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What Is Trumpism? Part Two: Gospel Relations and Wokeness
Perhaps you are far enough removed from what it is to be “woke” that you don’t know what it is. It might sound familiar, because it echoes religious connotations, as very often a counterfeit does. Scripture uses “awakening” to speak of true spiritual enlightenment. The Bible calls on unbelievers to wake up, which would mean being saved, and also admonishes believers to wake up in order to stir them from some degree of apathy. In this case, however, being woke means that you have the special knowledge to see what others can’t see. You “spot” white privilege and systemic racism everywhere with x-ray style vision that others miss.
How does someone become woke? Expertise or specialization in critical theory. How does one get this knowledge? Honestly, it is something closer to competence in the use of the divining rod for locating water. It is the the bizarre knowledge of the Gnostic, moved by something extraordinary in the realm of an ecstatic experience. The more fantastical the claim the greater possibility of correctness. The Apostle Paul describes something like it among the Corinthians out of Babylonian mysticism (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:1-3).
If I were to walk up to just any white person and call him a racist, he asks, why? I answer, it’s obvious, but it’s something that you are inherently blinded to. You are not woke to its reality in you. BLM adherents have gone around doing something similar, asking random white people to admit their racism and privilege at the threat of violence. It’s like the Salem witch trials. If they don’t confess they are a witch, they are drowned. The blindness, characterized by an unwillingness to admit racism, apparently comes through a social construction imposed upon the country. All whites are so immersed in systemic racism, that they don’t know they’re all racists.
In part one, I focused on the individuality of Trumpism compared to the judgment of wokeness. I want to explore the relations of wokeness to the gospel, partly to reveal its destructiveness in nature. Woke evangelicals preach repentance of group sins in line with Marxist group identity. A whole group, white people, is guilty of systemic racism. Reparations is a legal remedy for group sin. You might say that you aren’t racist and that you’ve never harmed another race. You say that, but you don’t “know” that because you aren’t trained to see it. You aren’t woke. You haven’t swallowed the blue pill.
The undermining of the gospel comes through a collective sin that brings group guilt. The group that sinneth, it shall die, which is just the opposite of what Ezekiel and Jeremiah and everywhere else in the Bible taught related to sin and guilt. It would then require group repentance. White people are guilty. Men are guilty. Straight people are guilty. Even if a white person becomes woke, he must still be named in the class action suit. Part of wokeness is admission of group guilt. This is the only way to forgiveness.
This spiritual collectivism contradicts scripture. Jesus Christ came to save individuals, not groups. A single person is awakened to his own sin and his own need of repentance. He enters the kingdom as an individual. He stands before God as an individual. The soul that sinneth, it shall die (Ezekiel 18:4). A man must examine himself for what he has done, not his group.
The transformation of wokeness is for the collective. The change is group change. A living sacrifice submerges himself in and for the group and the expense of his individuality. This is their Jesus, another Jesus, bringing in their imagination of the kingdom.
How are people awakened to their guilt of racism, sexism, transgenderism, and perhaps Trumpism? It’s a specialized knowledge, so you can either become a practitioner of critical theory, which is akin to learning divination or you can listen to the preaching of the theorist. He’s cherry picking scripture into which he can force his theory without historical precedent. No one had ever found in the Bible what he says he has found. He goes a looking to bring critical theory into God’s Word. It’s a reinvention of Christianity as detected through a seer stone.
The individuality of Trumpism matches the gospel and is a repudiation of the collectivism of evangelical wokeness. Wokeness undermines the gospel. It is in fact a different gospel. It requires group accession and group repentance. This is adding to the gospel, which makes it legalism. The requirement is conforming to the group.
I’m not saying that Trump himself is converted, that he is saved or that President Donald Trump has believed the gospel. I don’t believe so. I’m sure that some Trump supporters think he is. They’ve heard reports of private evangelism of Trump followed by a profession of faith. I don’t see a changed individual life of Donald Trump. By the abundance of his heart, he speaks, and I hear corrupt speech, bitter waters proceeding from a bitter fountain.
