Paul's Passing Thoughts

Nothing irritates me more than the predestination debate. Pastors and scholars on both sides of the issue are either clueless or lying. The completely disingenuous premise of the argument assumes that John Calvin had the gospel right, and the predestination argument is “secondary.” Past this ministry (TANC), who is saying, “Predestination is not the issue, Calvin believed a false gospel, that’s the issue”? I certainly can’t find anyone. It totally drives me nuts that pastors who claim to be “Calvinists” are assumed to be propagators of a true gospel while Calvin clearly promoted a false gospel. Whether John MacArthur, Albert Mohler, or whoever, if they proclaim themselves to be Calvinists they are false teachers on that merit alone. So, what is Calvin’s false gospel?

1. The state of being of a “believer” is not changed; a person is only illuminated for the purpose of seeing how far they are from God. This facilitates #2. The new birth is redefined as an ability to see how evil we are so that we can perpetually return to the same gospel that originally saved us.

2. Salvation is a process and not a completed work. Since “believers” continue to fall short of perfect law-keeping, they must continually seek re-salvation and this process can only be obtained through church membership.

3. Only water baptism admits one into the fellowship of the church which is synonymous with being part of the body of Christ. Of course, this is tantamount to baptismal regeneration.

4. Pastors within the church have authority to forgive sin. Right, in all, this is NO different than the Catholic Church. Right, whether MacArthur or Mohler, or Piper, or your local Protestant pope, they think they have authority to forgive your sin. That’s what they believe….period.

5. Clearly, Christ plus the church’s “means of grace” (salvation).

6. Clearly, works salvation.

The ability to progress in salvation, according to Calvin, depends on one’s ability to see how much further they are from God rather than a gospel that brings us closer to our Father’s likeness. Then, we have masses of confused Churchians moaning and whining on discernment blogs about the condition of the church when the very orthodoxy calls for it. It’s a joke and cognitive dissonance of the highest order.

Susan and I no longer go to church, but every summer of have to confront the whole idea that it is alright to send our grandchildren to VBS and church camps. Why would that be ok? It’s not ok, a false gospel is a false gospel…end of discussion.

I doubt this post will get any pushback because anyone vaguely familiar with this ministry knows that I have a litany of Calvin citations to back up what I am saying here. Nevertheless, we can start with 4.1.20-22 of the Calvin Institutes. Then we can move on to discuss how the other daddy of the Reformation, Martin Luther, believed the same gospel.

That is, the FALSE gospel of justification by faith.

paul

My children are grown adults, and moved out, so for years I have not had to deal with the yearly crisis. However, at least temporarily, I find myself in father mode. So, once again, it is that time of the year. It would seem that mothers are in a state of terror because of what might happen to their children during summertime: yes, it could happen; boredom. With more time outdoors, the fear is not kidnapping. With all of the swimming that goes on, the fear is not drowning. No, no, the real fear at hand is the psychological trauma of boredom.

And dejavue; as I listen to Susan expound on the possible consequences of children not having an activities director  during the summer, an eerily similar treatise heard from my first wife, I throw my arms up in the air and state incredulously: “The child will not die if he becomes bored!”

I was never raised in a situation where those overseeing me and my brother gave much thought to keeping us busy. In fact, asking would have invited an invitation to work in a cornfield or some other labor field of another vegetable. So, believe it or not, my brother and I came up with our own activities. We hunted snakes, we built tree houses, we visited the hippies who lived on the farm across the road and played army in their marijuana field because it looked like a jungle. Hey, we did just fine without an activities director.

Yet, if  the yearly crisis must be addressed, we might as well address it in a way that will save the world. I have succumbed; I will be Blayne’s activity director this summer, but in addition, I will be doing my part to save the world.

The first step is realizing that fun in its purest form should be a very, very small percentage of life. Kids watch enough cable TV and play enough video games to consume a lifetime of brain food with no nutritional value whatsoever. There are fun activities that actually teach something about life in the process.

Fact is, when one considers what goes into a happy and productive life, we must confess that most childhoods are totally wasted. The prevailing attitude follows: life is passive and kind of happens on its own. Of course, the extreme opposite is true; what we eat, what we do, how we think, and what we believe determine who we are.

This laxness towards life development is grounded in collectivism. More than likely, your child is going to grow up to be just another producer overseen by the state, so why all the fuss? And, why should I carry a baby that I don’t want to term and raise it when producers are a dime a dozen? With the kind of numbers we are talking about regarding abortion, have you noticed the following never enters into the conversation? How many of them were the next George Washington? How many were the next Jonas Salk? This is because we have been brainwashed into thinking about humanity in collective terms and not individual terms.

