I am no longer planning to post my new posts here. Please visit https://kentbrandenburg.com, the new What is Truth? site, to read my Friday posts from now on. Thank you.
Hey everyone, this is Kent Brandenburg. I'm not posting here anymore either. This will be available to use, but nothing new is coming here. It's all at the new site, which really isn't new anymore.
My wife and I worked hard for several months on various things without much of a break and we could get away for a day or so. Utah is a beautiful state. Little did Brigham Young know, when he said, "This is the place," that it meant five national parks, two of which are thirty minutes apart, Arches and Canyonlands. They both deserve national park status.
Arches especially means hiking, because you've got to hike to see the greatest scenes. They laid these out with well done trails. My wife and I walked miles, people passing us, we passing people, people walking along side of us, and crowds of people together with us looking at amazing views.
I want to take this moment to announce a trigger warning. Trigger warning to women. I'm preparing to talk about women wearing skirts or dresses. In all of those hours, besides my wife, I never saw another skirt. Not a single other woman in the entire time we were at those two national parks did I see a woman in a skirt or a dress.
I did see many women in skin tight leggings or pants. Loose ones too. The temperatures were cool, so there weren't so many shorts, but there were even some of those worn only by women, none by men.
A big occurrence this Sunday night before my wife and I left on our trip was the Academy Awards in Hollywood. My phone notified me that Will Smith punched Chris Rock. It came with an unedited video.
The comedian Chris Rock, who apparently hosted the show, added an ad lib joke about Smith's wife, Jada, an actress sitting with Will Smith, who suffers from a hair loss disease. She's essentially bald, and Rock sarcastically joked about her upcoming appearance in G. I. Jane, making fun of her hairless state. Some might call this joke, tasteless, because it made fun of a woman's medical condition over which she has no control. In other words, it's not funny to joke about that, or it shouldn't be. It's off limits.
Whether you think it was right for Smith to walk to slap Rock onstage in what some might think a chivalrous manner, it's an issue of women's hair length. Someone in Hollywood slapped someone else for making fun of a woman's hair length. Being called a "G. I. Jane" was insulting. None of this means anything if hair length on a woman isn't a symbol of identity, like a skirt or dress is a symbol of identity.
The Bible mentions visible symbols as they relate to identity. People know they matter. It's why you see a transgender "woman," biological male, wearing a dress. The dress is a symbol, as is hair. "Look at me, I'm a woman."
The girl, who wants to be a boy or thinks of herself as a boy, wants to get rid of her breasts. Or she prevents them with hormone blockers. The boy, who wants to be a girl or thinks of himself as a girl, wants those breasts. Breasts are symbols, even if they don't function except as a symbol. The Bible treats any kind of reversal of these symbols as an abomination and against nature. It's also the view held by professing Christians through their entire history until very recently, and one never rescinded by God.
The symbols that speak of identity are not arbitrary symbols. They aren't a social construct. They are the "laws of nature and nature's God" of the Declaration of Independence. Writing about this in 1762, Abraham Williams of Boston said:
The law of nature (or those rules of behavior which the Nature God has given men, . . . fit and necessary to the welfare of mankind) is the law and will of the God of nature, which all men are obliged to obey. . . . The law of nature, which is the Constitution of the God of nature, is universally obliging. It varies not with men's humors or interests, but is immutable as the relations of things.
Rebellion against the laws of nature is rebellion against God in a fundamental or root manner. The person violating these laws involves himself in a personal offense against the nature of God. In many of these instances, especially the ones I'm describing, they become an abomination to Him. You can deny that, but you'll still face God.
Our world reacts to symbols. The Swastika. The Hammer and Sickle. The Gay Flag. Men wearing skirts. The symbols mark identity in an elemental way.
The downfall on identity began first with the abdication and then the repudiation of symbols. Identity confusion and chaos starts with renouncing the symbols. If you think they're meaningless, then why do they trigger such strong reactions?
The model prayer of Matthew 6 and Luke 11, Jesus didn't pray. He was teaching His disciples how to pray. Certain few times the New Testament records that He spoke to His Father, He didn't ask for anything. He prays for one thing in John 12:28, "Father, glorify thy name."
On the cross in Luke 23:34, Jesus prays, "Father, forgive them." He prayed three times in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26, two of which He requested essentially the same thing, and the third time it says he prayed the same thing as the first two. In verse 39, He prayed, "Not as I wilt, but as thou wilt," regarding His suffering and death, and then in verse 42, "Thy will be done," which was about the same thing.
14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. 18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. 20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.
15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
Today churches have gone "woke." Many accept critical race theory and same sex relations. Before contemplating those extremes, we might consider something short of that and what leads to it.
A man I know well pastors in the same city as a conservative evangelical does, and the two discussed separation. The conservative evangelical church accepts membership of many and widely varied doctrinal and practical positions. Everyone is worldly also to sundry degrees, many very much so.