Others, which might be seen as adherents to Trumpism, take the position that Trump is a blunt instrument of change, ordained by a sovereign God. One analogy, I’ve read, is that he is chemotherapy to cancer, a painful methodology for a necessary cure or at least greater postponement of death. Advocates of the chemo acknowledge the cancer. The body is cancerous. It needs chemotherapy and Trump is it. The cessation of Trump, they diagnose, bolsters the cancer.
An irony to the lack of conversion of Donald Trump by judging him as an individual, however, is that I hear the same as bad or worse corrupt speech from woke evangelicals. Trump just doesn’t receive the gospel. He’s responsible. They see themselves as covered by their group identity. They are woke, so they are absolved of group guilt, their filthy language and lascivious lifestyles notwithstanding. It is a form of left wing legalism. Their sins are covered by their “good works.”
Many white people, who aren’t woke, believe the truth about race, that it is an arbitrary distinction, not backed by scripture. The Bible doesn’t recognize race. It does acknowledge a covenantal distinction between Jew and Gentile. These white people want a color blind society. They want equal treatment, vis-a-vis James chapter two. They also eliminate covenantal distinctions in the church age. They want to be free to judge according to scripture.
Park on the last part of that last sentence of that last paragraph: “to be free to judge according to scripture.” That is true freedom, ordained by God. It also gives someone the freedom to be released as an individual from the charge of racism. Someone can actually be saved, truly converted. He’s not a racist anymore.
The movement aligned with David French, Beth Moore, and Rod Dreher distorts the gospel. Its righteousness is one of virtue signaling. It constructs modern phylacteries. They signal to everyone how righteous, actually woke, they are. The toll levied for leftist acceptance produces a false gospel. They can talk about Jesus, what He can really do, but He becomes of no affect, because He doesn’t remove the group guilt of which “Trumpists” are not woke. They won’t allow for individual redemption through their group or community sin and guilt. The Apostle Paul says concerning them, if they will add anything to the true gospel, let them be accursed.
What Is Trumpism?
Anonymous comments, some I did publish and most I didn’t, and others under my most recent post, in which I briefly mentioned President Trump, were typical of what I get when I ever say his name. They are angry, insulting, unhinged, foul, devoid of reason, and carnal. And they want me to be a better Christian, or just a Christian period, by not uttering the name, Trump. It would have been easier for me not to have written more about Trump, but I’ve chosen to double down and write something right away, because the point of putting on the pressure — they would censor if they could. I’d say at least forty percent of the Democrat party would like public religious or biblical speech illegal and punished. It starts with intimidation.
I do not believe these are days for mincing words. I’m 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) December 13, 2020
I’m 58 2/3 years old and I’m pretty sure that Moore picked up the terminology “Trumpism” from her good friend, David French, when she was directed to his just published article on The Dispatch, where he is senior editor, entitled, The Dangerous Idolatry of Christian Trumpism. He’s also a columnist at Time, and was a guest this morning on the Morning Joe show on MSNBC. The Dispatch was a publication launched in October 2019 by men notoriously neoconservative and never-Trump, Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. Trump, of course, has been hated by the pure neocons, ever since he came on the scene, pummeling Governor Jeb Bush out of the 2016 primaries.
For a start, whatever Trumpism is, Beth Moore herself, her kind, and their teaching are more dangerous than it. This is not to approve of much of what French exposed in his piece, even though I do understand the thinking of those people more than I do Moore’s and French’s. A very destructive problem is this faulty thinking that Trumpism, whatever it is, is the problem. I’m saying that I don’t know what Trumpism is because it is a word that serves as a vessel to pour many different definitions that might suit the one who uses it. Whatever it is though, I would evaluate Trumpism as a net gain in the United States, compared to the absence of Trumpism. It’s not a replacement for Jesus Christ. It isn’t the formation of a new gospel. It isn’t the answer, but it is a safe space ironically to find an answer.
Some of what is called Trumpism is not true. One should say that everything from the left is not true. The left lives in a world of lies or that a world that is a lie, both. Neoconservatives aren’t biblical Christians, which are the only Christians, that is, biblical ones. They are so associated with progressives now that they aren’t even liberal enough anymore to show up on Fox News. Their associations with the left annul them. They are relegated to CNN and MSNBC purgatory.
