Category Archives: Christianity

Christianity, Theonomy

Practical Christianity

The Bible applies to every area of life, though you wouldn’t know it if your only source of information is modern American Christianity. Someone asked Bojidar Marinov if there is a systematic theology book that discusses economics. Below is his answer.

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Any area of practical study and application is deadly to anti-Theonomists, for it exposes their nakedness. If they want to be Biblical, they are forced to go to the Law of God, which makes them an easy target for Theonomists who point to their inconsistency. If they want to be faithful to their anti-Theonomic position, they have to rely on humanistic theories which can be easily exposed as anti-Biblical. If you go back and read Joel’s and mine articles against the Two Kingdoms rhetoric, you will see that most of the time all we need to do is wait for these guys to talk on some practical issue – economics, politics, law, etc. – and show how they go against their own theology.

Therefore, the safest bet for all these seminary rats is to exclude such issues from their systematic theologies in order to avoid exposing themselves as inconsistent and as theological hypocrites. Keep only obscure hyper-spiritualized irrelevant topics under the title of “theology,” and relegate life and action and practical thought to the realm of “natural law” and common grace.

Abolish The Police, Christianity, Police Abuse, Power Trip

We Need Decent Pastors! And David Clarke is an Idiot!

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I’m a little bit discouraged today to see my Christian friends post this David Clarke garbage as if this pagan, power-religion cult of law enforcement is in any way righteous.

  1. Kasich is an idiot and I wouldn’t vote for him (So are Trump and Cruz).
  2. Kasich harmed no one by not moving over.
  3. The law that states you have to move over is an unjust law.
  4. Christians bow down and worship at the feet of government.
  5. Christians don’t understand the Bible and say you have to explicitly obey the law.
  6. This cop really is an idiot for using threats of force to enforce unjust laws.

I have another guy that goes to my church who is willing to tell my wife to move out of the country because she opposes Trump. I have my pastor who never moves away from Christianity 101–never moves from milk to solid food. And unfortunately he’s probably the best pastor in town.

Christians don’t know right from wrong. They barely know their right hand from their left hand. What would you expect our culture to be coming to when the Christians don’t even know right from wrong? We need pastors who are half way decent to teach people before this culture is going anywhere.

Capitalism, Christianity

Good Information

This doesn’t fit my normal theme, but it’s so good I have to post it. I hate buying a car, but here are some good tips on car buying from a car salesman:

1. The best time to go is at the end of the day (about 2 hours from closing time) on a rainy or cold day. First the dealership will be empty so no wait going into finance. Second they likely have not sold many cars that day and are more ready to make a deal. The times we have discounted cars the most are those times.

2. You don’t get a better deal from paying cash or having a check ready from your bank. When you do this they don’t make any money from you financing with them. If you tell them up front is a cash deal, they know they have to make all their money on the price of a car. They will be more willing to discount the car if they know they will make money from you financing.

3. They are not always giving you as much as they say from the trade in. If they are not discounting the sticker price or if it is barely discounted, but giving you a lot on your car, they are really taking the discount and applying it to your trade in. My dealership doesn’t do this so people come in expecting an unrealistic trade in price and they don’t get it because we already discounted the price on the new car.

4. Save yourself time haggling by working the deal out online. You know when you are on their website and it pops up that you can chat with someone? Go ahead and do this because they will give you a great deal to get you in the dealership. Go ahead and work your trade in numbers then to so you aren’t surprised when you get there. When you do this, you simply have to walk in, test drive the car and the haggling is over with.

5. Some of the add ons they offer in financing are worth it and some are not. If you aren’t putting money down, GAP insurance can be great. If you are putting money down it might not be worth it. Do some research ahead of time to know what kinds of things will be offered.

Christianity, Power Trip, Practical Ideas, Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God, Taxation

Blown Opportunity

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I’m sick of myself today as I missed an opportunity to speak up to a micro-tyrant. Not only that, but it took me weeks to realize how badly I blew it.

On January 4, I went in to the Fremont County motor vehicle department to register a car I bought. That was the first work day after New Year’s Day weekend, and the deadline for registering the car. I would have incurred a late fee had I not registered the car that day.

Fremont County offices are closed on Friday. They started doing  that a few years ago to save money. Since Friday was January 1, they decided to close on Thursday December 31 for New Year’s Day. The end of the month is a deadline for registrations to be renewed.