The conservative evangelical graduated from Masters Seminary and in general follows their way of thinking and operation. In a conversation, the man who I know well mentioned to the conservative evangelical 1 Timothy 1:3:
As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine.
Paul besought Timothy to charge the pastors at Ephesus that they "teach no other doctrine." That's very clear. "Teach no other doctrine" is one Greek word, heterodidaskaleo. This matches up with what Paul also said in 1 Timothy 6:3-5:
If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness . . . . from such withdraw thyself.
Here's what the conservative evangelical, who went to Masters Seminary, said: "We teach that "doctrine" there [in 1 Timothy 1:3] is [or means] 'the gospel.'"
This is the kind of dealing with scripture or teaching that justifies disobedience to scripture. Is "doctrine" "the gospel" in 1 Timothy 1:3 and in 1 Timothy 6:3-5 among other verses of scripture? Of course not. Still, that's how conservative evangelicals will go ahead and understand "doctrine." "Doctrine" refers only to "the gospel" in that passage.
Calling "doctrine" "the gospel" is a type of deconstruction. Rather than a verse asserting absolute truth, a person assigns a meaning that he conceives at that moment in time. In Is There Meaning in this Text? Kevin J. Vanhoozer writes (pp. 21-22) about the deconstruction of the postmodernist Derrida, the one most associated with it:
The belief that one has reached the single correct Meaning (or God, or “Truth”) provides a wonderful excuse for damning those with whom one disagrees as either “fools” or “heretics.” . . . Neither Priests, who supposedly speak for God, nor Philosophers, who supposedly speak for Reason, should be trusted; this “logocentric” claim to speak from a privileged perspective (e.g., Reason, the Word of God) is a bluff that must be called, or better, “deconstructed.”
A teacher or preacher may dismantle Christianity by deconstructing the language. Christianity is based upon language, the language of the Bible. Rather than say you don't believe the Bible, you can just deny a "single correct meaning."
Deconstructing the biblical text allows and even instructs men not to believe and obey the Bible. They not only disobey, but they disobey while thinking they're obeying, because of the deconstruction of the language of scripture. A church can grow in numbers from the welcome of plenteous and diverse disobedience, while still labeling it obedience.
Do you know what Darwin said about evidence for design in creation? Find out in my latest post here.
I'm sure someone has made this argument, even though I haven't heard it. Someone might call the five previous editions of the King James Version an argument for another update. Four editions followed the original 1611. Why no sixth edition? Why did we stop at 1769, the date of the last edition, what is called the Blayney Edition?
Dr Blayney made thousands of changes to the text of 1611. In vocabulary he incorporated amendments from another version from 1743, for example, fourscore changed to eightieth, neesed to sneezed, and the archaic crudled to curdled. In grammar he changed, among other things, number, so that ‘the names of other gods’ became ‘the name of other gods’; and tenses, so ‘he calleth unto him the twelve and began’ changed to ‘he called unto him the twelve, and began’. There were changes in spelling, in punctuation, and in the choice of words to italicise (which had been intended to indicate words not literally present in the original languages).
By the mid-18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version, combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints, had reached the proportion of a scandal, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text. First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760, the culmination of 20 years' work by Francis Sawyer Parris, who died in May of that year. This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762 and in John Baskerville's fine folio edition of 1763. This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition, edited by Benjamin Blayney, though with comparatively few changes from Parris's edition; but which became the Oxford standard text, and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings. Parris and Blayney sought consistently to remove those elements of the 1611 and subsequent editions that they believed were due to the vagaries of printers, while incorporating most of the revised readings of the Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638, and each also introducing a few improved readings of their own. They undertook the mammoth task of standardizing the wide variation in punctuation and spelling of the original, making many thousands of minor changes to the text. In addition, Blayney and Parris thoroughly revised and greatly extended the italicization of "supplied" words not found in the original languages by cross-checking against the presumed source texts. . . . Altogether, the standardization of spelling and punctuation caused Blayney's 1769 text to differ from the 1611 text in around 24,000 places.
[1611] 1. Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore, and though I giue my body to bee burned, and haue not charitie, it profiteth me nothing.[1769] 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
[NASV] 1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Mark Ward wrote, Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible, which I read. He's taken on a goal of dissuading people from the King James Version to use a modern version of the Bible. He also has a podcast to which someone alerted me when he mentioned Thomas Ross and me. I checked back again there this last week and he did one called, "Is My Work Working?" In it, he said he received three types of reactions to his work.
KJV "SINFUL ANGER"
Ward said he received more than 100 times praise than anything else. The next most reaction he said was "sinful anger" from KJV Onlyists. Last, he received the least helpful criticism from opposition.
Critical text proponents very often use KJVO behavior as an argument. It does not add or take away from Ward's position. Ward reads his examples of "sinful anger," and well more than half didn't sound angry to me. They disagreed with him.