Just as an aside, who is the crowd of people that the Southern Baptist Convention or evangelicalism is going to receive and keep, who apparently accepts the gospel and this Woke thinking that accommodates the left? They think they’ll pick them up, while they ignore the deplorables? Or maybe they think they already have the people who, as President Obama put it, “cling to their guns and religion”? They don’t, but those are far more likely to consider the Bible than the ones they are attempting to impress. Those people have already sold their souls.
Trumpism has a Wikipedia page, certainly written by leftists there. You know that you’ve got make-believe when a big part of the definition is “narcisissm,” which is constitutive to critical theory. Narcissism was introduced to psychotherapy by the God-denying atheist, Sigmund Freud. Those who use it, like it’s being used today, I read apply it in Freud-like manner. It’s not what we might think, sinful pride, from scripture. The labeling of Trumpism, which includes Trump supporters, as narcissists is an aspect of critical theory through a marriage of Marxism and Freudianism.
The Trump supporter believes in liberty, which is tied to individuality, even in the definition of Americanism. For the Christian, which isn’t every Trump supporter, this is the individual relationship with God, rights God gives an individual (not a group), and individual salvation or redemption. God saves individuals, not groups. A major appeal of Trump to true believers is the individualism he represents in his beliefs, which to him probably stems from the era from which he comes, this being a far more prominent view, and then the Presbyterian church in which he grew up. It was a liberal church, but today it would look conservative.
The left puts its emphasis on the group — think group identity — and what you hear most often today, community, as in “community organizer.” Individualism is equated with narcissism. These are people so concerned for their own liberty, that they neglect the group. The practical purpose of critical theory is said to redirect individual narcissism towards collectivism. The individual lacks in critical reflection, destining for himself to act upon his own self-interests. One symptom then of this narcissism is the demonization of others, anyone different. Freud was Jewish, and especially at that juncture in history, saw this as the narcissism too in nationalistic tendencies that reject other ethnic identity, which later critical theory pointed out the need for this narcissism to find its expression in an autocratic leader.
Between the two, scripture, therefore, God, teaches individual rights: the right to life and the right to property. You don’t have true freedom if someone can play horseshoes in his neighbors front lawn or invade his refrigerator. Marxism believes that the state is God. At the root of its equality is equality of outcome, accomplished at the group level, the community. Capitalism is narcissistic because the person wants to keep what he owns instead of sharing it all with others. Anyway, you get the picture.
The protection of individual rights is the purpose of government. Trump supporters, not blind to Trump, don’t see Trump as a ruler who wants absolute power. I am a Trump supporter. I don’t see it. Trump was the de-regulator. He unchained individuals to innovate, much like we saw with the production of ventilators and then the vaccine.
The oligarchy of Big Tech is where I see autocracy. These Democrat governors closing their states for business are the autocrats. Trump was criticized during the pandemic for not “providing leadership,” which would mean a national mask mandate, something like that. Trump allowed the states the power reserved by the constitution to the states. His threat of intervention, which he didn’t really use, came with the endangerment of the citizens in Democrat run cities.
The freedom of religion is the right of the individual, as seen in the free exercise clause. Trump encouraged and supported the individual freedom to gather and worship against the Democrat instinct, like a state church, to conform to the state. The point of nationalism is the protection of individual rights again. Open borders destroys private ownership. People can’t be free if they are not protected, which is why the first role of government is protection. Protection requires borders and walls. These ideals have also been chosen to be superior to the alternative.
The left will call the individualism of Trump, not only narcissistic, but cultic. The only cultic tendency that characterizes Trumpism, that I see, yes, is taken to an extreme by some people. I don’t see it as a dangerous extreme, but I do see it as a necessary extreme right now to combat the collectivism of the left. I’ve heard the left call them black or brown shirts, which is a lie.
True Christians believe in the sovereignty of God. They believe God is the author of history. They believe that God brought Trump in whatever way they compare him to other leaders in world history whom God has providentially caused or allowed to gain power. Some probably have a cult like belief in this. They’re wrong to think that way, but I see them as a necessary, even providential, deterrent to the Marxists and Communists. They have far more adherents to their wicked, dangerous, and destructive collectivist cult. They are warped and blinded in far worse ways than the simplicity of the most fervent MAGA hat wearers.
