Coding Comparisons

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Victory: Then Comes the End

FIRST Christ wins, before our eyes, on this world. This INCLUDES the defeat of death. THEN comes the Final Judgement.

Postmillennial Worldview

PMT 2015-079 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

Postmillennialism differs from the other evangelical eschatologies in a very important respect: Postmillennialism is optimistic about the progress of the gospel in history. We believe that Christ’s victory on the cross will exercise a tremendous influence in history — before the end, before the return of Christ.

We see this throughout the Scriptural record. Some amillennialists charge that postmillennialism is built solely on Old Testament texts, and that its optimistic outlook cannot be found in the New Testament. But that is absolutely mistaken. Let us consider one text in Paul as an example of Christ’s victory in history before his return: 1 Corinthians 15.

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Why Jesus’ Victory Means More False Prophets

This must be expected! As Christ’s victory becomes obvious and inescapable, there will be more attempts to sneak in some false word into His good commands. Holy discernment is a must! Listen to the Holy Spirit!

Reformed Hope

We may be surprised by many things when we reach heaven. I dare not contend with J.C. Ryle who said that the thing which will surprise us most is how much more we ought to have loved Christ while on earth. But I think there is another reality which will also greatly surprise us when we reach heaven. And that is this: the depths of the spiritual battle that was waged for the souls of men and women during our lifetime. Take any saint—whether in the first century under the persecution of Nero, or suffering under Rome during the Inquisition in the 13th century, or faced with oppression by the secular government in China today—and behind the scenes in his life, the spiritual battle is of the intensest kind.  

I think we will be surprised to finally understand the depth of the conflict which was introduced to us…

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“…But Slavery Ended 150 Years Ago!”

The text below is from Joel McDurmon, not me.
(I just agree with it!)

After seeing James White’s latest ridiculous tweet, I realize *some* people need to hear this again (and much more):

BECAUSE IT DIDN’T END 150 YEARS AGO, THAT’S WHY. . . .

While most of the feedback to my The Problem of Slavery in Christian America has been very positive and welcome, some has also been, as you can imagine, less enthusiastic. Most of the more negative reactions are predictable, and we will spend a little time addressing them in the future. For now, one of the most common is this: “Why do you feel the need to drag up something that happened 150 years ago? Let it go!”

There is more than one answer to this. For starters, racism and even slavery did not just “happen 150 years ago.” As the book details in one chapter, overt forms of slavery, usually still targeting blacks, continued even into the 1940s. (If we count prison, and I do, it continues today.) More importantly, when we recognize that slavery and racism are separate phenomena, it is not difficult to realize that even if we accepted the idea that “slavery” ended in 1865, racism certainly did not.

After 1865, emancipated blacks almost immediately faced a barrage of legislation and extra-legal tactics based upon open white supremacy. Black codes, Jim Crow, segregation, Plessy v. Ferguson, the lie of “separate but equal,” various versions and historical permutations of the KKK, lynchings, terrorism, burnings, beatings, and much more continued for a long time.

Then realize this fierce anti-black attitude did not just end even when legal segregation ended. Many people still carry the attitude and beliefs, and some still quietly wish for a return to some form of segregation.

Just watch the overt racism, in many of my readers’ lifetimes, that permeates this documentary trailer. Listen to Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin announce that the state should annul the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated the schools. “As long as I am your governor,” he declared, “There will be no breakdown in the pattern of segregation in this state.”

Prominent examples like this could be multiplied by the scores, and have in some books.

In short, why do I feel the need to dredge up stuff that ended 150 years ago? Because it didn’t end 150 years ago.

And in the hearts and minds of many individuals, it didn’t end 50 years ago, either. . . . I now regularly hear anecdotes of direct, overt racist acts in local neighborhoods and from random individuals. In at least one case, I have seen it caught on video, right here in my little county in Georgia.

A friend recently showed me his private security cam video of a black neighbor being harassed by a woman down his street who routinely let her dogs out on his lawn. He eventually had to get a court order against her. She still did it one night anyway, and when he merely asked her to come get them, she called him “n—-r,” told him to move out of the subdivision, and then threatened him not to move toward her because she had a gun. He was standing in his own driveway.

Every time I relate such anecdotes, someone says, yeah but that’s a random fringe element. It’s almost as predictable as the people who will ask why I keep bringing up what happened 150 years ago. How many anecdotes do you need to prove to you that it is still a problem? Whatever number you mention, I am sure I can go find them eventually.

Nor is it a problem supported by merely anecdotal evidence. Consider the American conservative pillar Charles Murray, famous for among other things his 1994 book The Bell Curve, which gives support to the thesis of the guy’s message above.