My observation is that critical text advocates do not have better conduct. They disagree in a harsh manner and with ridicule. Ward himself uses more subtle mockery, sometimes in sarcastic tones. It just shouldn't come as a point of argument. Many in the comment section of his podcast use sinful anger. Ward does not correct them or point out their sinful anger. It seems like Ward likes it when it points the other direction.
In these moments, Ward talks about his own anger. He finds it difficult not to be angry with these men. Why even mention it? Just don't talk about it at all. Deal with the issue at hand. I'm not justifying actions of Ruckmanite types. They're wrong too. Both sides are wrong. This is an actual argument though of critical text supporters -- how they are treated. It comes up again and again, because they bring it up.
"EVASION" OF THE CONFESSIONAL BIBLIOLOGIANS
Ward says that few to almost none answer a main argument of his book, which he's developed further since it's publication. They don't concede to his "false friends" with appropriate seriousness. He says they don't think about false friends. He provides now 50 examples of these that appear many times in the King James Version. He includes the confessional bibliologians in this, which would be someone who believes in the superiority of the Textus Receptus of the New Testament. Their position might be perfect preservationism, Textus Receptus, confessional bibliology, or ecclesiastical text. He used the confessional title, referring to men like Jeff Riddle.
I've answered him in depth. Ward is just wrong. Hopefully calling him wrong isn't considered sinful anger. "He said I was wrong!!" King James Version supporters all over buy Bible For Today's Defined King James Version. It provides the meaning of those words in the margin. Lists of these from King James Version proponents are all over the internet, and books have been written by KJV authors (the one linked published in 1994) on the subject.
Ward says that every time he brings that up to Textus Receptus men, they sweep it away like it doesn't matter, then turn the conversation to textual criticism. That's a very simplistic way of himself swatting away the Textus Receptus advocate. They turn to textual criticism because the critical text and the Textus Receptus are 7% different. Many words differ. That matters more. It also denies the biblical doctrine of preservation.
The members of churches where men preach the KJV hear words explained. Sure, some KJV churches rarely preach the Bible. Talk about that. Where men preach expositional sermons from the KJV, relying on study of the original languages, they explain words to their people. They care. I have been one of those and the KJV doesn't hurt our church in any way. Personally I read the KJV Bible twice last year and this year I'm on pace for one Old Testament and two New Testament.
SUCCESS
Is success how much praise one receives for what he does? Is that the measurement? That is a very dangerous standard of success? That is what Ward uses as his standard in his video. In Jeremiah 45:5, God told Baruch: "And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not." We don't succeed when we receive praise. We succeed when we are faithful to what God said, whether we're praised or not. Seeking for praise is discouraged in scripture. Many faithful Bible preachers received far more harsh treatment than Ward. It's not even close.
True success is finding what God says and doing it. It's not success to turn a church away from the King James Version to a modern version, even if Ward supports that outcome.
You can find my latest post on how to lead an evangelistic Bible study with a seeking lost person here.
Some reading may have heard that the Russia invasion of Ukraine relates to the religion in these two countries. They might consider it a religious war. I will go back to give perspective on this issue and then dovetail with something from the last few days.
No one has more authority than God. In fact, God possesses all authority and any group has authority only because of God. To say that you have authority means that you function for God and even speak for God. People who want to stay in good standing with God will do what God's authority says. It's like God telling them. Disobeying this authority, since it is from God, is disobeying God. This could also relate to someone's eternal destiny, this often going along with the authority claim.
The true church authorized by Jesus Christ, the only church, is local only. Jesus started it in Jerusalem in the first century during His earthly life as seen in Matthew 16:18 and 18:15-17. The New Testament book of Acts records that first church reproduced other assemblies with scripture as their sole authority. The Lord Jesus Christ gave the true church authority, autonomy, with Him as the Head of each true church (Eph 1:22, 5:23, Col 1:18).
A true church has authority. It is serious enough that Jesus says the church looses and binds (Matthew 16:9, 18:18). It makes authoritative declarations as to whether someone is in the church or out. If someone is loosed, the true church regards him as unsaved. When the church sends someone out of the church, 1 Corinthians 5 says the church delivers this person unto Satan (5:5). These are true or real occurrences. They aren't games being played. It's very serious.
In the fourth century AD a counterfeit church arose in Rome. It claimed Christ's authority through a bogus claim of Petrine successionism (Petrine Theory). This spurious organization with the influence of Roman Emperor Constantine turned the church into a state church, the Roman Catholic Church, Catholic meaning universal. One could place the date at 313AD with the Edict of Milan, 325 with the Council of Nicea, 337 with the baptism of Constantine, or 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica. This institution, which preached a false gospel, claimed an authority it did not possess.
Nevertheless, for purposes of rule, Constantine split the empire into East and West in 330AD and the empire divided after the death of Theodosius I in 395AD. Roman Catholicism was still unified until it split into two in 1054, the Great Schism. The Orthodox Church (called Eastern Orthodox) formed from the division. The schism much related to authority, as the Eastern Church rejected the infallibility and unique authority of the Pope.