A means to an end, Trumpism allows Americans to keep being Americans. Trump hasn’t come close to living like the country he wants to allow Americans to have. He hasn’t lived it himself, but he has fought for those who believe in it. Others who have said they have believed in it wouldn’t and didn’t fight. They capitulate still. If one of them had fought like he has, we may have preferred one of them to him. This is what we got, like Israel got Samson and Cyrus in the Old Testament.
Trumpism, the word itself, is a type of critical theory tool. Words are power. David French and Beth Moore want you, Trump supporter, to be ashamed of yourself. Don’t be.
No Christian In the United States Is Going to Be Able to Just Ignore the Country To Serve God and His Kingdom
Well known Christian leaders today remind people that we’re not on earth to sustain America, but to serve God and His kingdom. It’s true. How does that thought change evangelistic efforts right now? Does it stop parents in churches from thinking about how they will educate their children? Does that mean ignore the deluge of sewage that comes through the media and the easy accessibility to it? What if your people don’t have a job because the economy is shot? If the church budget shrinks, what does that do to mission support? When you go to plan your week, how will you do church with the shut down or new regulations? How is hospital visitation? How does your church relate to the fast downward slide of Christianity? How will your church relate to “wokeness”?
The Gospel (The Good News of Salvation, Because We Need to Be Saved and God Can and Wants to Save Us)
My Lifetime Surprising Struggle With My Own Sin
Nobody on earth, what I say, “breathes pure, spiritual air.” Nobody has their head in some superior spiritual cloud. Everyone must struggle against sin. My life has been one of a continuous struggle with sin. When I say that, some might act like they are surprised. I was surprised too, because when I was young, I didn’t understand sanctification. Little was said about sanctification as a struggle, the latter a technical word to describe a successful Christian life.
I don’t expect believers to live a sinless life. Scripture itself informs me of this (1 John 1:7-2:2). It’s been, especially in certain seasons of my life, a real struggle, even after I became a pastor in early adulthood. Being a pastor doesn’t take away the difficulties of living the Christian life and not sinning.
To a pastor, it seems very, very important not to be sinning. It’s similar to sinning as a husband or parent though. Your consideration is that the people you are leading will not do well with your leadership if you are sinning, you are not doing right. Struggling with sin seems to be very, very incongruent with influencing people under your leadership, so you don’t want them to know that you’re struggling with it too. This tends toward this idea that you’re really not, when you really are.
Struggling with sin doesn’t sound like a good Christian life. It sounds like failure. Yet, that’s what the Bible says sanctification is, a struggle. It will be harder at different times in your life too, and it would be helpful to know that.
The struggle isn’t losing. It is struggling. Losing is giving in to sin, saying that you are just going to continue in sin. When someone is struggling with sin, he’s not comfortable with his sin. He’s vexed. He doesn’t like it. He’s battling, which can look ugly. It is. But he doesn’t settle and give in, to where he’s now a committed sinner, not giving it up.
One reason someone might not want to admit a struggle with sin is that someone might think he’s even unsaved. This is an important reason why to teach believers that sanctification is a struggle. It isn’t an excuse to sin. Where is this doctrine though? The classic passage is Romans 7. Romans 7 gives a lot of hope to any Christian when he finds out what it’s like to live the Christian life. It seems impossible to have assurance of salvation without a passage such as this, looking at Romans 7:7-24, but especially focusing on 7:14-23:
14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. 20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
When you read it, it is pretty self-explanatory why this passage is so helpful to present the true Christian life as a struggle. This is not some novice, weak professing believer here. This is the Apostle Paul, sometimes considered the greatest Christian who ever lived. This is his describing of his own life, not someone else. It doesn’t sound possible, but it is true. Where do we get the idea that the Christian life is not a struggle if he said this about his own Christian life?
I write “surprising,” because I had the definitive impression that my Christian life wasn’t going to be like that, a struggling one. Why? I don’t remember anyone telling me it would be a struggle. Keswick theology, which was the environment of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, that I grew up with, portrayed Christians able to live in an ionosphere of near perfect Christianity. It’s not that people were doing it, but it was what was portrayed by preachers. They weren’t living this way, but they were making it look this way. I wanted what they had that they didn’t have.