As parents, the following is job one: to prepare our children to be the best them; to prepare them to make their assigned mark on humanity based on the gifts they were born with. And, the standard is so dumbed down that if you merely teach your children to think for themselves you are heads above the rest. Indicative of our steroidal collectivist mentality is feeding our children junk food, junk information, junk history, junk thinking, junk examples, and then taking them to “experts” for fixing.

Life building isn’t rocket science, but it is a myriad of simple concepts to be diligently taught and applied. I cite the following example as a snippet only: if you allow your child to eat junk food, they will become obese which lowers self-esteem, which in turn lowers their self-worth and confidence, which causes them to do many stupid things like marry a loser because they think they can’t get anything better, which in turn is enough on its own merits to totally wreck their lives. And it all began with just the one subject of eating. That’s just one branch of the life chart, which is massive in and of itself. What we put in our bodies weighs huge on overall wellbeing regarding many life categories.

What we do with our children during the summer is indeed very important, but not because of the dreaded boredom crisis. The goal is not to merely keep our children busy to save them from boredom…

…the goal is to make our world a better place by investing in the individualism of our children.

paul

Church evil isn’t even news anymore; it’s now commonplace. The latest revelations of mega-church pastor James MacDonald being investigated for attempted murder-for-hire hasn’t even drawn the interest of secular news outlets. Regardless of the constant flow of evil from the church, is it still seen as a bastion of morality in our culture? I don’t think so, and I think most attempts to preach the gospel as a representative of the church will fall on deaf, if not incredulous ears.

Remember, as boasted by Dr. Albert Mohler at the last Southern Baptist Convention, the church’s testimony is strictly, “confessional.” What’s that mean? It means any attempt to practice what is preached is “moralism” and “Phariseeism.”  Preaching is all about what “Jesus HAS done, NOT what WE do.” If you have been paying attention for the last 40 years, the church has all but admitted the following: the notion of real personal change is only a pretense to get people into the church where they will be slowly indoctrinated with the real church gospel of progressive justification that is only a “legal declaration” to begin with.

The church gospel is a denial of the biblical new birth…period…end of discussion.

Not that long ago, James MacDonald even announced publicly that he was done trying to fix people because they can’t be fixed. That is, apparently, unless you have them killed. As bemoaned by this ministry for years; church, week in, and week out, preaches the total depravity of the saints and then fires its pastors when they get caught with both hands in the cookie jar. Why? Because moralism is a church pretense to initially draw people in until they are slowly indoctrinated. Right, that’s cult behavior, but we must remember that the very definition of a cult is the marriage of authority and faith. When pastors tout the authority of the church, they are, in fact, proclaiming that the church is a functioning cult.

For years, the church has survived all of its scandals by using the dichotomy ruse. What’s that? Church dichotomizes its leaders from the parishioners. Tisk, tisk, such and such has fallen into sin and is disqualified from the ministry. Well, such and such was supported by the parishioners for years while the congregation knew he was suspect. In fact, in one sermon some time ago, MacDonald suggested that his critics should be killed by launching them into the air with human catapults. The congregation laughed. The now disgraced Mark Driscoll referred to blessed piles of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill church.

The church has many other red herring dichotomies. “That sounds like a ‘high controlling church,’ not us.” “That’s ‘reformed,’ we aren’t reformed.” Etc., etc., etc. One of the biggest diversions was the trending implementation of “elder rule” in the churches or “plurality of elders” for the sake of, get this, “accountability.” What was the result? No church was accountable for any objective truth because, “Well, all of the elders would not agree with that position.”

Frankly, I think the jig is up. The church is in a downward spiral and refuses to change. Thanks to America, people cannot be compelled by force to support the church. My best guess follows: the Protestant church and the Catholic Church will unit for survival purposes. And, with the vast majority of government representatives being either Catholic or Protestant, and making laws accordingly, you have a church-state by default. This will be the final mega church-state that will usher in the last days.

Politically, I do not see the citizens of a country as victims of tyranny; they have the government they supported. Likewise, church parishioners share the guilt of the church they support. They share the guilt totally.

And as they feign gentle concern for you being “outside of the church’s love” while laws will compel faith more and more, remember that they laughed about the thought of you being run over by a church bus or “catapulted into the next county.”

paul

I had a special relationship with my grandparents who lived in the country outside of Portsmouth, Ohio. Their lives were storied with the narratives of rugged individualism that made America great. For reasons not stated here, they raised me much of my life.