The authority of Eastern Orthodoxy describes itself a fellowship of self-headed churches, the term "autocephalous." Orthodox churches recognize the preeminence of Constantinople, called the primacy of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. This means Constantinople is a first among equals. The Orthodox hold that God's authority passes down directly to Orthodox bishops and clergy through the laying on of hands. They consider this apostolic succession and each Orthodox. Each bishop has a territory, called a "see," that he governs.
Roman Catholicism invented its own authority by procuring a non-existent apostleship. Eastern Orthodox then appropriated it as its own. It's difficult to estimate, but stats say 1.3 billion Roman Catholics and 220 million Orthodox in the world, top two of Christendom in numbers. Neither of them possess authority. When they talk about authority, it's not true. They say they have it. They don't. Yet, if a religious organization says it is from God, we shouldn't be surprised when it acts like they have authority.
Of all the autocephalous churches of the Orthodox by far the largest is the Russian Orthodox with over 100 million. It is known as the Moscow Patriarchate. This Orthodox church started when the early, original Russian prince, Vladimir I, was baptized by the Patriarchy of Constantinople in 988. The center of Russian Orthodoxy was Kiev. It remained under Constantinople authority until 1488, when it moved to Kiev as an autocephalous church. The Russian Orthodox Church moved then to Moscow in 1686 when the region of Kiev came under authority of the Tsars there.
I zoom forward to the period after the Soviet Union. The atheistic Soviet Empire swallowed religions. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church emerged again. Alexy Ridiger first became Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1990. This continued under Patriarch Kirill in 2009, who remains in that position.
Not only did and does the Roman Catholic Church not have authority, but it operates with a corrupt system of interpretation of scripture. The Eastern Orthodox and its autocephalous churches continued that system of allegorization or spiritualization of the Bible. These denominations within Christendom rationalized themselves with an eschatological and ecclesiological program called amillennialism.
According to amillennialism, the kingdom of God exists on earth in the present age in a universal church, a kind of spiritualized nation Israel. In the Old Testament passages about Israel, someone can read in the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church. They then function like a nation that authoritatively enforces the precepts of the Bible as seen through the lens of church authority. This explains a Christian holy war fought on behalf of the church.
Amillennialism says there is no literal millennium where Christ comes to rule for a thousands years on the earth. The "a" of amillennialism means "no," as in "no millennium. This view allowed for a state church that functioned like a kingdom.
An inquisition that tortures or puts to death heretics also comes from authority allowed by an amillennial eschatology. The church does the work of God by punishing sinners and implementing what God said.
In 2018 the Patriarch of Constantinople, the foremost of the autocephalous churches, gave autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox. This formed a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, taking the jurisdiction of the Ukraine, the region of original Russia and the initial Russian Orthodox Church from the Patriarch of Moscow. Not all of the Orthodox Churches operate under the authority of the Ukrainian Patriarch but under the Moscow Patriarch, who now is Patriarch Kirill.
The Associated Press reported that just this week Kirill came out in support of the invasion of Ukraine by saying the following:
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, leader of Russia’s dominant religious group, has sent his strongest signal yet justifying his country’s invasion of Ukraine — describing the conflict as part of a struggle against sin and pressure from liberal foreigners to hold “gay parades” as the price of admission to their ranks.
Kirill, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had already refrained from criticizing the Russian invasion – alienating many in the Ukrainian Orthodox churches who had previously stayed loyal to the Moscow patriarch during a schism in their country. Several of these former loyalists are now snubbing Kirill in their public prayers, with some demanding independence from the Moscow church even as their country’s political independence is imperiled.
Kirill, in a sermon delivered Sunday before the start of Orthodox Lent, echoed Putin’s unfounded claims that Ukraine was engaged in the “extermination” of Russian loyalists in Donbas, the breakaway eastern region of Ukraine held since 2014 by two Russian-backed separatist groups. [He] focused virtually all of his talk about the war on Donbas — with no mention of Russia’s widespread invasion and its bombardment of civilian targets.
Kirill on Sunday depicted the war in spiritual terms.
“We have entered into a struggle that has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance,” he said.
He contended that some of the Donbas separatists were suffering for their “fundamental rejection of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power.”
He claimed that this unnamed world power is posing a “test for the loyalty” of countries by demanding they hold gay pride parades to join a global club of nations with its own ideas of freedom and “excess consumption.”
God holds all authority. When He looked down on Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, he saw the corrupt lifestyles. This included homosexual or same sex activity. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Within the nation Israel, God expected punishment of death upon such behavior in Leviticus 18 and 20.
The fall of communism in Russia left a vacuum of authority the Russian Orthodox Church filled. Putin had become antagonistic to communism. The Russian Orthodox Church filled that void in harmony with his nationalistic thinking. This mirrors such a historical figure as Henry VIII in England in his role in the Anglican Church. He put many opponents to death. This arose from a belief held called "the divine right of Kings." Henry was also the head of the state church in England, which like the Russian Orthodox, borrowed from the amillennialism of Roman Catholicism.
