in front of the house. He heard a light sound of the horn as he went downstairs, pulling on his new, warm coat. Mary leaned over to open the door. “It’s great to see you again. I thought the afternoon would never end.”
“I guess my afternoon went quickly because I did so much walking and saw so many different people. But I’m certainly glad to see you again,Mary.”
“Look, is it all right with you if we go up to my apartment to eat?”
Before he could answer, she added, “There will be other people there, friends of mine.”
“I’d like nothing better.”
“But we’ll probably get talking and won’t get to the Christmas Eve service at church. In fact, these friends of mine wouldn’t go anyway.They’re not the church kind. They’re like me—like I was before I met you.”
“Supper with you and your friends sounds a lot more interesting—and worthwhile—than sitting through a Christmas Eve service.”
“Do you really mean it? I was afraid you’d be like the rest—oh, that wasn’t a kind thing to say. I’ve got so much to learn.”
By now they were climbing the stairs to the second-floor apartment.
From inside the door came sounds of the Living Dead.
“It’ll be noisy,”Mary said as she opened the door. “Hi,” she called out to the six or seven forms sprawled on chairs and on the floor. “Turn that record player down, someone. I want you all to meet my new friend. I’ve only known him one day, but in my whole life nobody has ever known me so well. He’s from Israel.”
“Welcome, Israeli. How are the Arabs?”
“Suffering, as they have for centuries. Like my own people.”
“We’ll eat soon, gang,”Mary called as she went into the tiny kitchen. She turned toward the Israeli, “Come and help me.”
Before long, spaghetti was overflowing a large bowl, and long loaves of bread, buttered and flavored with garlic, were placed on the table next to a bowl of green salad. The table had no cloth on it. Paper plates and red paper napkins were set out, with stainless steel utensils.
When the food was on the table, Mary announced, “Before we eat, my Israeli friend will pray.”
There was a whisper, “Mary has a new hang-up.”
The Israeli stood in the kitchen doorway. “Father,” he said, “I thank You for this spaghetti and for Mary’s kindness to us all. Make Your name glorious in this room tonight.”
No one sat at the table. They ate from their laps, or placed their plates on the floor, where they sat or reclined. At first the music was so loud it was hard to talk, except to one other person. But as they were finishing the meal, Mary turned down the volume. Then the whole group began to discuss war and peace, sex and drugs, life, race (two of them were black),Camus and Christmas.
The Israeli listened most of the time, although he asked a lot of questions. His occasional comments were brief. He also told several stories.
As the evening passed, they began to ask him questions. His answers were direct, without pressure.
At midnight Mary said, “Merry Christmas, Israeli! Merry Christmas, everyone!”
Soon afterward the guests began to leave. The Israeli was the last to go.
“Thanks for a most enjoyable Christmas Eve, Mary. And thank you for introducing me to your friends. They’re an interesting group, each one different.”
“Thank you for coming. May I go to church with you tomorrow?”
“Of course. I was hoping you would.”
“I’ll stop at your house about ten-thirty.”
“Fine. Good night, Mary.”
He walked through the snow—by now almost to his knees—to the house where he was staying. Because most of the sidewalks were not yet shoveled, he walked in the street, where cars had smoothed some narrow tracks. In his room he undressed, then stood by the window for a moment, shivering in the darkness, looking at the silent snow. He prayed, “Father, I thank You that You hear me. I thank You that things shall not always be as they were that night and as they are this night. Cover earth with righteousness and justice and love as snow covers all things tonight.”
He slept.
The blinding sunlight of Christmas morning awoke him, reflecting whiteness all around. From his airline bag he removed an orange, which he peeled and ate.
Just before ten-thirty,Mary came.The green Vega was filled with people who had been at her apartment the previous evening—all except one couple, who rode a motorcycle behind Mary’s car. A snowplow had partially cleared the street.
“Merry Christmas, Israeli!” they all shouted as he came out of the house.
He smiled—a pleased, happy smile. “Thank you, friends. And Merry Christmas to all of you. I’m surprised to see you, but I’m glad you’re going to the service with Mary and me.”
