He is risen

While Christmas is the expression of Christian hope, Easter is the expression of Christian certainty. It is of particular import at this time, when the once-Christian West, having fallen away from its faith, reels before five decades of invasion from the pagan East and South.

But it is always darkest before the dawn and this present darkness is far from the most dangerous that Christianity or Western civilization have endured.

The solution to the decline of the West is not to be found in politics, in tribalism, in violence, or even in the courage of its defenders. The solution is the hope that can only come from the faith in the Risen Lord Jesus Christ and obedience to the Word of God.

Without that faith, Western Man lacks purpose. Without that obedience, the nations of Europe miss the societal discipline that made them historically great. As C.R. Hallpike has shown, neither science nor secular humanism are credible replacements for Christianity and the cultural confidence that is a consequence of Christian hope and Christian faith.

So, don’t despair that the soldiers of Islam are on the march again. Don’t despair that the weak-in-faith have succumbed to temptation and doubt and have fallen away. Don’t despair that the numbers of the faithful have dwindled. Don’t despair that the pews of the unfaithful churches are empty. Don’t despair that those who call themselves Christian leaders throw the children’s bread to the dogs.

And don’t be surprised that the worship of the world and acceptance of its Narrative has enervated the converged institutions. All of this should fill you with confidence, with certainty, because all of it is exactly as we were told it would be.

Remember, Jesus Christ of Nazareth required a mere 12 apostles to change the course of human history and shake the world. It doesn’t matter if there are one billion believers or only one dozen, the Gates of Hell will not prevail.

So stand firm in your faith. Stand fast. Speak fearlessly. When you feel fear, when you feel doubt, think about the empty tomb. For he is risen and he has not given you a spirit of fear, but of victory. The victory that we celebrate today.

Happy Easter.


A Churchian sermon on politics

A Churchian cuckservative, appropriately named Peter Wehner, preaches a sermon against Donald Trump in the New York Times:

Among the most inexplicable developments in this bizarre political year is that Donald Trump is the candidate of choice of many evangelical Christians.

Mr. Trump won a plurality of evangelical votes in each of the last three Republican contests, in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. He won the glowing endorsement of Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, who has called him “one of the greatest visionaries of our time.” Last week, Pat Robertson, the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, told Mr. Trump during an interview, “You inspire us all.”

If this embrace strikes you as discordant, it should. This visionary and inspiring man humiliated his first wife by conducting a very public affair, chronically bullies and demeans people, and says he has never asked God for forgiveness. His name is emblazoned on a casino that features a strip club; he has discussed anal sex on the air with Howard Stern and, after complimenting his daughter Ivanka’s figure, pointed out that if she “weren’t my daughter, perhaps I would be dating her.” He once supported partial-birth abortion and to this day praises Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. He is a narcissist appealing to people whose faith declares that pride goes before a fall.

Mr. Trump’s character is antithetical to many of the qualities evangelicals should prize in a political leader: integrity, compassion and reasoned convictions, wisdom and prudence, trustworthiness, a commitment to the moral good…. At its core, Christianity teaches that everyone, no matter at what
station or in what season in life, has inherent dignity and worth.
“Follow justice and justice alone,” Deuteronomy says, “so that you may
live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” The attitude
of Thrasymachus is foreign to biblical Christianity. So is Trumpism. In
embracing it, evangelical Christians are doing incalculable damage to
their witness.

There are few Churchian phrases I hold in more contempt than “damage to their witness”. It’s passive-aggressive manipulative nonsense. In combination with their actions, use of the phrase shows what forked-tongued liars the Churchians are. The Churchian “witness” is pure poison. They preen and posture and virtue-signal and criticize and condemn, driving genuine believers from the pews while simultaneously welcoming women and sexual deviants and atheists to the pulpits.

Any decent, honest, self-respecting man would rather pledge his life to Satan, Cthulhu, or the Nameless Spirit of the Abyss than live life the way these mealy-mouthed, nominal Christians do. They don’t follow Jesus Christ and worship God, they follow public opinion and worship at the altar of social approval.

The punchline: Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last three Republican administrations.

I don’t know if Jesus would vote for Donald Trump or not, but I know that he wouldn’t constantly lie like the Churchians do. And frankly, I think he’d drive an awful lot of Churchian sermonizers out of the Church with bullwhips, just as he drove the moneylenders out of the Temple.


Put a cassock in it, Your Holiness

Not being Catholic, I don’t pay much attention to Pope Francis, but I’m beginning to see why so many Catholics are not at all happy with him.

‘A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,’ Francis said in answer to a specific question about Trump’s views. ‘This is not in the gospel.’

Asked if American Catholics should vote for someone with Trump’s views, Francis said: ‘I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that.

‘We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.’

As you can imagine, Donald Trump’s response was appropriately withering:

‘If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened.

ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.

The Mexican government and its leadership has made many disparaging remarks about me to the Pope, because they want to continue to rip off the United States, both on trade and at the border, and they understand I am totally wise to them.