Putin may rationalize his acts according to an Eastern worldview. He sees the corruption, decline, and decay of the West. The West in hypocritic fashion commits its own barbaric acts by murdering its own children through abortion. Putin sees a Ukraine following in the trajectory of the West with its gay parades and then its separation from the state religion of Russia. Kirill expresses this. Many Russians still dwell in the Ukraine both ethnically but also religiously. They still submit to the Moscow Patriarchy.
I'm not saying I support Putin's position, just that this is a matter of authority. God is still on the throne. He's not ruling through the Russian Orthodox, but its strong adherents at least admit that God rules in some manner. They follow a historical position without a biblical basis. This is not inferior to those who do not give acquiescence in any way to God's authority, even if they see themselves as having superior values.
God reigns. Authority exists. The United States and Western nations reject Divine authority. They face consequences for their rebellion.
The Orthodox do not possess genuine Divine authority, but many of them recognize it exists. Indications of belief in Divine authority appear all over historical monuments of the United States. It is seen in the founding documents. Statements like "In God we trust" evince these foundations. Even if a nation stops acknowledging the authority of God, it is still subject to His reign.
Many reading know President Trump's expressing genius to Putin is his way of playing American leftists. He is also fond in calling those in power, "our stupid leaders." Those on the left turn this into Trump and his supporters advocating for Putin and Russia. When the media calls Trump a Putin supporter, he doesn't back away from his "genius" language, because he won't submit to their lie. This works nicely with the Russia narrative invented by the left between 2016 even until today. They conform that narrative, which is a lie, to the Russian invasion. The globalist left supports the Ukraine, which makes the invasion difficult to sort.
The left didn't support Ukraine. President Obama gave them blankets. Trump gave them javelins, perhaps the most effective weapon against Russian conventional warfare. Ukraine did not gain NATO membership under any president. The country became useful in the Obama years for Vice President Biden to benefit through its corruption. Ukraine did not gain membership because of a malfeasance utilized by Biden and his son, Hunter. Trump dug into the corruption by asking Zelensky for help with the investigation, attempting to tie U.S. aid to elimination of criminal crookedness. The left impeached Trump for that.
Russia took Crimea under Obama and Biden. Russia invades Ukraine under Biden. Putin does nothing against Trump. Trump hurts Putin, because he increased oil production until the United States became energy independent. The lowered prices hurt Putin more than anything. Look at the gas prices now. This helps Putin, and President Biden does not ban Russian oil exports. The United States then looks to Venezuelan oil production instead of increasing U. S. generation.
Putin in a religious manner sees the Ukraine as Russian. Russian history started with Kiev, the Rus emerging there in the 10th century AD. Vladimir I adopted a unique Russian Orthodoxy in 988. When a cynical Putin became mistrustful of a Communism and a secular state, he embraced his version of religious nationalism, somewhat like a leader of a Moslem nation. Like conservative Jews see Palestine as Israel, Putin sees Ukraine as Russian. His version of Russian Orthodoxy plays a role in his aggression, irrationality, and brutality, much like a grand inquisitor burns heretics at the stake.
Trump understood the nationalistic instinct of Putin. Yes, Putin wants to make Russia great again and with a religious fervor. I'm sure he saw men like Putin in business. He could respect his opposition in the business world and on the world scene without supporting them. He states recognition of their toughness, a trait missing in those who allow homeless to defecate in our streets.
If the media and the Democrat Party cared about Zelensky and Ukraine, why did they not urge Obama or Biden to do more before the invasion? They care now, because they see an opportunity to blame on inflation and the related high gas prices. If they care about border security in the Ukraine, why not in our own country?
The underdog Ukrainians stand against Putin. By nature, Americans reject imperialism. The United States fought an imperialistic power for its own freedom. Americans want a free Ukraine. The left commandeers Zelensky like they did during the impeachment.
The left doesn't represent freedom. Their wokeness didn't stand for Hong Kong against China. President Biden and his son Hunter took money from China. The left rejects freedom of speech. They're for allowing perversion, a college male swimmer winning medals against women in the name of transgenderism. They elevate a transgender general wearing a dress in the United States military. The left doesn't want the freedom of adversarial speech. They shut-down and cancel political opposition to vaccines, vaccine mandates, Covid origination, Covid restrictions, religious freedom, the Russian conspiracy, critical race theory, and voter fraud. They don't allow creation in the school system.
First amendment freedom originates for political speech. The left shuts down speech. They control the public schools like Putin puts down his protestors. Theirs and Putins are a religious fervor each with their own totalitarian values.
The United States has its own religion that sacrifices babies to abortion, defunds the police, and stops energy production for their apocalyptic eschatology. When they pose to support the Ukraine, they calculate this for opposition to Trump. They see a political opportunity.
