Signs of an Apocalypse

When God Gives Them Up

Evil is not a constant.  Like all things human, it waxes and wanes.  One of the clearest passages in this regard is Romans 1: 18-32.  This passage describes and prescribes what Van Til called the integration into the void.

All men, apart from those quickened to life by the Spirit of God, suppress the truth to some extent or another.  God's existence, glory, power, and wisdom is overtly displayed to all men.  But men, in rebellion against God and lusting after their own glory and power, suppress these self-evident truths.  At that point, things become much worse, for the Scripture says when men attempt to suppress God it is so egregious a response that He gives them up.  [Romans 1: 24].

The first sign of a culture in the throws of being abandoned by God is an increase in lusts and "dishonouring their bodies".  Then comes a rise in homosexuality.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;  and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.   [Romans 1:26, 27]

Clearly Western civilization is in the throes of divine desertion.

Sad and Evil Days

Ahab, Jezebel, and Absalom

So, who gets to be the next President of the United States?  Who knows.  As one cynic put it, how do you make a choice between Dumb and Dumber?  Far more importantly is how Christians ought to think about the US presidential election and its aftermath. For around this issue turns the ultimate purposes of the sovereign Lord.

We have held the view the both candidates are deeply flawed, inadequate, and dangerous.  We also hold the view that Trump, whilst a narcissist of substantial proportion, is less dangerous than Hillary Clinton because he is less practised at mendacity and greed on the national stage.  Clinton has had thirty years to hone her skills and instincts, and were she to win the election, she would be hard to control.  Damage limitation would be much more difficult under Clinton than Trump.

Nevertheless, biblically speaking both candidates represent a judgement from the Lord God, King of all kings.  We are reminded of that time when King David brought Israel into judgment because he did something which God specifically forbade.  He numbered the people.  Gad the prophet came to David and declared that he must choose one of three punishments: Israel would suffer under famine for three years, or be given into the hands of his enemies for three months, or there would be three days' pestilence.  David chose the last option.

There are times, it would seem, when God permits us to experience His wrath and judgement according to our choices.

Refining Fire: Judgment Begins with the Household of God

A Principled Decision

We will likely see more of this.

Carly Hoilman
The Blaze

A popular Southern California pastor resigned from his position on the state’s largest high school board after his peers voted in favor of a mandate that would require pro-LGBTQ sexual ethics education in public schools.  In an email published in a First Things article last Thursday, Pastor Chad Vegas noted that after 12 years of serving on the board he faced a potential lawsuit for his decision to vote against the policy.

Vegas wrote:

CA has mandated this [school transgender policy] for the whole state. I have served on the largest high school board in CA, and the nation, for 12 years. I basically lead that board. Our board voted to adopt the new law into policy. I voted against it. I was breaking the law for doing so. I could be personally sued and our attorney tells me the board insurance won’t cover me because I am breaking the law and I am a bigot.

The California law requires that the state’s middle and high schools offer instruction to students on how to have safe homosexual sex and how to get an abortion. It also requires schools to teach that gender does not correspond to biological sex.

Vegas announced last month in a letter to his Sovereign Grace Church congregation that he would not run for re-election, despite the community’s pleas for him to remain.

Man's Inhumanity to Man

Arise, O Lord

The Epoch Times has published a report upon "organ harvesting" in China.  We are aware that there are few limits to man's inhumanity to man.  This account reaffirms that view.  As the prophet said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  Who can know it?"  (Jeremiah 17: 9,10)

Here is the sum of the matter:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The authors of a new report about state-led organ harvesting in China presented their findings at the National Press Club on June 22, calling it a “slow motion genocide” that has led to likely over 1 million organs removed from unwilling donors.  “This fits the pattern of King Leopold and the Congo, and the genocides in Cambodia and Darfur,” said David Kilgour a former Canadian secretary of state and a co-author of the new report.

King Leopold of Belgium wrought a death toll of tens of millions running a slave trade in the Congo, researchers suspect, while in Cambodia and Darfur, Sudan, class and ethnic cleansing massacres with vast death tolls were carried out by the government and militia.