In a more recent book, Murray continues the theme:

“I am predicting that over the next few decades advances in evolutionary psychology are going to be conjoined with advances in genetic understanding, leading to a scientific consensus that goes something like this: There are genetic reasons, rooted in the mechanisms of human evolution, why little boys who grow up in neighborhoods without married fathers tend to reach adolescence not socialized to the norms of behavior that they will need to stay out of prison and to hold jobs. . . . These same reasons explain why society’s attempts to compensate for the lack of married biological fathers don’t work and never will work.”

I am sure that anyone who reads racism into this is just being a racist themselves right, because it doesn’t really come out and say it? And this guy is not a nobody or a random individual. He is a prominent conservative spokesman and political scientist.

In short, again, the racism didn’t end 150 years ago. It continued every bit as strongly as before. It continues today, more widely than many people may realize, or at least admit. It happens in modern scholarship and social commentary, i.e. leadership, and it happens often between average citizens and neighbors.

It’s bad enough that it happens. It’s worse that so many people work so hard to deny it, look away, stop their ears, or disbelieve it. Such denials and opposition are as bad, spiritually, socially, and morally, as the actual overt racist acts, for they cover for they cover for those who refuse to love their neighbors as themselves, but instead hate, and in doing so, refuse to love their neighbors. If we cannot be brought to love our neighbors, what makes us think we are really Christians?

So instead of asking why I am concerned over something that allegedly ended 150 years ago, why don’t you ask yourself why we’ve gone 150 years now without fixing the problem?

Get the latest edition of The Problem of Slavery in Christian America here: https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Slavery-Christian-America…/…/

Joel McDurmon

Intellectual Integrity Versus Hating the Left

The thought below are from Joel McDurmon.
(I just agree with it!)

One of the things most dear to my heart and agenda as a Christian thinker is intellectual integrity. It is the ninth commandment—thou shalt not lie—applied to discourse, thought, etc. It’s so simple. Yet it seems so difficult for many people. I am especially concerned here with Christian and conservative thinkers who repeat lies and falsehoods in order to score political points or pander to their base (sometimes to make money).

Here is an example I have wanted to address for a long time. This will make some of you uncomfortable, but the reason for that is in part because we put team-loyalty ahead of intellectual integrity. The subject here is a clear intellectual opponent of biblical ethics, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
In the article linked here, Sanger is presented as “an avowed White Supremist” because she allegedly said, “…colored people are human weeds and need to be exterminated… reckless breeders… spawning… human beings who never should have been born…”

The problem with this is that it is fake news. The quotation is fake. She never said it. Further, this is *easily* discoverable with a simple Google search. Yet as often as I see such quotations, it seems the eager sharers never even perform the slightest check before they click share.

Quite frankly, after considerable reading on this, the things Sanger said that were anywhere near close enough to this type of sentiment to get twisted into this are nevertheless easily understandable. In other words, it takes effort to get this out of what she did say. It is still possible that she was a white supremacist of sorts, though I do not know. But she never said this, and she never said a good number of things for which she is condemned. In other cases, things she did say have been twisted from context to look sinister, when in reality they are benign.

For example, she is widely quoted as saying, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” This is cited by many conservatives as if she were trying to conceal her movement’s true agenda: as in, “We don’t want this secret to get out. . . .” The truth is, as anyone who reads her actual letter about “The Negro Project” can tell, she was trying to squash a FALSE rumor before it started. I.e., “We don’t want the falsehood to get out . . . so we must take steps to prevent this.”

I don’t care who much you hate Sanger and how evil she may have been, she did not say this, and saying she did makes you a perpetuator of lies, or possibly a direct liar yourself.
Another example is a video interview that purposefully edits her IN MID-SENTENCE, I kid you not, in order to make her say something far more extreme than she was saying. This clip was used by alt-right celebrity Bill Whittle with glee to chop her down as the kind of dictator who wanted to round up “entire populations” of “undesirables” in Nazi-style or Communist “death camps.”

She is quoted by these guys as saying, “For my view, I believe that there should be no more babies.”

Period, end of discussion. Now if it were left only to that, I would agree this is ridiculously callous, misanthropic, extreme, and stupid. And she may have been all of those things, too, but not because of this quotation—because it is deceptively edited.