Truly, life has pots of gold everywhere. If one were to make a sitcom based on my grandmother’s personality, it would be pure gold. For one thing, not one thought in my grandmother’s head was ever a mystery, and it was usually things other people wanted said, but were afraid to say it themselves. A little bit of that may have rubbed off on me. Her open commentary on life is family folklore, like the time she commented on a family member living with someone out of wedlock: “Well sure, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” My grandmother didn’t have to debate much; her statements usually left people shell-shocked and therefore speechless.

She was the perfect wife for my grandfather. He was not only a John Wayne like character in real life; he even looked like John Wayne. You might get an idea of what he was like based on the fact that he was a union leader for a boat dock and Operating Engineers during the 60’s and 70’s. When the union leaned on his men to vote for a Democrat in one particular election, he endorsed the Republican candidate to make a point, and his men followed him  accordingly.

Together, my grandfather and grandmother went from living in a barn and making $1.75 a week as farmhands during the depression, to owning an impressive homestead outside of Portsmouth.

And that homestead was my sanctuary growing up. It was a different world. Time stood still, there was peace and quiet there, and security. As a teen, I once said to my girlfriend; “See if your parents will allow you to go to Portsmouth for the weekend to meet my grandparents.” With permission secured, my girlfriend asked what my grandparents said about me bringing a guest. But that’s not how it worked. I never called when going there by myself or bringing a friend, or friends. You just showed up. If you were family, it was an open door policy. Prior arrangements were interpreted as some notion that you were not welcome. “Of course it is alright! Why wouldn’t it be alright? You know we never go anywhere. Do you think we are mad at you?” No, trust me, if grandma was mad at you, you would know it.

The Whistman homestead was exactly  2.5 hours from Dayton unless I was going for a new record. According to grandma, one could make it in 2.25 hours if they “drive like your grandfather.” When I was near, I observed the eta and announced to any guest that might be with me what would be happening when we arrived. If 6:30 pm, as we drove in, “Bo” the coon dog, and “Jack” the rabbit dog would sound the alarm as if the gravel driveway didn’t make enough noise to begin with. Grandpa would be in his recliner smoking his pipe with “Fran,” my grandmother’s Pekinese laying between his feet on the elevated stool. One of the two TV stations they could receive (because they had a tower antenna beside the house) would be on, and grandma would be in her rocking chair.

Grandma would stand up and walk to the door to report who had arrived. She would stand at the door until the arrivals walked up the steps and then she would open the door wide and say, “come in.” While standing in the living room, grandma would walk to the kitchen to remove leftovers from the refrigerator and instruct the guests to sit at the kitchen table. There would be no argument or refusal at that time; grandma often stated that all people from Dayton were underfed. As the spread was laid out, a virtual feast, as predicted beforehand to the guest, grandma would say, “I know it’s not much, but it’s all we have.” With the unfolding of each event, the guest would look at me in amazement as if I was a prophet of some sort.

Grandma always took pictures of my guests and wrote them letters, especially the girlfriends. All totally fell into her scheme to know what I was up to in Dayton. But in all cases, they were struck by the family unity and unquestionable love between us.

However, though I found this kind of love on earth among mere mortals, we find such experience with God elusive. Why? Though I knew my own weaknesses, and at that time knew very little about life, I never thought for a moment that my weaknesses could ever diminish my grandparents’ love for me or my brothers. Though much, much closer than I have ever been to feeling this kind of relationship with God, I still fall short. Why?

One reason: 30 plus years of church. I could have the relationship I had with my grandparents because there was no condemnation between us. Church is in the business of keeping condemnation between you and God. That’s church orthodoxy…period. Try to argue the point, and be sure to bring your favorite church expert sycophant; they will lose the argument big. Church orthodoxy NEVER states that the professing Christian is free from all fear of condemnation; such a notion is not in the church’s soteriology or membership contract. Church wants to control you…through fear of God’s condemnation.

Such fear is directly responsible for the trending evil in the church. In order to control people, there must be some fear of condemnation in regard to salvation. The Bible calls this, “under law” as opposed to “under grace” (under love). The church DOES NOT teach that the condemnation of the law is abrogated by under grace. Under grace is presented as a church system that enables one to continually strive against condemnation. According to the Bible, being under condemnation actually fuels sin against the law of God. Trending evil in the church is a direct result of the church’s false gospel. If you really want a thorough understanding of this, get “The Church Lie” (thechurchlie.net).