I support the Ukraine. Some doctrine consistent with true American values should guide our present and future involvement. I'm against Putin. However, everyone should understand the left's intentions of using this war for furthering its own agenda. I don't know if Putin is worse than the leftists who appropriate the Ukraine to further their insidious causes.
What do you think? Is the Constitution of the United States a religious document? You say, "Nooooo." Okay, why? I think many people would say, "Separation of church and state." One part of the first amendment perhaps someone, maybe you, latches on to. It's called the "establishment clause." It reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Without giving him an endorsement, but instead maybe giving him a disclaimer, perhaps you've seen the "church lady" that Dana Carvey does, and the line she says: "Isn't that special?!?" We've got an establishment clause. Aren't we special? I mean, we are going to make no law respecting an establishment of religion, cross my heart and hope to die. Is that true though?
Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.
All of us know that 100 plus 100 equals 200, not 100. If a single being is at 100 and Jesus is a single being, then He must be 100, so how can He or could He be 200? What does all this mean? How could Jesus effectively be completely, 100% man, when He is completely, 100% God? This is usually a struggle when teaching about Jesus to anyone. I've been asked about it many times and in various ways.
From my study and experience, the number one thought that brings together His complete humanity with His complete Deity is the teaching that by becoming man Jesus gave up the free exercise of His attributes, a doctrine that centers on Philippians 2:7, which reads:
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.
The words "made himself of no reputation" translate two Greek words, eautou kenoo, the second of which translates into the four words, "made of no reputation." That second Greek word is the basis for a doctrine called, "kenosis." The two words, eautou kenoo, mean literally, "he emptied himself." If it means, "he emptied himself," of what did Jesus empty Himself?
The doctrine of kenosis says that when Jesus became man, He was still completely, 100% God, but He emptied Himself of the free exercise of His attributes. This is saying that He had all these attributes. He kept all of them. He did not exercise these divine attributes freely. This was an aspect of His condescension and humiliation, which is taught in Philippians 2:3-10.
The doctrine of kenosis has its one proof text in Philippians 2, but it also emerges from the Gospels. It makes sense of certain statements that don't complement the Deity of Christ very well. You read it and you ask, why? The doctrine of kenosis answers these, bringing harmony to all of these passages.
Consider God's attribute of omniscience. God knows everything. Many times Jesus shows omniscience. He can read people's minds. He knows what they're thinking in supernatural way (Matthew 9:4, 12:25, Mark 2:8, Luke 11:17, and John 13:5). Jesus told the woman at the well things that He could not have known about her unless He was God (John 4). At the same time, in the Olivet Discourse Jesus said in Mark 13:32,
But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Jesus didn't know this. Only the Father knew it. This is an example of Jesus limiting the free exercise of His attributes. There were other ways that He did, but you get the point.
Theologians call the union in Jesus of the Divine and the human the hypostatic union. To make sense of the hypostatic union means exploring how He did divine works like forgiving sin (Luke 7:48), while doing things as a human being not characteristic of God, such as sleeping (Mark 4:38), weeping (John 11:35), and hungering (Mark 11:12). Luke 2:52 says Jesus grew in wisdom. If Jesus was omniscient, how could that be true?
The purpose of God necessitated the incarnation. Jesus must become man, while remaining fully God. He would not fulfill the Davidic covenant without a human lineage. Jesus rose from dead with Divine power, but He was dead because He was human. As a human He could pay sin's price for humans and yet rise again as God. Still a tension exists.
Jesus said in Luke 22:42, "Not my will, but thine, be done." Wait a second. Wasn't the will of the Father and the will of the Son exactly the same? They had the same will, right? This is where we understand something further in the doctrine of kenosis. As a human being, Jesus must submit His will, His human will, to the will of the Father. As a human being, Jesus must learn obedience. That might sound impossible, but a verse teaches this. Hebrews 5:8 says,
Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.
Did Jesus need to learn anything? Yes. He didn't need to learn obedience as God. He and the Father forever had the same will. His subservience to the Father's will, His submission to the Father's will, was an aspect of His humanity. Like other human beings, He learned that. This was again part of His emptying Himself of the free exercise of His attributes.
For awhile and today still an argument exists concerning the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. I understand why people have believed it. The main argument against, and I agree with it, is the following. As both God in essence, the Father and the Son cannot have two wills. They do not have two wills. The obedience of the Son, His earthly submission to the Father, represents kenosis, Jesus' emptying Himself of the free exercise of His divine attributes.
God is one, so He has one will, not two. As human, Jesus learned obedience. He always obeyed, but that subordination was not eternal. The subordination of the Son to the Father does not extend previous to His incarnation. This is a repercussion of Jesus simultaneously being both completely 100% God and completely 100% Man.
In a story told by the Lord Jesus Christ during His earthly ministry, He said in Mark 12:6:
Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.
What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.