To begin with, the context was 1947 Europe, in the aftermath of WWII, with a burned out, rebuilding, impoverished continent. Next, they cut off the sentence after “babies,” inserting a virtual “period” where none belongs. Her sentence was chopped off. The full sentence contains a crucial qualifier which drastically changes the meaning of the sentence:

“For my view, I believe that there should be no more babies *in starving countries for the next ten years.*”

See the difference? This was not about ending the human race. This was not about hating babies. This was not about eliminating whole populations. It was not even necessarily about what is understood by some as “population control.” This was about a temporary measure to address a unique post-war circumstance: the effects of a rapidly increasing the population in a drastically war-torn, impoverished culture. It was only in the post-war “impoverished” context, and it was only for ten years.
Perhaps you disagree with here on all counts on that issue. Perhaps you still think she’s a beast. Fine. But don’t lie about what she said.

Maybe you still think she’s a white supremacist. Fine. But don’t tell lies.

Maybe you think she’s an evil person. Fine. Demonstrate it with facts. Just check your facts before you pretend to demonstrate it.

Even if she is an evil, racist, murderous beast does not give you the right to lie or spread lies.

Further, there are practical outfalls from this that are reasons you should not lie even about your enemies.

First, you are called by your King to the highest standard of integrity, and this includes intellectual integrity. When you tell lies, you defy Jesus Christ. This puts you on the same ethical level as your enemies who also defy Christ.

I understand that we want to stop abortion. But if we sell our souls in the process, what have we gained? When you cast your own integrity out the window in an effort to expose someone else’s lack of integrity, what have you gained? When it is discovered, they will end up looking better than you do.

Second, when you lie about your enemies, it empowers and helps your enemies. The leftist and liberal followers of Sanger are often elitists who already believe their conservative detractors are ignorant, dishonest, and oppressive. When conservatives perpetuate lies like this (especially those that are easily disprovable), they do nothing but prove their enemies right. They give ammunition to them to keep showing how ignorant, stupid, and intellectually dishonest is the conservative case (as they believe).

The leftists always tell THEIR base that the conservative message is one of backwardness and is only sustained on fear and lies. When you do things that prove them right, you only encourage them and energize their base.

It encourages them because the lies are so EASY to disprove. This further provides them a tool with which to evangelize and *expand* their base. “Look, these conservatives do nothing but tell stupid lies about us. See? (Shows easily disprovable lies.)” Whom do you think young people are going to follow when THAT set of facts is laid before them? This is how you lose a culture war.

This matters because God has told us truth matters, and he has also called us to love even our enemies. Those who think we can give this a pass because the cause is so much greater (ending abortion, defunding PP, whatever) are simply practicing an “ends justify the means” ethic. This is the very ethic the left uses to justify abortion. Adopting your enemy’s ethics is how you lose a culture war.

Now, I know this will make some of you uncomfortable. No doubt, some will PM each other or even state publicly, “There goes Joel McDurmon again, sliding further liberal.” They will say, “Why would you defend Margaret Sanger.”

I am not defending Margaret Sanger. I am defending intellectual integrity. Some of you have failed at it, and a few do routinely.

When you react in this knee-jerk way, realize you are not acting according to facts, reason, truth, and integrity, but out of some partisan loyalty. You have accepted the promotion of lies and falsehoods by *your* side because *your* guys are the good guys—Christians, Republicans, conservatives, your favorite celebrities, whatever. But when the other side does it, it is evil.
When you do this, you prove only that you are just as much a collectivist thinker as the leftists, statists, communists, and socialists you claim to despise.

Some of you simply hate the left so much, you do this all the time.

Our call as Christians—whether scholars, journalists, leaders, homemakers, or any other profession and calling—is to exemplify the ethic of Christ as individuals. Sometimes, this means taking a stand that is unpopular even among your friends. Sometimes, Paul must get in Peter’s face.

All of us need to get in our own faces every time we get ready to share stuff like this. Check your facts.

If your favorite leaders refuse this ethic, then you need to get rid of the leaders, not the ethics. Your choice will reveal your intellectual integrity.

“Am I therefore you enemy because I tell you the truth?” (Gal. 4:16).

See the Whittle clip here: https://youtu.be/9IvPhKuDPGM?t=262

The original from Sanger here: https://youtu.be/_BG11OHrCDk?t=49

https://www.lifenews.com/…/black-pastor-why-hasnt-naacp-d…/…

Joel McDurmon

Using Privilege

WATCH: School Teacher Owns Border Patrol Agents, Refuses to Comply with ‘Citizenship Check’

A partial repost from my sci-fi blog:

From the Real World…

What instigated the post:

WATCH: School Teacher Owns Border Patrol Agents, Refuses to Comply with ‘Citizenship Check’

And Marinov’s commentary:

The obvious thing in this video is how courageous this woman is, and just look at the faces of the despicable uniformed thugs who don’t know what to do with her. She is blond, white, well-educated, outspoken, obviously an American citizen, and they can’t just pound on her as they do on people with a different skin color. So they are forced to keep their distance grinding their teeth. And even when one of them flips out says, “No, we don’t let people go to the bathroom” (which does happen to people of different skin color), the boss then comes and mitigates the situation.

