“Things ain’t cookin’ in my kitchen
Strange affliction wash over me
Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire
Couldn’t conquer the blue sky…” [1]
Today, the Australian government’s carbon tax repeal bills cleared Parliament’s lower house. They will be voted upon in the Senate next year. To see this reported as an act of climate vandalism by the media isn’t a surprise. What is surprising is the consternation of many Christians.
“Typologically speaking, life on other planets would be Creational ‘polygamy,’ something outside the character of God.”
A great little book in the Gary North arsenal.
Here’s the thought-provoking questions. Download the book for his thought-provoking answers (1oMB PDF).
“All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”
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The new atheists believe Christianity is a wet paper bag, and they are intent on punching their way out of it. They don’t understand that Christianity is the source of blessing, and that through their unbelief they are its bastard (or mutant) children. They are unlike the old atheists. Their moral outrages are not at all consistent with their nihilistic beliefs.
The truly evil are the ones who do understand the integrating, empowering, culture-building force of Christianity, and shamelessly steal it for their own ends. Satan knows the Scriptures. His policy isn’t scorched earth. His desire is a thorny crop of his own, and for that he must imitate Covenant hierarchy – a totus Diabolus. An authority structure has the potential for far more carnage than anarchy does, especially one with a dictatorial “Covenant succession” built-in.
It is a strange fact that many tinpot dictators, many terrorists, many proponents of promising but destructive modern philosophies, were products of a Western education. Or is it so strange? Counterfeiters invest a lot of time in studying the real tender before they manufacture their own currency, otherwise their plans will fail. The finished product is identical but for two things: the source of authority (Head); and the end result on the community (Body). Gary North writes:
“Satan needs a chain of command in order to exercise power. Thus, in order to create the greatest havoc for the church, Satan and his followers need to imitate the church. Like the child who needs to sit on his father’s lap in order to slap him, so does the rebel need a crude imitation of God’s dominion theology in order to exercise power. A child who rejects the idea of his father’s lap cannot seriously hope to slap him. The anti-Christian has officially adopted an “anti-lap” theory of existence. He admits no cause-and-effect relationship between lap and slap. To the extent that he acts consistently with this view, he becomes impotent to attack God’s people.
“Deny that God speaks to any area of life, and you have denied God’s jurisdiction in that area of life.”
A very intelligent Christian recently posed the question, “What will be the most pressing intellectual challenge facing the church over the next 50 years?” What if the biggest challenge facing the church is not intellectual at all, but ethical. [1]
Gary North has a free course on reducing your debt. Part of the plan is an application of the 5-point Covenant structure. Basically, God calls a man, gives him a job to do, and returns at the end to assess the man’s work. North refers to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:
or Judaism is a Testimony to the End of the World
There is a patisserie in the Blue Mountains that bakes traditional German sourdoughs. Originally the mother culture for their sourdoughs was brought to Australia in a phial by the owner’s father from a bakery near Stutgart. The culture is 500 years old and has been given the name, “Corey”. This is a fantastic picture of what leaven symbolises in the Bible. It is not a symbol of sin. It is a symbol of historic continuity.
A brilliant thought (I think) from shotgun over at the AV forum:
I’m currently reading Gary North’s commentary on Genesis, “The Dominion Covenant.” It is probably one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read, especially in terms of economics.
Anyway, I ran across some ideas that might serve to savage any and all attempts to intertwine the Genesis account with modern theories of evolution. (Gary North doesn’t apply these conclusions in this way. This speculation is all Shotgun.)
Gary North says this:
Under covenantal dominion, cursed nature’s restraints are progressively lifted. (Pg. 84)
He claims earlier that the “Earth was never designed to be autonomous.”
It seems to me that those who would posit long periods of time before man arose (as man) are implying that the Earth (and nature without man) has some sort of autonomous purpose apart from man. Implicit then, in systems like those of Hugh Ross, is the assumption of an autonomous sphere of sovereignty allocated to nature.
This cannot be true since there is no neutrality. In seeking to critique theistic evolutionary models, then, we should be on the lookout for any implications of an autonomous wilderness.
Adam Smith was a true son of Adam when he wrote these famous words in Chapter 2 of The Wealth of Nations (1776).
But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
The motivation here is clear: “More for me in history.”
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