The guy sitting at the desk next to mine was going to be charged a non-nominal (though I don’t remember how much, maybe $20) late fee for having missed his December deadline. He explained that he had come on Thursday, and their offices were closed. He complained to the clerk, and she called over a higher-up to explain.

The higher-up said she had to charge a late fee to several people in his situation that day, and told them to take it up with the county commissioners for having declared December 31st a day off.

Here’s what I should have said:

Hey man, she’s just doing her job. Just like the Nazis who shoved the Jews into the ovens were just doing their job. She checks her conscience at the door every day and thinks that having a government job entitles her to rob people.

Ma’am, you can’t push the blame for your willingness to steal off on the county commissioners. Your job consists of forcing people to run the bureaucratic gauntlet of an evil, antichrist government. You produce nothing of value. You will stand before the Lord and give an account some day for every penny you’ve stolen.

None of the theft this government commits is possible without regular people like you making it happen. The Nazi guards didn’t get away with killing Jews by blaming their superiors. Neither will you get away with stealing by blaming your superiors. So at least be honest and say that YOU are enforcing these wicked rules and evil registration fees. You can’t blame anyone but yourself, and it’s not happening without you or someone like you.

If the commissioners had chosen to take Monday off rather than Thursday, I would have been in that guy’s position. We need to stand up for each other, and speak up for each other. There is no other weapon we have at this point other than to boldly speak the truth. Lord, give me the words to say and the courage to say them. Help me to not be so self-absorbed as to not think of others when they’re facing injustice.

Christianity

A Good Ancap Argument

Yesterday, I gave my thoughts on anarcho-capitalism. My purpose
was to get to this post and discuss at least one ancap’s approach
to battle the growing tyranny we face. I think there is a lot of
truth in what he says about unjust government, like the one we
have.

His argument is something I’ve never heard before. He has used
this argument to get people out of traffic tickets and tax bills.
He asks why the law applies to him. They’ll say because the law
says it does. Of course, that is a circular argument, and is
therefore a non-answer. Judges, IRS agents, lawyers with their
juris doctorate can’t answer the question.

I can answer the question of why just laws apply. There is no
answer for why unjust laws apply. The only reason why anyone
complies with unjust laws is because we will suffer violence at
the hand of government. The only rule for unbiblical, unjust
government, which has rejected God’s law, is might makes right.

The reason why just laws apply is because we are created in God’s
image, and His law is the definition of justice. Of course, we’ve
rejected that in this country. No self-respecting judge could
utter such a thing in an American court room. So, this argument is
very effective, and plays into the wheelhouse of this website. It
is presuppositional and theonomic. Choose Christ or choose
absurdity.

Christianity, Theonomy

Anarcho-Capitalists are Cool. Theonomists are More Cool.

Anarcho-capitalists believe there should be no government. I don’t know of any Christian anarcho-capitalists, but that certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t any. I’m very sympathetic to the anarcho-capitalists, and they make a lot of good points. An atheist anarcho-capitalist is much closer to espousing a biblical society than the typical American neo-conservative evangelical.

On a scale of government intrusion, 100 being an all-powerful dictator and totalitarian, and 0 being no government (anarcho-capitalism), I’d put the USSR at 90. They may have aspired to 100, but humans will always have limited resources to achieve our aspirations. I’d put the Democrat party at 55. I’d put the Republican party at 30, and the civil law of the Old Testament at 5. By my estimation, the difference between Republicans (most Christians) and the Bible is greater than the difference between anarcho-capitalism and the Bible.

One of the points that ancaps make is that it is immoral for anyone, including government, to force you to pay them. I wholeheartedly agree. There is no civil penalty for not paying taxes in God’s law. I think the Bible teaches that you ought to pay just taxes, but whether you pay or not is between you and the Lord.

However, where ancaps go wrong is that they take the principle that no one ought to force anyone to do anything out of thin air. This is a belief they take on blind faith. It is a biblical belief, but the non-Christian ancaps reject the only valid source for moral oughts. This is a huge problem as there is no foundation for their system.

The Bible gives very specific instructions to civil magistrates. Their ONLY job is to punish evildoers (Romans 13:1-7). They don’t get to build roads, protect wildlife, give people handouts or make up whatever laws they want. The only standard for good and evil is God’s law, and the only job of government is to enforce God’s law.
Therefore, maximum liberty isn’t zero government, but biblical government.