Church condemnation and its subsequent bondage to evil and fear begins with an understanding of justification by new birth as opposed to the church gospel of justification by faith. That will not be addressed here, and again, if you care to understand the difference, get The Church Lie. With that said, our relationship with God should be very much like my relationship was with my grandparents, and by the way, between God’s children as well. That is a primary goal of this ministry: we have the justification part nailed down; now we want to be a leader in striving to find that perfect love experience with God void of condemnation. This will require an utter rejection of the church’s credibility, especially their pseudo-authority, and a pursuit of individual understanding leading to a cooperative effort in Christ’s mandate. The cells of a kidney do not wait around to get permission from braincells to do what they are created to do. If they did, you wouldn’t live very long. God’s family is a body with ONE head, not a top-down institutional authority.

Church, that’s why we have relationships on earth that we wish we had with God. It shouldn’t be that way, not even close. And in another attempt to control people, church makes suffering a way of life. Yes, we are called on to “pick up our crosses and walk daily,” and “live by the cross of suffering.” Since life is supposedly all about returning to the cross daily for re-salvation via the church, we should also happily embrace the “suffering of Christ.” Current events in my life have caused me to look at that differently.

My grandparents took me in throughout my childhood when needed, often for long periods of time. More than once, my return to Dayton was a crushing experience. An attachment more than mere duty was the cause for the pain. I wasn’t old enough to experience their pain when I was with them a couple of years as a baby, but I saw their anguish vividly when it happened in my adolescent years…and, how they handled it. They handled it the same way they handled losing half of their extended family during WWII, they handled it the same way when they lost friends and loved ones during the depression. Life doesn’t stop. If you don’t tend to the garden because of grief, the living will not eat. If you take a day off work because of grief, one from the long line outside the factory gates will take your place. A world was on the verge of being taken over by three madmen, you must go to the arms factory and do your part. And on that day when it was determined that I was going back to Dayton, my grandmother did the laundry.  I remember that day like it was yesterday as I watched her toil at it with that helpless feeling I will never forget. That’s how life raised my grandparents; if you stop to grieve, life will run over the grieving. You tend to life in your pain until the pain passes. Indeed, time does heal most ills.

Of course, my grandparents would have never gone to court against blood, and the reasons for Susan and I having temporary custody of my grandson are far different. But if a court ruling is not in our favor, it will be painful. I never saw this coming at all; that I would share the same sufferings of my grandparents. When I was a young boy, I could only watch my grandmother doing the laundry with that helpless feeling, now I am doing the laundry.

However, because of the relationship I had with my grandparents, there is a certain kind of honor about it. The opportunity to follow in their footsteps, win or lose, is the highest of honors. Words cannot explain the experience of reliving what they did for me, and in their shoes. In understanding this afar off, I know this should be our like experience with Christ, but the church has robbed us of it. Condemnation has no place in a true relationship with Christ. We cannot share in his sufferings because we are under condemnation, Christ was never condemned. Suffering for love and suffering as a condemned person are not the same. We share in HIS sufferings that have become our acts of love as well. Christ never suffered for anything other than love.

Life is that way; it can throw you a curveball. It can inform you that you are being called on to be dad again at 62 years of age. That can certainly cause you to question some things. In case God hasn’t noticed, I have some other things going on. My grandparents were young grandparents; with me, not so much. But goldfish can remind you of what is important. Goldfish can remind you that grandparents have something a lot of people do not have; experience, and better yet, trial and error experience. Older grandparents obviously have more experience than younger ones.

I take what young people do and say seriously. Early thought patterns and habits make old ones. Of late, I have been concerned about my grandson’s lack of compassion towards animals. Animals are a lifeform. Then, the other night, when I heard him crying in his room, opportunity called. I guess I am like Christ in that regard; I see all of life as a teaching opportunity for myself and others. Christ didn’t need much teaching for himself, but he certainly never passed on an opportunity to use a life event to teach others.