“Mary didn’t twist our arms, either,” one said. “Yesterday she’d have had to, and we still wouldn’t have gone. The fact is, she wouldn’t have gone herself, before yesterday. But now we’ve met you ourselves, and we know you, so we want to go.”
At the church, which was already almost full, an usher led them up to a partially empty pew at the very front. They were an odd assortment: miniskirted, leather coated, long haired, one bearded, two black, and the rest white. And the Israeli, who sat between Mary and a young black man.
The service began with the doxology and Apostles’ Creed. Carols sung by the congregation, “O Holy Night” by the combined choirs, the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel followed. Next the offering. While the ushers were taking it, and the organ was playing, the pastor looked thoughtfully down at the front pew, at the Israeli and the group of young men and women around him.
After the offering, the children’s choir sang “Silent Night.”
The sermon followed. It was a carefully prepared, almost exhaustive survey of the Old Testament prophetic passages that predicted Christ’s advent. A prayer, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and the benediction ended the service.
Mary’s little group of friends surrounded the Israeli as they walked behind the slow-moving group out the center aisle. The young black man turned to him. “Sir, could I talk to you before you leave town? Mary says you’re heading back down today.”
“Of course.We’ll find a quiet place.”
At the door, the pastor smiled as he shook their hands. “I hope you all felt welcome among us. And you, my friend,” taking the Israeli’s hand, “I’m sorry there just wasn’t time in the service for a word from you. But Christmas morning, you know—people are so anxious for the service to end promptly at twelve so they can get home to their family celebrations. I hope you understand.”
“I do,” said the Israeli.
Mary spoke to the pastor. “You missed something. We know, because we’ve been listening to him.”
“Well, Merry Christmas,” said the pastor, turning from them to greet the last ones to leave.
They went back to Mary’s apartment for a bacon-and-eggs lunch. They talked all afternoon.
Around five o’clock Mary drove the Israeli to O’Hare airport. Everybody went. This time the motorcycle, with its two riders, led the way.
He left for Israel on TWA flight 802.
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One man commented under a post that he considered the discipline of lifting hands and kneeling in prayer to be unworthy of reformed worship. Likely these things are a sort of pietistic emotional manipulation? To which I respond. First, this hypothetical exchange:
Tim Doe: “So lifting hands is wrong? Why? Who said so?”
John Doe: “Well, anyone can see it’s Pentecostals and charismatics who do that sort of thing! Who wants to be mistaken for a Pentecostal?”
Tim Doe: “So we don’t do it because we don’t want to have anyone think we’re Pentecostals. Is that it?”
John Doe: “Well, no. That’s not the only reason. There are lots of reasons, but I can’t spend all day telling you something you should already know. I don’t want to argue with you, but no self-respecting, cerebral Presbyterian would ever lift his hands in prayer.”
Tim Doe: “But I wasn’t arguing. I was only trying to find out where it says in the Bible—or for that matter, where Calvin or other reformers say it’s wrong to lift our hands in prayer or kneel in worship.”
Reformed men need to realize the reason charismatics lift their hands and kneel in worship while modern presbyterians don’t is that somehow, somewhere, we lost our way so that, now, we think we’re honoring Scripture and our spiritual fathers when we’re directly contradicting them.
Tim Doe: Here’s why we ask our worship leaders to urge the brethren, by the mercies of God, to present their bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, as our spiritual service of worship.
John Doe: “Bodies? Who said ‘bodies?’ The Bible teaches us to worship God ‘in spirit and in truth.’ What do bodies have to do with it?”