The last criticism I have of ancaps is that there has never been a successful society built on anarchy. When there is no biblical government, a tyrant will take over.

I don’t want to end on a criticism, so the last thing I’ll point out is that as I’ve listened to some ancaps, they’ve discussed love in society. I’ve never heard Republicans or Rush Limbaugh talk about love. Christians talk about love a lot, but I’ve never heard them talk about love in politics or society. I’ve only ever heard about it listening to non-Christian ancaps. Shaggy hippies seem to have co-opted and redefined peace and love, but those are concepts for which Christians should be striving.

Christianity

Apologetic Questions

A friend sent me a list of questions from the end of a chapter from a book called Already Gone by Ken Ham. I answered them for her, and I figured I might as well post them here. Of course many books have been written on each of these questions, but here’s my quick answers.

1. Why am I here?
To glorify God.

2. Who is God?
The Creator. One God in 3 persons. The Father is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God.

3. Who is Jesus and why is He the only path to salvation?
Jesus is God in the flesh. We have broken God’s law, and God isn’t obligated to forgive us. He made only one way for us to be forgiven–through the blood of Christ.

4. Why the Bible and not other holy books?
It’s impossible for the Bible not to be true. The God of the Bible is the only explanation for the existence of truth. If the Bible were false, there would be no such thing as true and false.

5. Why should the Bible be the authority in my life when making decisions and moral choices?
It is God’s message to us, and God’s law is the only basis for saying anything is good or evil–moral absolutes.

6. Why set boundaries on sexuality and marriage?
Because God set the boundaries in His law. If I want to know what kind of oil to put in my car, I look in the owner’s manual to see what the car’s manufacturer says. As the Creator of humans, He knows the optimal conditions for our operation.

7. If we are the descendants of one man and one woman where did all the different races come from?
Microevolution. Certain characteristics lend themselves to survival in a certain place, and those characteristics are passed on to the next generation. Microevolution is a loss of genetic information whereas macroevolution is a gain of genetic information, which is impossible. Poodles had a forced evolution by breeders from wolves, but they’re still dogs. They could never breed a flying dog.

8. How does one determine the value of a human life?
The only possible way to answer this would be Scripture. We are worth the price Jesus paid for us on the cross.

9. Dinosaurs and the Bible – how does that work?
There is a lot of interesting things about this. I believe it is a dinosaur mentioned in Job 40:15-19. Alexander the great talked about encountering dragons and there are carvings of dinosaurs in temples in Cambodia.

10. What is wrong with the world (suffering and death) when God supposedly made everything perfect?
Sin. I contribute to what is wrong with the world when I sin. One time this kid asked me why God allowed his bike to be stolen, and then he admitted that he stole the bike he was riding.

11. How can “what is wrong with the world” be made right?
There will be sin in the world until Jesus returns. We can contribute to the improvement of the world by taking dominion– having many godly children, evangelism, doing a good job at work, making money–good deeds in general.

12. Does science disprove or confirm history in the Bible.
In order to do science, you must presuppose that the laws of nature will be the same in the future as they’ve been in the past. That principle is called the uniformity of nature. Christianity is the only worldview that explains why we can presuppose uniformity. This is a huge problem for atheism especially. Science is impossible apart from the God of the Bible.

For a specific example of how biblical young-earth predictions have been proven true, they recently sent a satellite to Pluto. If Pluto was billions of years old, it would be a cold, dead rock with many craters. But they found that it has few craters. This indicates that there is recent volcanic activity. Also, it has a nitrogen atmosphere, which would be impossible if it were billions of years old.

13. Why does the age of the earth really matter to me and my life today?
If there was death before the sin of Adam, that would be a problem for Scripture. Jesus also talked about a recent creation in Mark 10, and the six-day creation is mentioned in the 4th commandment.

14. Why is it important that I believe in a literal 6-day, 24-hour creation?
Same as #13.

15. Did we evolve from ape-like creatures?
Evolution is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. What are the incremental steps between a shrew that can’t fly and a bat that can? Half a wing is an impediment. And there are a million examples of things like that from a cellular level to things like animal evolution.

The simplest way to think about it is that DNA code contains information. Information only comes from intelligence. Mutations and natural selection only decrease information. You can’t have humans evolving from another species if it requires an increase of information. It’s impossible.