When I went into my grandson’s room to investigate, I discovered the reason for his grief; his goldfish died. Yes, I took the opportunity to make a big deal out of that. After all, we live in an age when delivering a baby under DNRCC (Do not resuscitate comfort care) is a “mother’s right to choose what to do with her own body.” If you think delivering a baby and laying it on a table while the mother decides whether it lives or dies is wrong, you only want to “control her body.” Wow. So here we are; the ability to deliver a baby has nothing to do with God’s enablement or what God’s opinion on that would be. As the baby you delivered lays on the table awaiting your thumb up or thumb down as in the Roman Coliseums of old, God would say, “Damn right, it’s your body, and your choice.” Really? As the Bible states, people know better and deliberately suppress the intuitive knowledge of common good. And do I think diverting these kinds of attitudes towards life starts with how a child thinks about losing a goldfish?  Yes. After all, somehow, we go from crying about the loss of a goldfish to making the life of a newborn baby some kind of a political statement.

Look where we have come and become. In spite of decades of secular expertism, trillions invested in church infrastructure, and innumerable books on how to live life, we are further from knowing the love of God than ever. My grandparents grew up during a time when you figured out life on your own, or life would run you over. While grieving death, tragedy, and misfortune, not attending to life actively, and  in a better and wiser way, would only lead to more death, tragedy, and misfortune. Out of the individual strength and contributions of the many, a purer love was born, and a closer experience to the true love of God.

In other words, an authoritative collectivism is much further from God than an individualistic body life. A body depends on collective roles and the values of individual members, not the supposed wisdom of a minority expertism. Caste systems endorse  hierarchical condemnation, and where there is condemnation, there is no real love.

So, this is my prayer for all of us children of God; that we will be at complete peace in our relationship with Him and our heavenly family siblings; that we will feel complete security in Christ. Failure to love perfectly is not the issue as the church asserts; the motive of love flowing from our changed heart is the issue.

If we feel completely secure in earthly relationships, how much more should we feel secure in Christ? And why should we let any institution steal that hope from us? The church has had more than 1500 years to prove itself to humanity, and its supposed “reformed” version has had 500. What are the results? A lawlessness never before seen in the church and outside of the church. Obviously, the church is powerless.

Love believes all things and endures all things, and frankly, the Scriptures are clear; it is the only gift we will take with us past this life, and the only thing worth pursuing presently.  If we pursue love, and avoid the peddlers of condemnation of which the church is chief, we will experience a love and security in Christ never before experienced. Christ died to end condemnation. Fear of judgment is not a motivator for godly living, because…

“there is no fear in love.”

paul

The essence of sin is control lust and sin has no greater weapon than fear which is the antithesis of love. “Perfect love casts out fear.” For certain, one of the purposes of the book of Revelation is to inform Christians on how the world is going to end. And no, climate change doesn’t end the world as we know it. No, space aliens are not in the picture at all. No, earth’s inhabitants will not be living on other planets. No, a meteor doesn’t hit earth and destroy it.

Actually, the earth doesn’t end at all, Christ comes down and sets up His future kingdom. Then, after 1000 years, God the Father moves all of heaven to earth. This was pictured by the Jewish tabernacle in the wilderness. These events also coincide with the eradication of God’s enemies: Christ came first to end sin, the coming kingdom of Christ will end sickness and disease, and the new heaven and new earth will end death and all sadness.

World history is dominated by the marriage of church and state. This is state rulership in the name of God, or a plethora of gods. Religion determines the theology, and that theology is enforced by the state. It began as the pagan-state which ruled the world in various and sundry forms until it was overcome by the church-state in the fourth century. The marriage of religion and state force began shortly after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden and reined in one form or another until the advent of Americanism in the 1700s. Until then, the pagan-state and church-state rained terror and misery on humanity.

Americanism rejected determinism, collectivism, Plato’s systemization of the pagan-state which was later adopted by the church, emphasized individualism, separation of church and state, and a government by the people and for the people. This turned the world order completely upside down. It also brought collective happiness and wellbeing to the world for the first time in history. America ended the church-state in the Western world, and communism filled the void with a secular version of Platonism.

However, what we find in the book of Revelation is the following: the church-state comes back with a vengeance. Its pent-up hatred for freedom and individualism will unleash hell on earth. The anti-Christ will be a renowned world leader who will proclaim himself to be God just like the Roman emperors of times past, and will be in unison with a false prophet and a false religious system. It is the return of the church-state on steroids.

The Bible is clear: during this time, if Christ does not return and intervene, humanity will not survive. Undoubtedly, due to weapons of the nuclear sort that the church never had at its disposal before. Check history for yourself; the VAST majority of wars prior to Americanism were religious wars. That’s just historical fact.

The Bible is also clear on something else: the world economy will be booming and there will be a time of relative peace on earth, and then out of nowhere, it all hits the fan. One can take these primary elements and do their own math in conjunction with present events.

paul