With that preface, here is Calvin:
The inward attitude certainly holds first place in prayer, but outward signs, kneeling, uncovering the head, lifting up the hands, have a twofold use. The first is that we may employ all our members for the glory and worship of God; secondly, that we are, so to speak, jolted out of our laziness by this help. There is also a third use in solemn and public prayer, because in this way the sons of God profess their piety, and they inflame each other with reverence of God. But just as the lifting up of the hands is a symbol of confidence and longing, so in order to show our humility, we fall down on our knees. (John Calvin, Commentary on Acts 20:36)
And again:
Lifting up pure hands As if he had said, “Provided that it be accompanied by a good conscience, there will be nothing to prevent all the nations from calling upon God everywhere. But he has employed the sign instead of the reality, for “pure hands” are the expressions of a pure heart; just as, on the contrary, Isaiah rebukes the Jews for lifting up “bloody hands,” when he attacks their cruelty. (Isaiah 1:15.) Besides, this attitude has been generally used in worship during all ages; for it is a feeling which nature has implanted in us, when we ask God, to look upwards, and has always been so strong, that even idolaters themselves, although in other respects they make a god of images of wood and stone, still retained the custom of lifting up their hands to heaven. Let us therefore learn that the attitude is in accordance with true godliness, provided that it be attended by the corresponding truth which is represented by it, namely, that, having been informed that we ought to seek God in heaven, first, we should form no conception of Him that is earthly or carnal; and, secondly, that we should lay aside carnal affections, so that nothing may prevent our hearts from rising above the world. (John Calvin, Commentary on 1Timothy 2:8)
And again, Calvin:
As for bodily gestures customarily observed in praying, such as kneeling and uncovering the head, they are exercises whereby we try to rise to a greater reverence for God. (John Calvin, Institutes, III.20.33)
And again, Calvin:
Let us take, for example, kneeling when solemn prayers are being said. The question is whether it is a human tradition, which any man may lawfully repudiate or neglect. I say that it is human, as it is also divine. It is of God in so far as it is a part of that decorum whose care and observance the apostle has commended to us. But it is of men in so far as it specifically designates what had in general been suggested rather than explicitly stated. (John Calvin, Institutes, IV.10.30)
Once more, Calvin:
…nothing prohibits a man who cannot bend his knees because of disease from standing to pray. (John Calvin, Institutes, IV.10.31)
After posting the above, a brother wrote:
It sounds like you all are saying that those who raise their hands in worship are somehow more spiritual than those who don’t. At the very least the people who raise their hands are portrayed here as somehow more mature than the counterparts who don’t. Can you not be a Pharisee if you worship with your hands raised or sitting quietly in the pew? It is the prayer of a righteous man that avails much, not necessarily the prayer of the man with upraised hands, if you get my drift.
What I’m saying is not that those who raise their hands, kneel, and stand in corporate worship are more spiritual, but that raising of hands, kneeling, and standing is obedient to Scripture, taught and practiced by the Reformers, gives glory to God, and is a needed discipline for our souls. Note that word “discipline.”
I suppose such statements could be construed as making the case that those who have repented of being disembodied brains in worship are more spiritual. But if so, teaching and calling others to practice almost anything in worship—or really, in any part of life—could equally be construed as spiritual pride.
As to whether or not those who follow Scripture and the Reformers by bringing bodily disciplines back into worship think themselves more mature because of it, I can’t see how that could be the conclusion of any man of good will having read this discussion.
Speaking for myself, every time—and I mean, every single time—I lift my hands in worship, I feel quite immature and childish. Then I remember this is a discipline, and I am glad my hands are lifted. I remember our Lord warned us if we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, our faith must be childlike.
As to Phariseeism, it never dies and no one holds a corner on it.
Meanwhile, keep in mind that the improper use of a tool does not invalidate its proper use. The question isn’t whether preaching or prayer or standing or kneeling or lifting hands can be abused in worship, but whether these are proper disciplines during worship.
The reformers said so. We believe they’re right.
Should we reserve these bodily disciplines for the privacy of the home? Should we not incorporate them in worship lest we call attention to ourselves?
No. It’s time to reverse this equation. Maybe we can neglect our bodies at home, where we don’t have worship leaders. But we ought not be allowed to do so at church where the elders lead us and know our weaknesses. Hasten the day when the man who doesn’t kneel and lift his hands and stand during worship will call attention to his own rebellion and pride in the presence of the assembly of the people of God.
Pride is the besetting sin of our reformed hearts. What excellent discipline of our laziness and pride for us to stand, kneel, and lift hands in a childlike gesture to our Heavenly Father.
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In which we talk Scrooge (1935), Mickey’s Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol (1984), and Spirited for some reason. Also thoughts on other Christmas Carol adaptations.