Christianity, Conversation

Flushing Out False Doctrine

I’m no longer a Premillennialist (the most common end-times view of American Christians). It is a pessimistic view, teaching that ultimately Christians are going to be defeated in history. However, Jesus will return and make things right and secure the victory. But, as time goes on, it would teach that Christians are going to lose more and more battles. I think proper premillennialism would say that we should continue fighting the battles valiantly. But if you think you’re most likely to lose a battle, it would certainly be tempting to not fight. John MacArthur has even said that trying to improve society is like polishing brass on a sinking ship.

Below is a quick conversation on a Youtube video. You can see that Awakened Won is dead certain that the end is near, and he’s very pessimistic, to the point of dismissing the previous commenter’s suggestion out of hand.

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How is he so certain that the birth pangs have begun? By watching and reading the news, and focusing on America’s viewpoint. That isn’t the way to properly interpret the Bible.

I think scrimmy6969’s suggestion is cool. At least he’s making a concrete suggestion, and something is way better than Awakened One’s nothing.

I have known Christians who share Awakened One’s outlook, and one of the things they say is, “We should just preach the gospel.” Generally, the people who do that aren’t actually preaching the gospel, but you can also ask them if all they do is preach the gospel. Do they have a church softball team or pot luck dinner? The gospel is God’s power unto salvation and it leads us to try to correct injustices we see, as much as just to proclaim a message. I think it would be hard to proclaim the message of the gospel without it actually leading to taking action as well.

Here’s the video on which the conversation took place. My thinking on Alex Jones is that he does quite a bit of speculating, and he’s right some of the time and he’s wrong some of the time. I really like the impassioned speech he gave towards the end of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PmCRaa5hJU

Whether postmillennialism is true or not is something I’m still studying, but I’m sold on the idea that I’m here to build a godly legacy for my children, grandchildren and generations to come. Part of my job is to build an inheritance for them to be influential members of the community. If Christ wants to come back and interrupt that, it’s up to Him.

Christianity, Great Quote, Theonomy

Black Robed Regiment

Here’s a quick conversation on Facebook.

Stephen says, “I think you need to get out while you can. I suspect things are going to get really nasty in the USA, and Texas will not be immune to it, no more immune than elsewhere in the US. I would never have believed I would say this a few years ago, but I think things will be worse in the USA than parts of Europe, worse that the UK. I can hardly believe I am saying it, but there appears to be an authoritarianism, born of a largely unrecognized teutonic influence in America, coming to the surface in the USA that will end up being as bad as anything Europe had in the 20th century. I have been told this for many years by an American friend who insisted that I did not undertand the teutonic influence in the USA (I was first told about this by my friend nearly 30 years ago when it seemed incredible and the USA was a different place or at least seemed to be). I thought he was woefully mistaken. I do not think this now. I think he understand perfectly. Come to Britain while you can. We shall quite possibly be leaving the EU in year or so, and after that your chances of getting in, unfortunately, will diminish.”

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Here’s how Bojidar Marinov responded,

“Well, yes and no. Don’t forget that these things don’t happen in the UK only because the government has won this war there. The reason the new totalitarians are so violent in the US is because there is still a spirit of resistance here.”

“At its very bottom, the really fundamental conflict in the US is not in the society, the people vs. the government. The fundamental conflict is in the church: the preachers vs. their listeners. And it is a war of deception, not a war of arms. The listeners in the churches are fully aware of what is happening in the society; they are still blind to the fact that their own preachers are accomplices of the enemy and are charged with the task to keep them down while the government advances its agenda. What most outside observers – and most American Christians as well – often miss about the US is how much this nation is driven by what’s preached from the pulpits. The statists know it very well, though, and that’s why they have worked so hard to capture the pulpits. And I am not talking about the liberal pulpits here: The pulpits in the so-called “conservative” and “Reformed” churches are just as much accomplices to statism as the liberal and the Charismaniac churches.”

“The solution to America’s slippery slope to statism and tyranny is actually very simple: purge the pulpits of any preacher who doesn’t preach righteous rebellion against unjust authority. Yes, even the celebrities. Yes, even those that are otherwise orthodox and preach really good sermons on the doctrines of grace or the five points of Calvinism. And even those that are good men and wonderful pastors. If they fail to take the right side in the great conflict of our day, they are useless and even dangerous. Kick them out. Replace them with preachers who will fearlessly oppose the Beast. Restore the Black-Robed Regiment.”

“The solution to Britain’s spiritual problem is not that simple. In Britain, it will take longer, and will take more steps.”