I Evolutionians, Chapter 1

Quote from the video:

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Contrary to the reasoning of my Christian friends  who use the popular canard that “Genesis doesn’t  have to be taken as plainly written because  God only wrote it that way for the Israelites,  who were too simple to comprehend the ‘scientific  sophistication’ of evolution,” this was all very easy for an average child like myself to  grasp. If God had used evolution to create,  it would have been very easy for him to convey.

Imagine the following:

“Long ago, before there was man,  God created the first living thing,  and that first thing slowly changed,  and its descendants changed,  and eventually they turned into every  living thing that has ever lived on earth.  And eventually came mankind!”

1st  Evolutionians, Chapter 1 (Made-Up Version)

Explaining the idea of evolution in Genesis  would have been extremely easy to do should  God have wanted to. The fact is, he didn’t. 

Compromising the plain reading in one area of  scripture (Genesis) and then telling people  they should take another area as plainly written  (the gospels) is arbitrary,  illogical, and inconsistent.  Far from cerebral, it seems like special pleading  and mentally incohesive. And for linear-thinking  individuals like myself, it provides little  intellectual satisfaction whatsoever.

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I do wish the preachers, the pastors, and the theologians either stuck with the Bible, or walked away from the Bible… instead of going down the intellectually insulting “let’s pretend” road.

But when your salary and a comfortable living is on the line, incoherent babble starts to make sense.

Tidbit: if someone starts offering theistic evolutionary cant, grab a copy of Theistic Evolution and smack him upside the head.

Be a man.

Stop with the incoherent career-protecting waffling.

Stop being a fearful coward.

And Make a Choice.”

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

Matthew 5:13 English Standard Version

“Prepare to Thrive” (Addendum, “Answers to Go”)

Join Patricia Engler (with Michaela Duncan, the book designer) as she unboxes her new book, “Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students” in the Answers in Genesis warehouse.

Action is being taken, finally, to give a real hand to Christian students in a hostile nation.

First: God bless the Answers in Genesis people! They do the work, so they get the holy reward: small now methinks, but bigger – perhaps MUCH bigger – two, three generations from now.

Second: Angry glares at the churches who would not dare stand up for their little ones. Someone else is going to receive their wages, as well.

“Do you even think they’ll make it to the third generation? I have my doubts.”

Better to be a worthy servant, than to be an unworthy one.

“You see, Christians need answers like never  before. And as our Western culture’s become  more secular, we’re increasingly seeing the  Bible and Christian values mocked and attacked.  Believers need to be equipped.”

This has been true in elite circles for at least two centuries, and in common culture since the Scopes Trial: a useful manufactured media event, so far as the Progressives are concerned.

Note that the vast majority of churchmen chose to bend the knee to the contemptuous enemies of God… as they craved the approval of powerful men much more than the approval of God.

It takes a non-denominational charity to get any sort of coherent defence – never mind a proper offence – going!

More is needed than this: but that’s on us, far more than it is on Answers in Genesis, who at least showed up on the battlefield with weapons and a plan.

It’s time for the rest of the Christians to catch up to where they are… and then, surpass them.

Not only are we to show up on the battlefield, we are expected to win.

In time and on earth.

Guilds as Wasteful Monopolies

A.k.a. “Government-business partnerships of the Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Era.”

A.k.a. Fascism with swords, rather than snazzy uniforms.

From Mises.com, The Problem with Guilds: They’re Monopolistic and Wasteful
By Lipton Matthews

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Economists have illuminated our understanding of guilds in medieval Europe, but we still know rather little about their functions in other parts of the world, especially Africa. In the West, the approach has been to question the relevance of guilds as a platform to accentuate economic growth. In economic literature, most agree that guilds inhibited growth in medieval Europe; however, this idea is rebuked in the text Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy, 1400–1800, edited by Stephen Epstein and Maarten Prak. This volume attacks the assertion that guilds operated primarily as rent-seeking institutions responsible for halting the pace of economic growth.

Instead, the authors reply that they were instrumental in facilitating the acquisition of skills and diffusion of technology. Despite the admission that under select circumstances guilds opposed innovation, the conclusion is that this argument has been exaggerated. Yet, Sheilagh Ogilvie in her meticulously researched tome European Guilds: An Economic Analysis punctures the assumption that guilds served a laudatory function. Ogilvie portrays guilds as political institutions that instituted occupational barriers, thereby limiting some professions to guild members.

Ogilvie’s findings complement prior research arguing that guilds discriminated against women, Jews, poor men, and immigrants. Contrary to the revisionist literate depicting guilds as enablers of competition, Ogilvie points out that they regulated markets by bestowing members with exclusive rights to engage in economic production in a specified location. Such perks entailed monopoly rights over producing particular products; for instance, merchant guilds would provide members with exclusive trading rights to procure particular wares, whereas a weavers’ guild could bar nonmembers from selling fabrics to consumers and merchants.