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Movies have a knack for making us sympathetic to monsters—not to mention thieves, adulterers, and murderers. But how much sympathy for a monster is too much? The Sanity crew talks about a clip from the 1931 Frankenstein and ask some hard questions!
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As we continue our December Sanity Shelves segment, our heroes talk about even more books that we’re enjoying! Books on… heartburn! The way your mind works! Weird mysteries surrounding ancient civilizations! Paleontology and creationism! There’s something here for everyone.
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What’s this?! Guillermo del Toro turned Pinocchio into a dark fable about fascism or something? Huuuuuuuuuh???!!??!?!?
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Ho ho ho!
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Please do support us here! If you want to see us continue, we need your help this Christmas!
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Nathan talks about suspense in movies like The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock.
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Our heroes talk about books they’ve been reading, such as Extreme Ownership, Revolutionary Summer, Lord Peter Wimsey novels, and more! Plus they end up talking about how to read and whether to listen!
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Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? – Romans 2:4
(Tenth in a series.)
When Evelyn Jerred resigned her eldership at Rosedale Presbyterian Church in Cambria, Wisconsin, although it wasn’t talked about this way at the time, there was no doubt Don and Evelyn had concluded that woman elders were a violation of the Word of God. The teaching of Scripture was what they asked about prior to Evelyn’s resignation of her office. Yet, from inside church and family life, it became clear their action was as much a statement of their growing trust and submission to God’s Word as it was their growing conviction concerning sexuality and authority.
The reader will recall the practice of woman elders in our two yoked mainline congregations was nothing new. Already then in the early eighties, it had been in place for a generation or two and was uncontroversial. In fact, even Evelyn’s resignation didn’t make our practice of woman elders controversial in either congregation. Had the women of the church been asked why Evelyn resigned, most of them would have assumed personal reasons that weren’t their business, and those who did know it was a principled resignation would not have felt any pressure to take a cue from the Jerreds and bring the churches’ longstanding practice to an end.
If bitterness is a root which corrupts many, repentance is a root which sanctifies many. But keep it firmly in mind this sanctification where it started with Don and Evelyn was not at all sectarian. Rather, it was personal and peaceable.
What Mary Lee and I noticed and commented on during the two dinners out at Don and Evelyn’s home was Don’s spiritual growth. Earlier I’ve recounted my initial suspicions concerning possible sinful motivations behind his questions, and how I tried to tease them out and test him during those conversations. Coming up with nothing there, it became evident Don was in a new place, spiritually. He seemed to have a newfound fear of God and determination to trust and obey His Word.
Over time, this became even more evident.
Don had not been regular in his attendance at corporate worship. Evelyn told me how one Sunday morning their youngest son, Douglas, had announced he was not going to church. Asked why, he responded that he didn’t see why he had to go if his father didn’t.
But now, Don was faithful in worship. It wasn’t long before it became inconceivable to me Don had ever not been faithful in worship. For this reason, Evelyn told me this story of their son, Douglas—proving the present had not been the past.
Don had been respected in the church and community. Humble, meek, and wise, his wife had always commended him, also. So, of course, it wasn’t long before Don was again nominated to serve as an elder, and this time he agreed. (Until then, he had always declined.)
Not long after he took office, Don and I were walking up the aisle of the church following worship, and halfway out to the foyer, Don asked, “So, pastor, I was wondering how old you think a child should be before you stop spanking him?”
Assuming the question was hypothetical, I responded, “Well, I’m not sure. We rarely spank Heather, anymore. She’s eight or nine, now.” (Heather was our eldest.)
Don said, “What about sixteen?”
I was about to say something like “seems a bit old to me” when I stopped dead. Turning to face him, I gurgled, “Don! You didn’t!”
Danny was Don and Evelyn’s middle son. We called him “Rambo.” Walking into the church foyer each Sunday morning, he wore a scowl reinforced by a rolled-up red bandanna across his forehead. But he was Jean’s grandson and Don and Evelyn’s son, so people pretended not to notice. Country churches are gentle that way. Danny was sixteen.