Hell is a common atheist argument, usually made with disdain. It's even got a name, "The Problem of Hell." You've got to say it in mocking tones, because scorn is part of the argument. It can be done in one statement something like this: "You've got to love God or else He'll torture you in Hell." Or, "If God is so insecure, that He needs everyone to love Him, or He'll send them to Hell, I wouldn't believe in Him even if He did exist."
The Hell argument against Theism sets the atheist up as morally superior to Bible believers and God Himself, justifying atheism. It could be a kind of dress rehearsal for an argument before God Himself at the final judgment. It could too serve as an emotional appeal to support a bankrupt position. Others will cheer this on.
Someone is judging in his judgment of Hell. What is this standard for judgment in a random world of matter and motion, atoms colliding with one another? How does someone put even two related thoughts together by a cosmic accident of naturalism? He doesn't. How does naturalism cause the ability to provide a nuance of disdain? It doesn't. The atheist mocking Hell borrows from theism by using words, which are abstract, nonmaterial ideas. He constructs a moral system to account for behavior that doesn't exist in the arbitrary world of the naturalist.
Even so, Hell could at least feel difficult to defend in the world in which we live. The atheist frames it as though you enjoy the future pain and anguish. For that reason among others, people won't talk about Hell. They call it perhaps eternal death or just eternal separation from God. Knowing how offensive it might sound, thinking it might just shut down a conversation, it's given little mention, even though Jesus was the one who talked about it more than anyone. There is a Heaven. There is a Hell.
How some people have dealt with Hell is eliminating almost any opportunity for anyone to go there except for someone almost everyone thinks deserves it. Hitler comes to mind. A general audience might choose for a child molester or a serial killer. Almost everyone else goes to, you know, "a better place," even if they don't know what or where it is or why that person will go or should be going there. It's not helpful to give someone false assurance related to Hell.
I've titled this, my acceptance of Hell, because in a personal way, Hell is acceptable to me. There are general reasons for acceptability. The Bible teaches Hell. Jesus taught Hell. It is also taught in so many different ways. The opposition to Hell isn't persuasive. It amounts to "I don't want it" or "I don't like it," which is a version of rejection of justice for sin.
Here are my personal reasons for acceptance of Hell.
People just don't think they deserve Hell. This is very common. When I'm evangelizing, it's the second greatest stumbling point. I ask, "Do you think you deserve Hell?" 90 plus percent answer, "No." The idea here is the punishment doesn't fit the crime. It's way too severe, reflecting on the nature of God, His righteousness, and His justice. People do not think they're bad enough to deserve Hell. That's for very bad people, and few think they're that bad.
I say I deserve Hell, and I accept that, because I do think I'm bad. How bad we are starts with the nature of God. The Bible compares us to God. I fall very far short of the glory of God.
God created me for His purpose and not only do I not fulfill that, but I don't want to do it. I want to serve myself. I can give many examples of this. Today at church, while someone was praying, I caught myself thinking about something else. I was thinking about something temporal and superficial and suddenly I awoke out of that trance, not even hearing what someone was praying. I've done that many times.
God's judgment turns us over to our own lusts. Romans 1 uses the language of "gave them up" (vv. 24, 26, 28). God lets people have they want. He lets them go. They're getting what they want. They don't want God. They don't want what He wants. If you get that, it ends in Hell, because that path leads to where God isn't. His love is absent from Hell. Where God isn't, it's a very terrible place. That's how the Bible describes it. Hell is the final destination for those God gives up.
I think of this aspect too. In going my own way, I disobey, even ignore, the great command, to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. God loves me. No one is better to me than Him. It's not even close, but I live for myself.
Sin ruined man. It ruins men. Men easily live for themselves. They move from one lust to the next. This is all so strong, that Hell is a necessary impetus to reject that.
I know there's all the positive too: Heaven, God's goodness, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and the truth of the Bible. That's all important. I still see Hell as necessary motivation in spite of all those good things, on the negative side. The flesh is that strong. Human desire is that strong.
You could call all that the world offers, what Jesus calls, gaining the whole world. Even if man doesn't gain the whole world, the whole world is still out there offering its invitation. The eternal loss of a soul counteracts the lie of the world. It's a nagging reality. Even if someone wants to block it out, it disquiets and afflicts.
When Jesus told the story of the rich man in Hell, someone sees a man who did have everything in his short lifetime, who would gladly give it all up for even a drop of water, while he's in Hell. If there's one thing he wants to do, even when he can't escape Hell, it's to get a warning to his brothers. This is a warning to all the living.
Hell is not over the top. Even with it, people still choose to go there with the knowledge of its existence. As severe as it is, it's still not enough for a vast majority of people. Many atheists would rather mock Hell and God than receive the Lord, despite the reality of Hell.
Hell makes total sense to me personally for these two reasons.