Working in tandem with political elites, guilds were frequently insulated from competition. Monarchs appreciated that forming alliances with guilds could weaken the authority of rivals. In the case of France in the sixteenth century, the monarchy attempted to ensure that all merchants and artisans fell under one umbrella. Amalia D. Kessler in her provocative study A Revolution in Commerce: The Parisian Merchant Court and the Rise of Commercial Society in Eighteenth Century France illustrates how the monarchy employed guilds to undermine the authority of rival institutions: “In February 1674, the monarchy attempted to consolidate the power of the Chatelet—and in particular, its newly formed police power—by suppressing the nineteen seigneurial courts that continued to sit in Paris and its environs. In doing so, the monarchy sought to ensure its primacy over manufacturing and trade (arts de métiers), and thus over matters of guild regulation—matters of great interest to its newly created police.”

Not only did the monarchy rely on guilds to obtain political mileage, they were also a source of income for the crown, since membership in a guild was acquired after paying a hefty fee. Notwithstanding the cost of guilds, some believe that they were pivotal to human capital formation, though evidence compiled by economists suggests that guilds had low standards and would even grant certificates without examination. Analyzing the literature on guilds, Ogilvie debunks their perceived efficiency by noting that one disgruntled member bemoaned the paucity of quality training to such an extent that he petitioned to be released from his office, “on the grounds that the sealing takes place very badly, and when one says anything about it one incurs great enmity.”

Quite shockingly, it appears that junior members were inadequately instructed, as Ogilvie observes: “Second, the sealers lacked the requisite knowledge for detecting low-quality work. No pretense was made of appointing skilled or experienced masters as sealers. Instead, the office was a sinecure which rotated among masters every two years according to seniority, so every guild member would get a chance to enjoy the sealing fees.”

Our survey so far reveals that guilds imposed constraints on growth, but let’s see what the evidence indicates for Africa. Writing about the significance of the guild system in precolonial Yorubaland, A.O. Y Raji and T.S. Abejide list three main categories of guilds:

• The guild of general traders (Egbe Alajapa), which traded largely in inanimate objects such as medicinal herbs, fruits, and other food items.
• The guild of traders (Egbe Alaroobo) that specialized in different types of animate objects such as fowls, goats, etc. It is observed that members of both guilds often engaged in medium- and long-distance trading, as they moved around other towns and villages to collect their articles for sale in other larger towns or in their own town markets.
• The specialized guilds of traders, tradesmen, or professionals. Such guilds were named after the items they traded in or after their profession. These comprised, for example, Egbe Alaso (guild of cloth dealers), Egbe Olose (guild of soap makers), Egbe Alaro (guild of dyers), Egbe Alata (guild of pepper sellers), Egbe Eleni (guild of mat makers), Egbe Onisona (guild of carvers), Egbe Alagbede (guild of smelters), etc.

Like European guilds, in Yorubaland, these institutions crafted professional standards requiring the compliance of members. Although the economy was lightly regulated, the state exercised indirect control over the management of guilds by ratifying the installment of leaders and reinforcing the authority of the guilds’ executive to exert discipline. Furthermore, guilds in Yorubaland placed a high premium on investment, and this resulted in the emergence of a contributory scheme known as Esusu. Raji and Abejide explain the inner workings of the program:

This was a sort of capital accumulation achieved through constant re-investment of profits made from commercial activities by members of the respective guilds … whereby each guild member regularly contributed a fixed amount usually every fifth, ninth or seventeenth day, corresponding to the periodic market days…. A substantial proportion of the amount received in turn by each member was often invested in commercial enterprise to enhance the economic base of the respective members of the guild.

On the other hand, unlike most European guilds that restricted membership to middle-class men, women dominated guilds in Yorubaland. Except for blacksmithing, the hunters’ guild (Egbe Ode), and the warriors’ guild (Egbe Olugun), women were immersed in most professions. Some guilds exclusively contained women as members, such as the salt guild (Egbe Oniyo), the pepper sellers’ guild (Egbe Alata), the pot dealers’ guild (Egbe Onikoko), the palm oil traders’ guild (Egbe Elepo), and the fish sellers’ guild (Egbe Eleja). Additionally, the powerful guild of kola nut dealers (Egbe Olobi) was predominantly female. Their influence in this guild underscores the seminal role played by women in organizing the considerable kola trade network between Yoruba and Hausaland.