The Pope only heard one side of the story – he didn’t see the crime, the drug trafficking and the negative economic impact the current policies have on the United States. He doesn’t see how Mexican leadership is outsmarting President Obama and our leadership in every aspect of negotiation.

For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian and as President I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now, with our current President.

At this rate, Trump is going to end up being the first man being elected both President and Pope.


“Christianity under siege”

Donald Trump, of all people, is speaking out in defense of Christians around the world, when far too many Churchian leaders prefer to preach about tolerance and parodies of marriage:

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump touted his faith at Liberty University on Monday, telling the conservative college that Christians have to ban together because their religion “is under siege.”

“We’re going to protect Christianity,” he said. “If you look at what’s going on throughout the world…Christianity is under siege.”

Trump pointed to targeting of Christians by terrorist groups in Syria and urged Christians to work together to use their “power” within the United States to enact change.

He added that “I’m a Protestant. I’m very proud of it, Presbyterian to be exact. …[but] bad things are happening, very bad things are happening.”

To be precise, Christianity needs no more protection than reality does. It simply is. But Christendom does.


Trapping the wolves

The Anglican Community finally calls the false Christians of the Episcopal Church to account for their theological crimes:

For the first time, the global organizing body of Anglicans has punished the Episcopal Church, following years of heated debate with the American church over homosexuality, same-sex marriage and the role of women.

The Anglican Communion’s announcement Thursday that it would suspend its U.S. branch for three years from key voting positions was seen as a blow to the Episcopal Church, which allows its clergy to perform same-sex marriages and this summer voted to include the rite in its church laws.

It was also seen as a victory for conservative Anglicans, especially those in Africa, who for years have been pressing the Anglican Communion to discipline the U.S. body.

“The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union,” the leaders of the Anglican Communion, which represents 44 national churches, said in a statement during a meeting in Canterbury. “The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching.”

The Episcopalians are not Christians. They follow the world, they do not follow Jesus Christ. It would be better if their evil “bishops” were all excommunicated, but we live in a softer, more secular world at the present. This suspension is a long overdue start.


Not just broken, but nonexistent

Rev. Franklin Graham declares that the USA is “broken”:

“Tonight the president is set to give his final State of the Union address,” said Rev. Graham in a Jan. 12 post on Facebook. “I can tell you the state of our union.”

“Our nation is broken — it’s broken morally; it’s broken spiritually; it’s broken politically; it’s broken racially,” he said.

“The state of our union cannot be fixed unless we repent of our sins individually and ask our nation to do the same,” Rev. Graham continued.

While I agree with Rev. Graham that the abandonment and rejection of God is the most significant problem, you cannot put an egg back together when you’ve not only got a cracked egg, but also bits and pieces of a sausage, a burrito, and won ton soup.

If you add tigers, goldfish, and iguanas to a herd of sheep, you may have something, but whatever it is, it is no longer a herd of sheep.

You cannot make a nation out of many nations. It has been tried, many times. We have a word for such a multinational entity and that word is “empire”.

The US empire is breaking down. It is breaking apart. And it cannot be fixed because it cannot become something that it is not.


Standing by the faith

Wheaton College is showing some spine in insisting that its Christian professors actually be Christian in a theologically meaningful sense:

Wheaton College can confirm reports that on January 4, 2016, per College policies and procedures, Provost Stanton Jones delivered to President Philip Ryken and to Dr. Larycia Hawkins a Notice of Recommendation to Initiate Termination-for-Cause Proceedings regarding Dr. Hawkins.

The Notice is not a termination; rather, it begins Wheaton College’s established process for employment actions pertaining to tenured faculty members.

This Notice follows the impasse reached by the parties. Following Dr. Hawkins’ written response on December 17 to questions regarding her theological convictions, the College requested further theological discussion and clarification. However, as posted previously, Dr. Hawkins declined to participate in further dialogue about the theological implications of her public statements and her December 17 response.

This is the woman who claimed that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, which appears “to be in conflict with the College’s Statement of Faith.”

And it is in conflict. Christians don’t worship the same God as Muslims, which should be obvious since Christians consider Jesus Christ to be divine and part of the Godhead, whereas Muslims consider Jesus Christ to have been nothing more than a mortal prophet and a lesser one at that.

Any time you hear that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship the same God, you know that you’re hearing little more than fatuous unitarianism.


Repentance

Even those of whom we think the worst can repent. And when they do, it is our responsibility to accept their repentance and forgive them.

“Asking for forgiveness is certainly not an easy thing to do,” said Giromini in a YouTube video entitled “I ask Christians for forgiveness for feminist protest.” “We went way too far and ended up offending many religious and non-religious people,” she added, recognizing the stunt as a form of “blasphemy.” She adds that she is making progress in her own spiritual life, although the exact nature of her current beliefs remains unclear.