This morning I was sitting somewhere, not by my choice, that had a television with a Justin Bieber music video playing. I couldn't understand the lyrics, but I could see some of the action of the video. I knew it was Justin Bieber. He stood in a gigantic shallow swimming pool, about two and a half feet deep. He was wearing white shorts, a dark t-shirt. Behind him were dozens of women, filling the entire pool, wearing tight, tiny shorts and form-fitting halter tops. They danced in sync with one another, very sexually.
Bieber drew my attention with a cross he wore. As he moved in his sensual manner, jerking and twisting in the swimming pool, the cross flung and hopped all around, hanging around his neck. Justin Bieber made the cross, the cross, a feature of his video. He associated the cross with all the other lurid features of his production. This typifies modern evangelicalism.
The two words together, "the cross," appear eighteen times in the New Testament. Sometimes it speaks of the actual cross, such as Matthew 27:40, "If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross," which is the Gospel usage in Matthew through John. Other times, the Apostle Paul often uses it as a symbol, as in 1 Corinthians 1:17-18:
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
Paul wraps up his argument Galatians by using "the cross" in Galatians 6:12 and then verse 14:
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
The Apostle Paul talks about the enemies of the cross of Christ in Philippians 3:18-21:
18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) 20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; 14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; 15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
"Cancel culture" has a nice ring to it, a kind of poetic rhythm when one says the two words together. Go ahead, say them, "cancel culture." It does now have a Wikipedia article. When I googled books with the terminology "cancel culture," a glut of books appeared written in 2020-2021 with "Cancel Culture" in the title. I've not read one of them. I wanted to know how early the term appeared, because it's been on my radar for at the most two years.
A book, Environmental Impact Assessment, written in 1979, reads:
We have come to the realization---yet again---that knowledge is power, that we need to keep building on our science and be ever mindful that a democratic society is based on genuine public engagement, not the so-called cancel culture that is denying genuine dialogue (author's italics).
Before I graduated from high school, the quote appeared. Surprising. That's the first and only usage I found in the twentieth century. I don't know who popularized it. I went about trying to trace it, but I don't know who originated the terminology. Originally, it seems, it was "call-out culture," the idea here being that described by Adrienne Matei on November 1, 2019 in The Guardian:
The contemporary idea of a “call-out”, however, generally refers to interpersonal confrontations occurring between individuals on social media. In theory, call-outs should be very simple – someone does something wrong, people tell them, and they avoid doing it again in the future. Yet you only need to spend a short amount of time on the internet to know that call-out culture is in fact extremely divisive.
She pointed to a statement by former President Obama in an Obama Foundation Summit, which was on October 30, 2019, in which he said:
If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right, or used the wrong word or verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, because, ‘Man, you see how woke I was. I called you out.’ That’s not activism.
The rise of the term "cancel culture" seems to occur in the middle of 2020, which also happened to be right at the beginning of the Covid-19 'pandemic.' Now it is well entrenched, and the earliest popular book seems to be Primal Screams, which said:
Consider an example that materialized in March 2019, captured in a New York Times piece called "Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture." It reported the case a (sic) young black man who identified as gay and was employed as a "sensitivity reader" by various publishing houses. In that capacity, he enforced "cancel culture" (i.e., the flagging that progressive groupthink would deem unacceptable).
Wouldn't it be an interesting job to be a "sensitivity reader"? I had never heard of it until this quote. I googled that too, and it appears a lot, 40,000 times. As a pastor, a chunk of your congregation could take that job while listening to your sermons. The New York Times article was written on March 8, 2019.
Cancel culture emerged as perhaps one of the top issues for the 2022 mid-term elections. The cancel culture tried to cancel Joe Rogan on Spotify and failed. On the other hand, Whoopi Goldberg said something offensive about the Holocaust on her show, The View, and they cancelled her for a few weeks, so she could take time to reflect on her ignorance, stupidity, or callousness. Another aspect, it seems, of cancel culture is a reaction to the unvaccinated, losing one's job even if he has natural immunity. This relates to the trucker protest on the U.S. Canadian border, which is bigger than a vaccination issue.
During this last six months I've worked on a lot of writing projects and wrote almost two chapters on sanctification for our book, The Salvation That Keeps On Saving. The two chapters are "Dedication and Sanctification" and then "The Biblical Theology of Sanctification, the latter of which I'm halfway done, the former I've completed. For the latter, I am looking at every use of the related Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament words for sanctification, which is almost 1,000.
You reader know that God canceled in the most severe way everyone on earth except for eight people in Genesis 6-9. He ordered the cancellation of all the Canaanites. When Israel didn't, Israel suffered greatly for that. The Assyrians and Babylonians tried to and succeeded greatly at cancelling Israel. The Bible requires churches to cancel someone's church membership, called by us, "church discipline." Jesus taught that in Matthew 18:15-17.
God says in Leviticus 20:24, "But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people." Two verses later, He continues: "And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine." It's not just Old Testament. Jesus said in Matthew 13:49, "So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just." Many more examples occur.