Don answered, “Uh-huh. I did.”
My mind stopped. It needed a reset. Repeating myself, I said “You didn’t!” followed by, “What happened?”
Clearing his throat, Don matter-of-factly said, “We were doing chores in the milk parlor and he was disrespectful to his mother. So I said, ‘Danny, you come over here.'”
“Then what?”
“He came over and I said, ‘You may not speak to your mother that way.’ Then, ‘Lean over.'”
Dan was taller and stronger than Don, so I asked, “Did you think he was going to do it?”
Don chuckled: “I was praying he would.”
Then, “He did, so I took off my belt and gave him a good whupping.”
We all know, don’t we, that women have a dignity and honor among Christian men and their sons that the world has always mocked or envied? We all know, don’t we, that it’s the Christian man who thinks his wife shouldn’t be an elder over the men of the church who whups his sixteen-year-old Rambo son for speaking disrespectfully to his mother? We do know, don’t we, that the first duty of male authority is to love and honor the weaker sex God has presented him for his helpmate? Are any of us still unaware that abdicating our responsibility for women and children in society, church, and home life has wreaked havoc across the Western world, and women are only picking up the pieces as best they can and must?
Is there one man left who is a believer and does not mourn the shame of his fathers, brothers, and sons’ constant submission to women today? One man who hasn’t realized this shame is God’s punishment of His people’s lawlessness and idolatry?
O My people! Their oppressors are children,
And women rule over them.
O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray
And confuse the direction of your paths.Isaiah 3:12
The female authority God’s people live under now is not God’s gentleness and lowliness. It is His anger and discipline.
Praise God. Don and Evelyn repented and this is an account of the fruit of their repentance. The very fruit God has promised us:
If …My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. – 2Chronicles 7:14
(Tenth in a series,)
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Our heroes have had more time to digest The Fabelmans. And they have more thoughts! Is this a cry of despair over the corruption of Art? Or a lame excuse for hurting whoever you want? Or what?
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At long last, we’ve made some improvements to our online bookstore:
- There’s now a nice little link at the top of our website that says “Bookstore.” Try it out! It will take you straight to the books which you can purchase directly from us.
- Which books can you purchase directly from us? Any book published by Warhorn (finally). This includes older releases like The View from a Hearse and Peace & Holiness. It includes all books by Tim Bayly, like Daddy Tried and Church Reformed. It also includes our newest releases, like The Helpful Marriage Book and Who Is Jesus?
- Some products feature a Name Your Price option. For instance, we’re offering ebooks of Abortion and the Church for free, but you can feel free to pay us more than that—as much as you want, in fact 🙂
Our long-term goal is to move sales away from conventional channels like Amazon. There are a few reasons for doing so:
- When you buy directly from Warhorn, we get more of the sale than if we sell through Amazon. For example, if you buy Who Is Jesus? on Amazon for $10, Warhorn sees less than 50¢ of that sale. Seriously. Compare that to buying from our Warhorn bookstore, where your $10 purchase of Who Is Jesus? gives Warhorn roughly $3–$5. Which would you rather support? Amazon or Warhorn?
- We don’t really trust Amazon. Our book The Grace of Shame has already been mysteriously in and out of availability on Amazon, with no explanation. It’s currently available on Amazon, but it may not be tomorrow.
- We have more freedom to do what we want with our products when we manage our own sales, which benefits you. For instance, when you buy a physical copy of almost any of our books, you automatically get access to free downloads of all electronic formats of the book as well. We figure, if you buy the hard copy, why shouldn’t we give you the digital versions too? Try it out today with a purchase of Behold My Heart, which would make a great Christmas gift for a friend or family member. You can give them the paperback and download the digital versions for yourself!
We hope to continue making improvements to the bookstore. We know it’s still not perfect. Please be patient with us as we continue to make it more user friendly, and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. If you believe in the work we’re doing and would like to see our resources become even more accessible, please consider donating to our end-of-year fundraising campaign.
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Our heroes talk about Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien, asking such questions as “did you know there was a Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien?” They also announce their booklist for 2023, baby!