Although she left Femen in 2013 after denouncing it as a “business,” she had continued her bare-chested protests as the leader of a new feminist group comprised of both men and women, called “Bastardxs,” (allowing for both the masculine and feminine forms of the word “Bastards” in Portuguese).  She has now made it clear that she regards herself as having no affiliation with feminism at all, repudiating the movement as a religious “sect” that uses women as objects, promotes lesbianism, and covers up pedophilia in its ranks.

“For the feminist sect women are not the inspiration, they are prime matter in the worst sense of the term. They are convenient objects useful for the purpose of inflaming hatred against the Christian religion, hatred against men, hatred against the beauty of women, hatred against the equilibrium of families. That’s what feminism is, and I can guarantee it is like that because I was on the inside!”

“I saw the feminist movement cover up for PEDOPHILES,” writes Giromini. “I saw the feminist movement PERSECUTE WOMEN … I am a witness to the fact that today in the feminist movement women are not of any importance but serve as fuel for the fires of hatred that the feminist sect cannot allow to die.”

It is hardly a surprise to learn that feminists would cover up for pedophiles. As we know, they’re not the only ones to do so; SJWs and science fiction Fandom have done the same.

At the end of the day, there is only one enemy, the Father of Lies and his followers. What they call themselves today or tomorrow doesn’t really matter. They are the Children of The Accuser, which is why pointing-and-shrieking is their primary weapon.

We should keep this woman’s example in mind as we engage in cultural war in science fiction. Some of the SJWs we oppose will, sooner or later, be sickened by the actions of their compatriots. Some of them will reject the darkness and filth by which they find themselves engulfed and repent of their foul allegiances. And we need to be ready to accept them as penitents.


Secularism is not constitutional

Justice Scalia calls out those who would suppress Christianity in the USA:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country’s constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him.

Scalia was speaking at a Catholic high school in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana. Scalia, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 is the court’s longest serving justice. He has consistently been one of the court’s more conservative members.

He told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is “no place” in the country’s constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.

“To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?” he said. “To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?”

He also said there is “nothing wrong” with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. He said God has been good to America because Americans have honored him.

Scalia said during the Sept. 11 attacks he was in Rome at a conference. The next morning, after a speech by President George W. Bush in which he invoked God and asked for his blessing, Scalia said many of the other judges approached him and said they wished their presidents or prime ministers would do the same.

“God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways,” Scalia said.

“There is nothing wrong with that and do not let anybody tell you that there is anything wrong with that,” he added.

Moreover, the idea that Congress shall make no law “respecting an establishment of religion” does not bar the several States, or the executive branch, from doing as it likes with regards to any religion. The fact that various courts have interpreted this as meaning that Christian football players cannot pray before a football game doesn’t mean that it actually does mean that, it merely means that Christians should use their weight of numbers to do whatever they please.

The public is under no moral obligation to obey the courts. Law that is invented out of thin air can be justly ignored. Whether it can be safely ignored, of course, is another question.


Cuckservative Churchianity

As Red Eagle and I mentioned in Cuckservative, there is nothing that drives the modern Churchian evangelical like the desire to demonstrate that he is not racist:

When Michelle Higgins addressed a gathering of 16,000 evangelical students meeting in St. Louis this week for a missions conference, she brought the same intensity and fervor she’s often displayed as a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ms. Higgins, a St. Louis native and director of Faith for Justice, a protest group devoted to “Biblical activism,” minced no words when she told the crowd what happened after Michael Brown was killed last year in Ferguson, Mo.

“When I first heard that our brother had been killed, we began looking for churches to host discussion groups,” said Higgins, also the director of worship and outreach at a local congregation. “All of our evangelical partners said, ‘We’re not ready to talk about race and justice; we’re not ready to talk about police brutality and mass incarceration; we’re not ready to talk about the fact that black bodies are grotesque to us – we don’t want to admit that.’ ”

Her provocative words at the 2015 Urbana conference, a student gathering co-hosted by the conservative campus ministry InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, not only laid bare some of the deep racial divisions in the United States after the killings of Mr. Brown and other black men over the past year and half, but they also went directly to the fact that, as a whole, evangelical Christians remain among the least likely to have sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement.

But at the Urbana conference this week, many evangelical student leaders and others have expressed full solidarity with the emergence of the protest movement. Worship leaders onstage, a diverse group leading worship with the kind of praise music that many evangelical churches are known for, wore Black Lives Matter T-shirts and sang songs in Spanish, French, Korean, and Swahili, as well as English.

Those “evangelical student leaders” are pure SJW entryists. Any church that accepts them into leadership will be led astray. Whatever it is they worship, it isn’t the God of the Holy Bible. And whomever it is they follow, it assuredly isn’t Jesus Christ.

Here is a reliable heuristic for the Christian: if a fallen world lauds you for what you are doing, the chances are very good that what you are doing isn’t in line with the Will of God as expressed in the Scriptures.