How did I figure out that it wasn’t what was presented to me? It took me awhile. Ironically, it was a struggle to find out it was a struggle. I had to study the Bible. I had to reject what I heard or was taught, to sort through and understand without anyone telling me. That’s not the preferred way, which is one reason why our church has recently put so much emphasis on sanctification in our Word of Truth conference, spending four years of conferences on this subject. I’ve written on it.
Pastors are not disqualified for struggling with sin. Parents are not disqualified as parents for struggling with sin. The people we pastor are not disqualified for struggling with sin. There is disqualifying sin for a pastor. He can’t pastor any more for varied reasons, but he’s not disqualified because he sins. Paul was obviously sinning and he was the one who wrote about disqualification.
In writing this piece, I thought of pastors who are judged by a perfectionist standard, who actually don’t judge their own people in their church by a perfectionist standard. They are trying to help their people. Why are leaders judged harshly? They are going to be judged, but a big reason for harsh judgment can be that the followers want to use their leaders as an excuse for ejecting from the struggle themselves. They don’t want to live the Christian life, and they use the struggle of a leader as a reason not to struggle. This doesn’t make sense, but it happens. all. the. time. Especially young people today are harsh about their leaders. They don’t want to be judged by their leaders and then they use their own judgment of their own leaders, not to live the Christian life, but to not live the Christian life.
I’ve been careful in my leadership to give room to young people to grow and to help them to grow. I don’t excuse their ejecting from the Christian life though. I expect them to want the Bible, to love Christ, and to struggle. Just giving up on the struggle and then using whatever leader — parent, pastor, teacher — as an excuse, to give up, to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, to go out from us and discontinue with us, is inexcusable. This is apostate-like behavior. Every true believer is going to struggle and the support with that struggle needs to be there, either with the follower or the leader.
The Apostle Paul was attacked all the time for his Christian life and for his leadership. The whole book of 2 Corinthians among other chapters in other epistles accounts for this. People used Paul’s example as their basis for false teaching and bad behavior. He was regularly defending himself. Why? It was crucial for followers that they didn’t have him as an excuse.
I believe in continuous Christian living, a practice of righteousness, that is seen in 1 John and James among other places. However, not in contradiction to that is a struggle with sin. My lifetime has been a surprising, relentless struggle with sin. Losing the struggle is giving up. A true Christian will not give up. Giving up is not an appropriate response to someone who is struggling.
Someone struggling is at least struggling. Someone giving up is doing his own thing in contradiction to struggling. Endurance is a struggle. Followers of leaders should give leaders some room to struggle. They are not following their example when they give up. They can’t use the example of a struggling leader for ejecting from true Christianity.
Was the Apostle Paul a broken, useless leader because he was doing what he hated? Was he not worth listening to? We don’t want to trample and kick someone to oblivion, just because he has sinned. It’s also contradictory in someone who is living in sin without repentance because he saw others sin, and those same people have judged him or her. The question should be, is the judgment true? Isn’t the point to repent, submit to and please God, and grow as a Christian? In so many cases, it is just about not being judged. This was the case with the critics of Paul. They criticized him because they didn’t want to be judged by him and they had an agenda and life of their own they wanted to live.
Our judgment of other Christians should have as their point the desire to see repentance and growth, the actual winning of the struggle against sin. It shouldn’t be to excuse behavior. It isn’t an excuse. Everyone is going to stand before God by himself. He needs to struggle with sin and then help others with their struggle.
A Love-O-Meter: Love Does Not Rejoice In Iniquity And Does Rejoice In the Truth
In a very important passage, in 1 Corinthians 13 the Apostle Paul shines love through a prism that refracts into fifteen different colors or hues. Two of them are in verse 6, which reads:
[Love] rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.
Millennials Will Rue the Day They Despised Authority
Authority proceeds from God. When I write “authority,” I mean what the Bible says it is, and it is hierarchical (Romans 13:1-3). It doesn’t violate scripture. God created or originated authority. It is necessary to accomplish His moral will (God’s sovereign will is always going to occur). Authority orders the divine design of the world. It will only work the way God designed, if authority is respected.