But there is more. This woman uses her white privilege in the most moral way possible: not for herself, but for those who are oppressed. She knows she has that privilege, and presses it in the faces of those thugs all the time: “So if a brown person said ‘yes, I am a citizen,’ would you believe them the way you would believe me?” They don’t know what to do with her. And she capitalizes on it, to press her case for other people.

Modern fake “conservatives” like to whine that Democrats attract voters by promising them welfare. The truth is, both parties are exactly the same on this issue. But if you want to know why Democrats have been capable of growing their base, especially among the minorities, this is it: many of them have been using their white privilege for moral reasons like the one above. While modern “conservatives” have only denied it, and have adopted a defensive stance. This is the main reason why the Republican Party has been losing support among minorities and among young people.

Bojidar Marinov

…to the Game World

[…snipped here…]

The Point

It’s not the existence of privilege and social rank that the problem: it’s what you do with it. Will you be merely self-serving, always placing the need to protect your social class above any concern for others of lesser rank? Will you just lie your head off and claim that social rank does not exist? Or will you use your power for good, to protect the weak, to insure the victory of what is right and good?

And — all democratic, collectivist, and conservative claims to the contrary — EVERY society has a set of Social Ranks. There are always and everywhere some people who have more money and power than others, more pull and respect from the law, politicians, and the police, than others do.

(If you value getting into the Inner Circle, then you also need to get into, and graduate from, the right universities.)

Conservatives should fear God and, instead of just lying about it, take responsibility for who they are. If God put you in a high place, there is a reason for it… and with greater power and authority, comes greater responsibility and obligations to all those under you, especially to the weak and the powerless.

Refusal to uphold your responsibilities will bring shame and disgrace, as those privileges are stripped from you. As God placed you in a high place, it is no great problem for Him to cast you down.

And He is quite willing to use distasteful tools to do it.

Solutions

Privileged Christians looking to get right with God can’t go too far wrong, starting with The Problem of Slavery in Christian America. The documented crimes fill much of the book, which makes for hard reading, but necessary reading. How can you understand the poor & the weak, until you can see things through their eyes? How can pick out the speck from the eyes of your brother, without removing the log in your own?

The solutions provided are real solutions, but involve personal work, church to church and man to man. The cost involves your resources, certainly your time and perhaps your money: but most importantly than money, the privileged must meet the weak face-to-face, often after spending a lifetime isolating themselves from the lower classes.

We all should know that “isolation => blindness, deafness, and then death”; even Early Modern European Nobles often lived in the same neighbourhoods as the impoverished, and of course had them as servants.

There will come a time when the Welfare State will die: first for the poor (food stamps, etc) then for the middle class (Medicare mainly, but also Social Security). It is best to build personal relations with the poor, and heal the rifts and wounds, before the hard times come.

Peaceful and just societies, without ground-in racial fears and hatreds, have a good shot of becoming broadly prosperous cultures.

When the corporate welfare state dies, the rationale for the very existence of the government comes into question. But that day is far into the future, methinks, as that day has the entire Establishment as its enemy, which will fight it tooth and nail.

“You always bring me the very best violence.”

A snipped post from my other blog:

It’s important that people who follow high-octane belief systems keep an eye on the younger male set. Especially the fatherless ones.

[…snip…]

Fortunately, I have always encouraged Christians to focus on personal self-discipline, building families, building business, building communities, and being charitable – especially to orphans, widows, and foreigners in the land. Upholding public justice should wait until Christians have proven ourselves in the eyes of the public: “politics fourth”… at most.

Even then, Biblical law is a fixed, predictable negative law that all can understand:

“You can’t do this or that: everything else is up to you.”

Rather than totalitarian, secularist positive law that is ever-changing, arbitrary, unpredictable, and can only be partly mastered by expensive specialists:

“Everything that is not forbidden is mandatory. You must not say this, but you must say that. You can’t do this, but you must do that.”

AND I’m not particularly fond of standing military forces & police establishments. They should be defunded, outside of times of actual war.

“See?”

“I’ve always heard that what a man says when he’s weak, is different than what he says when he’s strong.”

“Then follow Christ’s advice: Judge us by our fruits, by our actions.”

“I’ll do that.”