The likely estimate is that one transplant has meant one death. In other words, it was not just a matter of prisoners (usually of conscience) having their organs forcibly removed, but that while the donee's received the organs and appropriate medical care, the forced donors were left to die.

The Madness of the Gentiles

Sologamy

We have often pointed out that narcissism attends the Chattering Classes of the West as the limpet clings to the rock.  It is all about Me, Myself, and I.  Since there are no absolutes, no rules, no principles that bind--and above all, no Laws that govern the universe--it's all about Me.

This has got to the point of final idiocy where even one's identity is self-determined.  Genes?  Nothing at all.  Nurture? A wisp of fog.  What I conceive myself to be is the ultimate hard rock, universal value.  Before it all others must bow.

In praise of the new model where narcissism rules, and before which human civilisation must kowtow, comes a new "social relationship".  This, from Bob McCroskrie:

Removing Scales From Eyes

Properly Re-Setting the Chess Board

The doctrine of divine judgement occupies most of the revelation of Holy Scripture.  Measured by volume of content, the major subject concerns God's wrath upon sin and sinners.  One imagines the reason for this is that God is holy and righteous: evil must be punished.  His purity and holiness demand it.

From the time that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, God's judgement upon sin looms large in the Bible's unfolding story.  Yet it is a truth which many Christians, particularly modern evangelical Christians, would struggle to acknowledge, let alone reverently accommodate in their doctrinal house.

Just to reinforce the point, we would remind ourselves of the Deluge upon the entire human race, apart from Noah and his family; of the plagues upon Egypt; of the judgement upon Israel in the desert where a whole generation perished because of their unbelief and loyalty to idols.  We would go on to refer to Sodom and Gomorrah--which became an abiding symbol for God's holy wrath upon extreme evil, including sin associated with homosexual lust and rape.  We would recite God's judgement upon the Canaanites, the Amalekites, the Edomites, the Moabites.  We would refer to the prophets from Elijah onwards whose primary obligation was to warn Israel and the surrounding nations of the judgements of God about to fall.  We would meditate upon the fortunes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the ten lost tribes.  We would think of the Imprecatory Psalms (rarely read by Christians today).  We would think of the recorded writings of the major and minor prophets which are primarily focused upon the judgements of God upon Israel and the surrounding nations.  The accounts and the warnings go on for pages and pages, chapter after chapter.

Ah, but the New Testament-well, yes, that's different. We live in "Gospel days".

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

On Planting Black Damnation

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog&Mablog

The judgments of God are organic. That is, they do not operate in a mechanical way, as though dispensed from a vending machine. But they do operate in predictable ways, ways that we should be able to anticipate. We understand seedtime and harvest, and so we should also be aware that it is not possible for a nation to plant a vast crop of Canadian thistle in order to harvest a magnificent crop of barley. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7). One of the reactions to judgment is always surprise, when there is absolutely no good reason for the surprise. That’s what we planted, isn’t it?

Don’t think to plant black damnation with the idea that you will be able to fill up your barns with bright sunshine. And while we have not yet seen the finality of our particular grim harvest, it is certainly true that all our planting is almost all done.

But not only is the crop predictable, so is the astonishment of the unbelieving mind at the appearance of the crop. The pride of man thinks that the way he has managed thus far is the way he will manage into the future. But the judgments of God are designed particularly for the proud and lofty.

“For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, And upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low” (Is. 2:12).

What on earth makes us think that God has been influenced by our doctrines of secularism? Why do we believe that He who slapped down the Assyrians for their cruelty would think twice because He is dealing with Americans now?

It's Personal

Not a Tame Lion

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Judge of the heavens and the earth.  The methods of execution of His justice vary widely.  The Bible records just about every kind of judgement imaginable.  These include the purposeful death of isolated individuals (Ananias and Saphira; Lot's wife) to more general judgements upon kingdoms or civilisations (floods, famines, diseases, wars, earthquakes, fires, corrupt rulers, tyrannical and cruel governments, and so on).

Some judgements can be a direct result of cause and effect.  For example, China's One Child Policy (now Two Child Policy) has and will result in an atomisation of that society and economic stagnation in that country for generations to come. 