I’m not saying that all millennials despise authority. I’m writing about millennials who do, and really anyone who does, but I focus on millennials because this is more characteristic of their generation. Millennials will still want authority now and especially in the future. They will need it. Right now in the short term it is convenient for them to despise authority.
Why should anyone do what these millennials tell them to do? If they do tell anyone to do, why should they expect them to do what they are told? Why should these millennials ever possess any authority, if they don’t believe in it themselves?
Many Christian leaders today decry the apostasy of the day. For all the possible causes, a perverted view of authority explains a lot. In a rudimentary way, it is the underlying problem. How? Why?
God is in charge. He uses under-authorities to be in charge. He authorizes institutions — family, church, government, etc. — to order the world He owns. Satan merely usurps that authority. The response to authority is obedience. The attack of authority undermines God’s institutions and then results in disobedience. Salvation itself comes through the obedience of faith. The faith is in God, Who is the authority. His under-authorities are still His authority. Someone who disobeys those, with the exception of violations of the Word of God, disobeys Him. They are not believing in Him, because this is how He works, just like He used men for the writing of His Word. In that sense, obedience to God is obedience to Moses, for instance.
All of society breaks down with the position of these millennials on authority, really just so they can have their own way, just like Korah and his band with Moses in Numbers 16. They will justify it or excuse it by saying that their authority is unreasonable or wrong or bad leaders. They know best about leadership, how it’s supposed to be done. In most cases though, they can’t even be challenged, these millennials. They offer no due process, no discussion, no defense. They are judge, jury, and executioner. Like Rehoboam of 1 Kings 12, they look to their contemporaries, their friends, other millennials, as proof or evidence that they are right, their cronies on social media.
No one who despises authority as a practice is a Christian. God is the Author of authority. Again, I’m not talking about so-called authority that teaches or requires something contrary to the Word of God. Just because millenials don’t like what they’re being told doesn’t mean that they can call it unscriptural, and that’s their simple, rebellious way out.
The despising of authority starts with not truly glorifying God as God. The despising of authority is an outgrowth of not glorifying God. You know someone does not glorify God because he despises authority. It is indicative of a reprobate mind.
The benchmark or the norm for someone aligned with God is subjection to authority. His instinct is to do what he is told. He listens. With God-ordained authority, he is swift to hear, slow to speak (argue), and slow to wrath (at what he’s being told) [James 1:19]. He is apt to do what he is told, rather than bucking it.
If you are millennial, and you despise authority, don’t expect your spouse to submit, nor your children. Why should they? You shouldn’t expect your employees to listen to you. You don’t listen, why should they listen to you? The culture that you spawn will be one that will break down because authority is necessary. Your disrespect will come back on you. There is no way that your world will work.
The millennial who despises authority won’t be in the kingdom of Jesus Christ, because Jesus expects obedience. He is the King. Your Jesus might be something more like a therapist, but the Jesus of the Bible, the only true one, will rule over the earth. You won’t like His kingdom and you won’t be in it. It is a kingdom of authority.
2 Peter relates despising authority to lust. Lust then relates to self, to me, me first. 2 Peter 2:10 says:
But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.
They walk after the flesh. Their lives are characterized by flesh. Their music is fleshly. Their entertainment is fleshly. Their recreation is fleshly. Someone who lives according to the flesh doesn’t want the restraint of a authority, hence, he despises it. He is not afraid to speak evil of authority. When the authority arrives to restrain, like the Holy Spirit, the Restrainer (2 Thess 2:7), he tears down the authority.
Righteous men are very careful with their authority, especially in public. Righteous men don’t rebuke an elder, but intreat (1 Timothy 5:1). This is seen in the servant/master or employee/employer: “be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling.” “Fear and trembling” is a non-starter with most millennials today. It’s a violation of personal wellness and self-care.
Deuteronomy 5:1 says:
And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.
There are verses like that all through Deuteronomy. Moses says, these statutes and judgments that I speak, learn, keep, and do them. That is how authority works. Moses says something and everyone learns it, keeps it, and does it. This is especially the message of the Bible toward parental authority, that is seen again and again in Proverbs. This generation is even represented by Proverbs 30:11, “There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother.” The book of Proverbs reads very serious about this from God. I’m going to publish all of these just so that you have them all in one place:
Proverbs 1:8, My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:
Proverbs 4:1, Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding.