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The Sound of Music tells a whole lot of story with one epic shot. That’s the power of camerawork to frame (ha ha) a story cinematically. Lots of other movies do the same thing in their own way. Like Shop Around the Corner, which also features in this episode.
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We discuss Christian nationalism and specifically Stephen Wolfe’s controversial book, The Case for Christian Nationalism.
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A couple weeks ago Warhorn went over 2,000,000 page views. Six and a half years old, Warhornmedia.com has, I hope, been steady and true to the goal of warning the people of God, doing so with great patience. We have emphasized being faithful to God’s “no” as well as His “yes.” This is no indication […]
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A lot of people come to an understanding of biblical sex roles late in life. Sometimes, late in marriage. Sometimes, they haven’t had it modeled for them by their own families or by the churches they come from. Sometimes their understanding of a wife’s submission can be … really wooden. So … how can they […]
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The fruit of the sexual downgrades taught and promoted by the Presbyterian Church in America’s Covenant Theological Seminary, Redeemerites, and urban presbyteries such as Missouri Presbytery has been out there in public, visible and rotting, for decades now. More recently over in St. Louis, Revoice’s shameless celebration of gayness has forced the denomination to pay […]
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Citizen Kane uses mystery to draw you in. So do most of your favorite movies, like Indiana Jones. Even the ones that aren’t overtly mysterious. Sometimes it’s as simple as certain shot composition. Support our movie work here!
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Our heroes have many things to discuss about the state of the church in November, 2022. From attempts to properly “brand” Jesus … to the death of winsomeness in Australia … to whether Christians should use tricks of rhetoric … we discuss it all! Plus: help us out by making a one-time donation here! Support […]
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It’s Sammy Fabelman-er, Steven Spielberg’s life story! Does he have a good perspective on … himself and his parents’ divorce and his entry into Hollywood? Or is this self aggrandizing myth-making? Or what? Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! Subscribe to the podcast here!
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Note from TB: Scott Tibbs has been a great encouragement to me for years through his consistent presence and Christian witness in the public square. Scott knows the ins and outs of state and local politics better than almost anyone I’ve known, and his witness there has been faithful and wise. Unlike most of the […]
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Music makes movies work! It makes Star Wars epic and emotional. It provides an audio contrast to the images in 2001: A Space Odyssey. And it makes evil things seem good in… well, in a lot movies. Support our movie work here!
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Sanity at the Movies needs your help. Support us here with a one time donation. Support us here! Listen to the episode at a separate link here! Subscribe to the podcast here!
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Happy Thanksgiving! If you care about this and our other work, please consider giving at Warhorn Media. Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
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A word to readers: you’ll notice with this post the series title has changed. My desire is to lift high the kindness of God: Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? (Romans 2:4) Like every believer, […]
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Dear readers and subscribers, Below you will find Pastor Jake Mentzel, president of Warhorn Media, asking for your support as we approach the end of the year. We need to receive gifts of at least $60,000 this year to sustain this ministry into the new year, 2023. If you appreciate our work and believe it […]
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From Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers … to The Birth of a Nation … to Terminator 2 … to Saving Private Ryan … movies have changed the world, and totally rewired our brains. Watch to find out how. Support our movie work here!
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PayPal, JK Rowling, trans people, black sperm donors, Elon Musk, daylight savings, Trump, Desantis, abortion support… we discuss it all! Plus: help us out by making a one-time donation here! Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here
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NOTE: Eighth in a series, this latest post is better understood by reading the earlier ones. After the previous post, I think a few preliminary words are in order concerning the value of confessing one’s own sins, publicly. Public confessions are Biblical. When the Sons of Israel were defeated at Ai and it was revealed […]
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Over on Sanityville, an elder was describing a discussion he had with a young man who believed he was, as a Christian, duty-bound to resist any command of the civil authority which Scripture did not explicitly state to be within civil authority’s sphere of governance. In the course of describing his discussion with this young […]
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Sometimes discussions other places might be helpful here, so this is posted for the help of the saints. The subject is divorce and remarriage, and the discussion happened over on Santyville. If you don’t read it, check it out. It’s not appropriate to publish other men’s comments and posts without their permission, so some of […]
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We live in a world that murders its babies. People that we know have murdered their babies. People in our churches have murdered their babies. Tim talks about the kinds of experiences he has had as a pastor ministering to such people. And Jake and Nathan and Ben trace the history of how the church […]
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Steven Spielberg’s ET: The Extraterrestrial evokes a lot of religious feelings. So do a lot of Spielberg’s classic films. So are they religious? Support our movie work here!