Because God's law of the covenant includes all nations and societies, none are immune from the appended blessings and curses of His covenant.  If a nation does well and fears and worships Him in truth, blessings will follow.  If a nation despises Him, curses will inevitably fall.

If there is one thing to set Western nations seething in anger it is the suggestion that a judgement of God has fallen.  Whilst many Christians are keen to talk about God's blessings, they are reticent, if not downright reluctant, to talk about His judgements.  We believe one reason is that Christians want to be thought well of by all people, and to remind them of God's holiness and His judgements is one way to create maximal offence.  But God calls us to faithfulness, not popularity. 

When a severe earthquake struck Christchurch early in 2011, the nation was shocked.  Christian leaders hastened to offer up a theodicy for the event, arguing that such things in no way implied anything about God's character.

Who Knows?

No Time Left

The experiences of the prophet Jonah have much to teach us.  And we have much to learn.  This short book is about an exceedingly wicked city--Nineveh, the capital of the vast Assyrian empire, the ISIS of the ancient world.  It was a gorgeous city architecturally, but putrefying in death and bloodshed.  God commanded Jonah, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me."

Jonah's response--to run in the opposite direction--led to him becoming a living sign to Nineveh of the judgement to come.  He was resurrected out of the whale. And so, centuries later, when the opponents of the Lord of Glory asked Jesus for a sign to prove Himself, He replied:

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. (Matthew 12: 38-41)

The age of special revelation has ended with the coming of the Son of God.  Yet the the book of Jonah shines like a laser beam upon our age.

Screwtape's Diabolical Advice

God Owes Me--Big Time

"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered."

C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters

The idea that a "legitimate claim has been denied" depends upon a perverted doctrine of human rights.  This doctrine has now been accepted universally throughout the West.  How successful the Satan has been in this instance! 

The idea that "I have a legitimate claim" rests upon a foundation of believing that "I am owed . . . ", which is to say, "People owe me . . ." which in turn is to say, "Society as a whole, or mankind in the abstract, owes me."

Daily Devotional

Judge Yourself

"Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting."
Daniel 5:27

Charles H. Spurgeon

It is well frequently to weigh ourselves in the scale of God's Word. You will find it a holy exercise to read some psalm of David, and, as you meditate upon each verse, to ask yourself, "Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Has my heart ever been broken on account of sin, as his was when he penned his penitential psalms? Has my soul been full of true confidence in the hour of difficulty as his was when he sang of God's mercies in the cave of Adullam, or in the holds of Engedi? Do I take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord?"

Then turn to the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourselves how far you are conformed to his likeness. Endeavour to discover whether you have the meekness, the humility, the lovely spirit which he constantly inculcated and displayed. Take, then, the epistles, and see whether you can go with the apostle in what he said of his experience. Have you ever cried out as he did--"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Have you ever felt his self-abasement? Have you seemed to yourself the chief of sinners, and less than the least of all saints? Have you known anything of his devotion? Could you join with him and say, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain"?

If we thus read God's Word as a test of our spiritual condition, we shall have good reason to stop many a time and say, "Lord, I feel I have never yet been here, O bring me here! give me true penitence, such as this I read of. Give me real faith; give me warmer zeal; inflame me with more fervent love; grant me the grace of meekness; make me more like Jesus. Let me no longer be found wanting,' when weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, lest I be found wanting in the scales of judgment." "Judge yourselves that ye be not judged."

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

When the Bricks Start to Fall

Douglas Wilson
Blog and Mablog
Sunday, July 13, 2014

It is worthy noting that the Lord Jesus describes one of the features of hypocrisy as being manifested in an inability to read the culture.

“Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?” (Luke 12:56).

A hypocrite does not know what is coming down because it does not suit him to know what is coming down. It is always handy to say, when things are comparatively calm, “well, that’s not my interpretation.”

But this simply reveals the narcissism of our age — as though our interpretations were in any way authoritative! Yes, yes, we know your interpretation, but is it correct?