Proverbs 10:1, A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
Proverbs 15:20, A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish man despiseth his mother.
Proverbs 17:21, He that begetteth a fool doeth it to his sorrow: and the father of a fool hath no joy.
Proverbs 17:25, A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare him.
Proverbs 19:13, A foolish son is the calamity of his father.
Proverbs 19:26, He that wasteth his father, and chaseth away his mother, is a son that causeth shame, and bringeth reproach.
Proverbs 20:20, Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.
Proverbs 23:22, Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.
Proverbs 23:24-25, The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.
Proverbs 28:7, Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son: but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father.
Proverbs 30:17, The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.
Many, if not most, of these statements are axiomatic. A millennial may question them, but it’s like questioning the transitive property or some other axiom. They are just true. As you read them, millennial, you can question them or challenge them or just ignore them, but if they are you, then they are who you are.
You will notice that there is very little about the father and what he’s doing with his son, but it’s about the son and what he’s doing with his father. If the father is disobedient to scripture, and teaches that, that’s bad, but this isn’t the issue. There aren’t a series of verses that say, “Father, please thy son and make sure he gets to have his way and live like he wants. Don’t be too scary. You don’t want to hurt his feelings.” Your millennial companions might listen to your complaints and justifications, but in the judgment of God, you are still guilty. You won’t escape this judgment of God without repentance. It’s on you, no one else.
“Holy” Is Not Related to “Wholly”
Calvary Chapels multiplied here in the Rogue River Watershed beginning in the late 1970s, especially beginning with Applegate Christian Fellowship and Jon Courson, which is the largest congregation in all of Southern Oregon. This was an outgrowth of the first Calvary Chapel started in Southern California in 1965 with Chuck Smith, proceeding from the Jesus Movement. Very large other Calvary Chapels have divided off of Applegate here, one called Mountain Church in Medford. They all have the “Jesus Movement” quality, which was an outlier in the history of Christianity, producing something syncretistic with the culture of the world at a much higher degree than had ever been seen.
Angels Marrying Humans and Jesus Preaching in Hell? The Happenings of Genesis 6 and 1 Peter 3
Why this subject now? I have taken the same position on these two passages since I came to my position on these two passages. Other men I respect a lot have taken drastically different positions. You can’t confuse the difference between them, they’re so, so different. If you have some general knowledge of this, you know what I mean. I have to admit, the ones I don’t take are in my opinion very weird. They are some of the strangest things you will hear in biblical interpretation. But again, why now?
A youtube feed on my phone read this video: R. C. Sproul VS John MacArthur on 1 Peter 3:18 – Biblical Clarity. It’s kind of a fabricated debate, because they’re not really debating. It just shows that the two men take two totally different positions on both Genesis 6:1-7 and 1 Peter 3:18-21 on the related passages. I knew I differed than John MacArthur on both of them. I didn’t know that R. C. Sproul did too. Then I went looking to see if I’ve written a post on either of these in all my years of blogging. Answer: no. In one post, I’m not going to end this debate. The positions are so different that they can’t be confused. They are not the same. There is no way they could both be right.
Do the two differing positions make any difference? They will definitely change your angelology. I believe that there is very rich doctrine in the correct position that is lost. I’m saying, since they are true, they would be missed. Scripture, all of it, is sufficient. If all scripture is sufficient, and we take some it away, it isn’t sufficient then. We need all of it. We need this teaching. Our church decided long ago that a difference of interpretation on these two passages would not be a separating issue. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Everything is important in the Bible. For some readers, not separating over something is the biggest news of this piece.
I want to admit that I didn’t listen to every single bit of the youtube video, but I listened to enough of it to know that R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur take a different position on both Genesis 6:1-7 and 1 Peter 3:18-21. I also listened to enough to know that I take the same one as Sproul on Genesis 6:1-7. Sproul seems to like two positions on 1 Peter 3:18-21 as if both of them are good, not the MacArthur one in this instance. He gave three positions on 1 Peter 3:18-21 on the video and sounded like he liked both of the two, preferring one slightly above the other though, that were different than the one MacArthur took. Both were very different than MacArthur’s.