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Sound of Sanity discusses the, erm, problematic history of IVF and other forms of test tube baby-making. And also how much eugenics plays a part. It’s a wild story. Buckle your seatbelts. Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here! “Game Show Music” by Collin Thompson.
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What is there to say about The Godfather? It’s beautiful, it’s horrible, and most everybody considers it one of the greatest movies ever made. What is it about this simple story of a mob family passing the torch that makes it so powerful and so beloved? What do some people return to it again and […]
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Nathan and Ben try to tally up the staggering numbers of babies killed by abortion. It’s well nigh impossible especially when you count chemical abortion. Meanwhile, Tim discusses his early years as a pastor in a denomination (and a Christian culture) that was willfully blind on the issue. Read the Evangel statement (more of a […]
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Our heroes begin a three-part deep-dive into IVF, the fertility industry, and the crazy sci-fi world we live in. If you don’t know about this stuff, you don’t know how insane these modern times are. Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a separate link here! “Game Show Music” by Collin Thompson.
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Recently, Dr. John Raffensperger passed into eternity. Before leaving the States, I got a call from his ex-wife, Carolyn, who informed me. I note this because this is a post from ten years ago which explains Dr. Raffensperger’s connection with Dad’s book Winterflight. At the end, I note the questions surrounding Dr. Raffensperger’s faith. I’m […]
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The World We Made, Season 3, Episode 1, "When the church met abortion."
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The Bayly brothers went to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary to get what Dad referred to as “the union card” (an MDiv), after which we each were ordained into pastoral ministry. My first parish was two churches in the dairyland of Wisconsin, David’s was a church in Toledo, Ohio (where he has served his entire ministry), and […]
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Sound of Sanity discusses the fact that Sound of Sanity is recording an episode of Sound of Sanity.
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John Newton (1725–1807) wrote hundreds of hymns, and a handful are still sung by Christ’s people nearly two and a half centuries later. “Amazing Grace” is of course the most famous, but I’d like to introduce you to several others through my writing here. A couple of Newton hymns have a place in my personal […]
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“My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why […]
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Worship is fundamental. That may sound mundane, but let me explain. The fundamental nature of worship became clearer to me in a conversation I had in November with a man named Scott, whom I met on the disc golf course. He said he came from a Christian family, but when I asked where his family […]
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South Carolina is in the process of perfecting legislation they expect to adopt protecting babies from murder by abortion. Currently the following document has come out of the House Judiciary Subcommittee and will be debated by the full Judiciary Committee. Here is the text with comments interspersed: HOUSE AMENDMENT THIS AMENDMENT ADOPTED CLERK OF THE […]
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This post was written by pastor Joseph Helt and originally posted here on Sanityville. Some minor edits have been made for this publication. Indiana has been touted as having “banned nearly all abortions.” Indiana Right to Life has said the bill will “probably” result in “95%” of abortions ending. It’s amazing how much the message […]
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A couple days ago, Mary Lee and I were being hosted for the day by a farmer in Tuscany. He’d grown up in the nearby village, but at age eleven his parents sent him off to a Swiss boarding school. In time he’d travelled the world, then taken a job in New York City in […]
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Sound of Sanity discusses 4 things Christian artists get wrong.
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This is a response to a long discussion that got rather riotous on FB the past two days, and I thought it would be good to post it here on Warhorn for permanent record. If one wishes to view the ebb and flow of the original discussion, you can find it on FB under the […]
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Hello! It’s just a brief check in from Out of Our Minds and Pastor Tim Bayly to discuss the future of the show. After this we’ll be off for at least the month of August. But stay tuned! There’s more to come! Support our work: Support us here! Subscribe here! Download the episode at a […]
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