When God shakes down a culture, He does it so that the things that cannot be shaken may remain (Heb. 12:27). This means that when the earthquake starts, and the bricks start to fall out of the building you are in, you have a moral responsibility to know where the shelters are.

True shelters are those congregations of God’s people that are not hypocritical, where the Word is faithfully proclaimed (not just taught), where the sacraments are faithfully administered, where discipline is faithfully practiced. In fact, it would be a good idea to start attending such shelters now.

Call it disaster preparedness.

9/11 And The Culture of Death

Elijah's Mantle

In our self-absorbed, narcissistic Western culture there is a cardinal sin.  If any dare to transgress this One Great Commandment, he is instantly execrated and cast outside the city.  This OGC is the signature word of secular humanism: "Thou must never believe that God is judging us."   Sadly, oh so sadly, there are many in the Church today--weak and poorly taught believers--who subscribe to this OGC above all else.

We recall how the OGC suddenly burst forth from the hearts of the people with incandescent indignation when the earthquakes hit Christchurch, New Zealand.  Amidst all the mourning, weeping, and anger there was one proposition that was instantly condemned--even by churchmen.  The very idea that God might be judging New Zealand was shouted down in a chorus of horror.  At the time it took an Unbelieving left-wing public commentator, Chris Trotter to point out that whatever god people were appealing to when they said such things and intoned the OGC, it was not the God of the Scriptures, nor of the historical Christian faith.

That God is a holy, an awful (that is, awe inspiring) God, Who in His own words declares:  "You shall not bow down to them or serve [idols]; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me." (Deuteronomy 5:9)  and "The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.' ” (Exodus 34:6,7) [Emphasis, ours]

But the OGC declaims this God to be non-existent.  The god of the people and of the state is a god who is little more than a simpering cheerleader for the vainglory of his makers--modern, secular men.  Funny, that.

Every so often a man of God stands forth to reflect the actual, biblical truth.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Hellfire and Damnation

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

May 27, 2014

I want to begin by acknowledging that the metaphors of damnation that we find in Scripture are quite possibly not literal descriptions — where the worm does not die, where the fire is not quenched, where it is an outer darkness, where there is a lake of fire, and so on. But before assuming that I am quietly becoming a liberal, let me point something out about the nature of symbolic language.

The symbol is always less than the reality it represents. I am married, and I wear a ring to symbolize the fact. But the ring is less than the reality. The flag is less than the nation it represents. This means that if the language about Hell is literal — straight across — then it represents a horrible reality. But if the language is figurative, then let no one take comfort in the fact, because the comfort is as false as the other lies that can take a man to Hell. If the language is literal, then it is the stuff of nightmares. If the language is figurative, then it will be much worse than that.

One of the reasons we object to language about judgment is that we believe that it corrupts our motives for coming to Christ. We should love Christ, not fear Him. Right, but as sinners we are in no shape to love Him, and our sins require us to fear Him. Jesus does not reject the motive of fear, but rather encourages us to cultivate it. “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28).

But we are in the grip of theological preciosity, and we are fastidious about hellfire.

Bel Bows Down, Nebo is Stooping

Modern Idolatry

A minor brouhaha has flickered in Gore where a Christian church has honoured the Lord by exercising discipline over an errant, unrepentant member.  The former member has been living with a man not her husband.

In terms of the historical Christian faith there is nothing remarkable in this; it is, after all, what the Scripture commands.  (I Corinthians 5:1-2; I Corinthians 5: 9-13).  Any faithful, believing Christian church would do what the Calvin Community Church at Gore has just done.

What is far more instructive is the reaction of the pagans.  Many blog commentators have railed against the whole notion of judging.  How dare anyone judge another.

Camels and Needles

Inglorious Rich Man Trying to Pass Muster

Every so often Unbelief pulls of its particular mask and shows itself in all its ignoble vainglory.  Big Nanny Michael Bloomberg served as the fall guy recently.  Bloomberg, you recall, has become exceptionally wealthy owning and developing Bloomberg News.  He served as a three-time mayor of New York City.  During his tenure he became infamous for his nannying controls over what people eat and inhale: sugar, fat, and tobacco.  Mike has a plan for our good, whether we like it to not.  Mike knows best.  Mike for Saviour.