None of the positions are a new position. All of them have been around for a long time. I’m not going to get into the history, even though that is important to the ones taking the varied positions. In the midst of arguments, someone will say that he read support in the church fathers.
MacArthur says that angels intermarried with men producing a race of giants in Genesis 6. He says that Jesus went to Hell to preach to demons in 1 Peter 3. Sproul says that the godly line of Seth intermarried with ungodly line of Cain in Genesis 6. He says that Jesus preached to people held captive by sin, these are the spirits in prison, through millennia since the days of Noah in 1 Peter 3.
In a casual moment, I heard someone I know, who takes both MacArthur positions, that these positions are very important to an overall understanding of the Bible and history. It was a casual moment years ago after playing basketball. I didn’t follow up because I knew there wasn’t time for that discussion. It still intrigues me though what he might have said. I can’t wrap my brain around a position grammatically or contextually that says angels procreated with human beings to produce giants, and then Jesus later went to preach to these fallen angels while they were chained in demon prison.
I believe Genesis 6 explains how things went south before the flood. It is a consistent theme that runs through the Bible, which is why it is so important that believers are not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Intermarriage between believers and unbelievers produces an ungodly line. There isn’t a great threat for intermarriage between angels and humans to destroy mankind. However, read through Genesis alone and see what interhuman relations does to cause great sin and difficulty.
I Peter is about suffering. Noah suffered in the days he prepared the ark, but God saved him and his family from the world by water. Noah suffered when the preincarnate Spirit of Christ preached through Noah to that generation of men before they were killed by the flood waters and ended in Hell. The spirits in prison weren’t in prison when Noah and Jesus preached to them, but Noah and Jesus did preach to the spirits in prison before they were in prison. Who was suffering worse in the end? Noah or those who rejected His preaching?
During a debate with a major Campbellite debater years ago now in Oakland, the crowd was silent when I brought an argument from 1 Peter 3 against baptismal regeneration from its context. It is a powerful passage on an important purpose of baptism. Baptism saves men from the world, so that they will have a good conscience toward God.
The Belly or the Bowels (part two): Either a Belly Church or a Bowel Church
In Philippians 3:19, the Apostle Paul uses these words: “whose God is their belly.” Let’s play a thought experiment with a potential reader of those words at the end of that chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Philippians church. He says,
My God is not my belly, so Paul isn’t talking about me. He must be referring to unbelievers or apostates, and I’m not one. I believe in the true God.
This is important to consider, especially in the changing nature of churches today. Just because the name of God and of Jesus are both used doesn’t mean that these are the true God and Jesus of the Bible. This reader isn’t going to say, “My belly is my God, you’re right, Paul.” No, this reader is going to say that the true God and the true Jesus really are truly their God, but in fact their belly is their God. True faith in God is not some arbitrary check in a box. Many false religions put the check in the right boxes, but are not genuine faith.
The belly and the bowel contrast presented in part one distinguish between two religions or even two churches, with the exception that one of them isn’t even a church, because it isn’t preaching true conversion. The belly religion or church contradicts true salvation. No one in the kingdom will have his belly as God. It is a fabricated kingdom in someone’s imagination, that he calls God’s kingdom, because then he envisions being in God’s future kingdom, while also pitching his tent in the kingdom of this world. This has now long become the norm in evangelicalism, churches pandering to bellies.
The bowel approach relies on scripture alone, exclusively scriptural methodology, what the Apostle Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 1-3. That always “works.” When I say works, God’s Word is powerful. What I mean is that it really works. However, it also doesn’t “work.” It never “works.” The belly approach works far more in getting some tangible result and almost everyone reading this knows what I mean. The belly approach incidentally is the Rick Warren approach of Purpose Driven Church. Growing up, Warren didn’t like how unsuccessful his father’s church was, so he crafted a strategy that would always work. His belly wanted more. The nature of how the belly approach works reminds me of the moment Dr. Seuss’s Grinch gets its idea. It’s either a wonderful or an awful idea, all depending on how one judges the two. An awful idea became a wonderful idea, that was still awful.
1. pertaining to what is characteristic of the earth as opposed to heavenly; 2. pert. to earthly things, with implication of personal gratification, subst. worldly things
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