Paul's Passing Thoughts

Link to video excerpt 3: Medical Summit on COVID 19. 

Link to video excerpt 2: Medical Summit on COVID 19. 

The so-called “anecdotal” evidence is the results doctors expect to see because of the cell science.

Link to video excerpt 1: Medical Summit on COVID 19. 

There seems to be a battle brewing in California in the midst of the present American cultural war. What is going on today is literally the cold war version of the American Civil War. Sunday, day before yesterday, Pastor John MacArthur’s Grace to You ministry and his Grace Community Church officially defied the California lockdown order. 3,000 church members showed up, without masks, and with a total disregard for social distancing.

Full disclosure: I am no fan of John MacArthur for many, many reasons that I will not state here because it is off-point; but nevertheless, I am a fan of what will happen if Governor Newsom is foolish enough to not count the cost of this battle. It will be a political disaster and the best thing to happen to Donald Trump since the 2016 election. Newsom is smart; I am guessing he will find a face-saving way out of this one, but we will see.

Fact is, as a matter of metaphysics, governments only have the power granted to them by the people. For example, if half of the Chinese people united and told the Communist Party to cram it, there is absolutely nothing they could do about it. You can’t kill everybody, and you can’t put everyone in jail.

Fact is, if all of the churches in California unite, or even half of them, and tell Newsom to take a long walk on a short pier, there is nothing he can do about it except expose himself as a powerless two-bit despot.

MacArthur doesn’t have the fighting fundamentalist clout he used to have, but he still has plenty. He is beloved worldwide, and the last person on earth Newsom would want to coronate as a martyr. It will not go well. The lockdown probably has Grace to You Ministries (GTY) a little strapped for cash, which in my estimation is really behind the defiance, but if Newsom shutters MacArthur’s church by force, money will come pouring in from all over the world for a legal fund. Not only that, MacArthur’s clout will certainly embolden many other churches and California will be inundated with lawsuits and stay orders.

Also, the Constitution is clearly on the side of GTY, and MacArthur is no stranger to fighting the government in court and has won every time. Attorney’s will be lining up coast to coast to represent GTY pro bono. This is a looming political disaster for California Democrats. And if you watched MacArthur on Tucker Carlson last night, you now know how persuasive MacArthur is. MacArthur is seen as the premier elder statesman of church in our day, and executes the persona to perfection. He has already made Newsom look like a fool when they have appeared on TV programs together in the past.

For what it’s worth, and probably not realized by the Democrats, the Evangelical vote has been swinging heavily their way since the emergence of the New Calvinist movement (circa 1970). MacArthur is an avid supporter of the New Calvinist movement. This movement, which has totally taken over the Evangelical church, is dissatisfied with how little it can control people under American jurisprudence. Most New Calvinist leaders are openly leftist which is a huge shift from the 1980s. New Calvinism is a return to an authentic John Calvin Geneva style theocracy. New Calvinists are not for the Democrat platform per se, but are more against what they refer to as the evil, “American Dream.”

That is, until the government started locking down their churches. Before this, the New Calvinists were more than happy to take the position that God is sovereign and nothing happens unless God wants it to. In sermon after sermon, American individualism was labeled as the haughtiness and pride of totally depraved humankind. This was a convenient message because nothing sells like salvation and most of these ministries are flush with cash, but the lockdown has simply lasted longer than they ever dreamed it would.

Now, the narrative has shifted from the sovereignty of God to, “We must obey God rather than man,” and, “Christ is head of the church, not the government.” Interestingly enough, MacArthur stated last night on Tucker Carlson’s show that the main point is the American Constitution, while GTY statements make “obeying God rather than man” the main point. You see, the evil “American Dream” isn’t so evil all of a sudden. Freedom endowed to mankind by God according to the American Constitution, in the past, was merely a freedom to do nothing but evil, but now, not so much. I have been writing about the New Calvinist movement since 2007, so I am well versed in the ongoing hypocrisy and how the theology is constantly adjusted to fit reality.

If Newsom decides to step in it, that is, the biggest pile of dog doo one could ever step in, how much will it help Trump? That’s hard to say, but I think it’s significant. I believe the lockdowns have shifted a vote away from Democrats they didn’t realize they had.

To whatever degree that vote is, a showdown with the elder statesman of Evangelicalism will greatly escalate the shift, and show the American public at large that the Democrats are little more than paper two-bit tyrants who are not worthy to be feared.

John MacArthur is not the barber in Ohio, the hair stylist in Dallas, nor the gym owners in New Jersey. Get your popcorn ready.

paul

Deuteronomy 6:4 – “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

If you will not use the law to love God and others, the law will condemn you. Most professing Christians do not know the difference between being under law and being under love. These are two different realities. Neo-Protestants clamor about their “scandalous gospel” that has a single perspective on the law. The real scandal is that we can, as Christians, put our best effort towards using the law of God to love Him and others with no fear of any condemnation. It’s really us doing the love. Regarding the use of the law to love God and others, the celebrity evangelist Ray Comfort claims in the documentary film, American Gospel, that “we can’t do that.” Indeed, we can’t do it perfectly, but if you are no longer under the law, that’s not the point; if we have been transformed from darkness to light, we fulfill the law through our best efforts at love as Deuteronomy plainly states. Proponents of justification by faith wail and decry such heresy, but this is only because their standard for justification is perfect law-keeping and not the new birth.

    Another proponent of justification by faith in this documentary shows their fatal misunderstanding of what the law is for. If you can use the law of God to love God and others, that’s like using a mirror to see something in your teeth, and then taking the mirror off the wall to pick your teeth. His point? We can’t use the law to make ourselves righteous. But, that is only the point if you are still under the law. Of course, if you are still under the law, faith working through love cannot fulfil the law. The law is not for righteousness; it’s for love. This is not to say that there are no consequences for failing to love, but that has to do with loving correction from our literal Father and has nothing to do with condemnation. Ray Comfort’s statement that no saved person can use the law for love is proof that justification by faith keeps all people under condemnation.

    Hence, our righteousness is only a “legal declaration” and not our state of being according to the false gospel of justification by faith. The only use of the law is for establishing righteousness, but therein, condemnation must also be present. A true born-again Christian shows their righteousness by faith working through love, not perfect law-keeping. And, Jesus didn’t come to keep the law perfectly in order to impute it to our Christian lives through church ritualism; there is no life in that use of the law. If the law can be used to impart life in any way, shape, or form, that makes the law another “seed,” but there is only one seed. That is the cardinal point of Galatians chapter 3.

    Justification by faith is a false gospel. We are righteous because we are reborn from above and have God’s seed in us; that’s what makes us righteous. Perfect law-keeping by anyone does not make us righteous. The false gospel of justification by faith does not transform us from being under the law of sin and death to the law of the Spirit of life. It does not transform us from being enslaved to sin to being enslaved to righteousness.

Presentation date to be announced.