Bloomberg is also famous for his record of donations--to all kinds causes, but most often to doppelganger Bloomberg favourites.  The most recent is gun control in the United States.

Our Lord declared that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Clearly, our Lord would not have said that had He met up with Michael Bloomberg, who clearly regards himself as the exception to our Lord's warning.   This, from the New York Times:

Established Religions

The Return of the Prodigal

Every human society has an established deity.  It's inescapable.  In this context we define deity broadly: the god who rules is the object or person in which society places their trust.  Human beings inevitably have to trust someone or something to provide what only a god can: safety, security, provision, and care along with more abstract (but vitally important) realities such as truth, justice, righteousness, and wisdom without which no society can cohere.

Secular society's god is the government.  Rules, regulations and laws coupled with property exacted from subjects and bestowed upon others in order to pay for the "justice", blessings and benefits the god wishes to bestow is how this particular religion works.  And it works a doozy.  Every Western society without exception has kowtowed to this particular deity.  Why are the peoples' of the West so resistant to the historical Christian faith?  Because they love their idol god, their respective governments.  You cannot serve God and Mammon, Jesus says.  The West now serves Mammon with a deep, abiding devotion.

Which would be great.  Apart from one minor problem.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

God's Gonna Cut You Down 

Money, Love, Desire - On Scandal
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 16 February 2013

Now if we come to the understanding that the devil is "the accuser," and not God, what are we to make of the necessary holiness of God's law? And how can we make sense of the Last Judgment? Doesn't God run the Last Day, and not the devil?

Go tell that long tongue liar,
Go and tell that midnight rider,
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter,
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down.

This is true in staggering ways, but how it is true matters a great deal.

God dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16). The seraphim fly in His courts, crying out holy, holy, holy (Is. 6:3). And when that holiness is juxtaposed with our sinful condition, we are immediately aware of the gulf between us. When Isaiah sees the vision, he cries out that he is a man of unclean lips (Is. 6:5). When Joshua the high priest stood before the angel of the Lord, Satan, the celestial prosecutor, was right there to accuse him (Zech. 3:1). And although Joshua was aware he was indeed deserving of accusation (Zech. 3:3), because his clothes were filthy, God's response is to clothe him appropriately. When the apostle Peter caught a glimpse of the Lord's holiness in the miracle of the fish, his response was to collapse, aware of his own sinfulness (Luke 5:8).

When we find ourselves in the numinous presence of God, our response is the right kind of self-accusation. And in such juxtapositions, notice how God responds in grace -- because the right kind of self-accusation is evangelical repentance.

But there is a wrong kind of reaction to God's presence also.

Fiscal Cliff Sideshows

Healing the Land

The so-called fiscal cliff in the United States has been averted.  The march toward the soft-despotic state continues unabated.

The sad reality is that a majority of the population in that country want government to look after them; they, therefore, both demand and require that the government be big; they also insist that someone else pays for it.  Since the US is borrowing 40 cents for every dollar it now spends, the real cost will be born by those not yet alive.  Our parents used to call this having one's cake and eating it too.

The United States is not alone in this, of course.  It is now the ordinary characteristic, the new normal of all countries in the West.  Having rejected God they require an idol to perform the works of a god; that idol is the all beneficent state.  Chuck Colson summarises the chaotic irrationality and madness of the US electorate:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Fools and Blind 

Engaging the Culture - Meaning of Judgment
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 29 December 2012

In the long aftermath of the Newtown tragedy, one of the things that has become apparent in the midst of all the recriminations is we do not know how divine judgment works. We do not yet know how God operates, and we do not see how diseased our culture has actually become. We are not only visited with horrors like the shooting, but also with the horror of officially sanctioned nonsense circling over the first horror like an opportunistic murder of crows.

To the extent that Christians think about cultural judgments at all (which is not as much as it should be), we tend to think that because we have done this bad thing "over here," then that other bad thing might happen "over there." This might be the case early on, when the judgments are still warning shots, like the collapse of the tower at Siloam.

But what we are dealing with is a judicial stupor across the board, and it is the hand of God upon us.