However, a major distinction between Yoruba and European countries is that whereas in Europ, guilds and political elites partnered to secure power and economic privileges to the detriment of ordinary citizens, in Yorubaland there was a power imbalance favoring the political class at the expense of guilds. Raji and Abejide elaborate on the appropriative tendencies of political elites:

The loyalty and efficiency of the guild system also provided economic support for the traditional ruling elite in pre-colonial Yorubaland…. This took the form of regular or periodic contribution of products or items by members of a particular trade guild or profession; the presentation of goods or items with the best quality in order to be distinguished as to earn the praises of the ruling elite; and, the constant order or instruction given to the guild members to surrender a specified quantity of goods, with a further directive that those who were well established or well known in their specialized crafts or guilds were expected to surrender a greater quantity of products.

Further, the Benin Empire presents a peculiar case because in Benin, the guild system emerged to secure commodities for the monarchy. The genesis of the guilds in Benin can be traced to Ogiso Ere, the second ruler of the Ogiso dynasty. Historians posit that Ogiso Ere decided to formalize the guild system due to his desire to control the craft of iron smelting so that products could be delivered to him first in his capacity as monarch. Politically, the act made sense, because as a militaristic empire, it was in the ruler’s best interest to have jurisdiction over products that were used during war.

The success of the guild system was inextricably linked to monarchical authority. This is explained by Michael Ediagbonya, Abiodun William Duyile, and Yemi Ebenezer Aluko: “The common people in Benin were organized into occupational groups of craftsmen and professionals who supplied the Oba’s specific needs in return for monopoly rights from the Oba in their various trades. The raison d’ etre of the guild system was that each guild was formed to supply some needs of the Oba.”

In the cases of Yoruba and Benin, obviously some craftsmen would have derived wealth from the guild system. But from an economic standpoint, it is evident that in the former, the appropriative nature of political elites would have slowed growth by depriving traders of vital resources to aid capital formation, and in the latter, guilds can be construed as an extension of the Oba’s household. To protect themselves from vilification, craftsmen had an incentive to render free services to the Oba at the expense of their business. So even though, a few benefited from patronage, the dominance of the Oba in dictating preferences to guilds would have precluded them from engaging more worthwhile activities, thus registering a loss for professionals. Certainly, more research is needed for Africa, but the current evidence suggests that on average guilds have not been a boost to the economy.Author:

Contact Lipton Matthews

Lipton Matthews is a researcher, business analyst, and contributor to Merion West, The Federalist, American Thinker, Intellectual Takeout, mises.org, and Imaginative Conservative. Visit his YouTube channel, with numerous interviews with a variety of scholars, here. He may be contacted at lo_matthews@yahoo.com or on Twitter (@matthewslipton).

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Episcopal vs Anglican (Church of England) – What’s the Difference?

Interesting history lesson!

Also, I learned something today: the Church of England, although definitely flawed, still (as of 2022) officially opposed same-sex marriage. Surprisingly: I was confident that they bent the knee to our TRUE Lords and Masters a decade ago!

I’m confident that there is still no hope for their resurrection from spiritual extinction. But, there may be something actually good, holy, and biblical happening in the UK.

Beyond the corner of my eye, past the limits of my perceptual vision.

Something that can’t be seen in 2022, but may be more apparent in 2042.

After the extinction of our TRUE Saviour and Healer, the NHS, a Pure Hand of the God-State.

Obviously.

Raising a Godly Future: You Get What You Put In

Parents want to make sure they give their kids room to explore religious questions for themselves, and don’t want to do anything to alienate their kids or provoke teenage rebellion. These are legitimate concerns, and if children feel like religion has been “rammed down their throats,” this may serve to push them away. 

But my study suggests that, on average, the barrier to passing on the faith is not too much religious socialisation, but too little. Taking too light a touch with religious parenting comes at a cost. If kids do not receive a clear and consistent message from their parents that religion is important, they are likely to simply conclude that it is not important.

In eras past, religion may have been pervasive enough that parents could assume children would receive religious socialisation from the surrounding society, from peers or other adults in their lives, or even at school. But in 2022, if they do not encounter religion in a serious way at home, they are not likely to get it anywhere else.

While the challenges of passing on the faith remain considerable, religious conservative parents are managing that challenge somewhat better than others, and their secret is simple: when it comes to religious parenting, be hands-on.

Why are some parents more successful at passing on their faith?
by Jesse Smith

Religious conservative parents need a far higher bar than being “somewhat better than others” at transmitting their faith to their children.

The current culture is organized to take our futures away from us, and place them under the direction of our enemies as long and as vigorously as possible. (See: public schooling, media, university.)

If you want to change the world, now and in the future, you aren’t going to do it by following the crowd, or passively sticking with the herd.

A price must be paid, if you want to build your children up to where they should be.

Fortunately, that price (as of 2022) is lower than it has been for a long time, outside of Europe. France recently banned homeschooling, and both Germany and Sweden have a deep hostility to parents directing their children.

“Stop stealing the Property of the State!
WE are the Lord, WE own your children,
WE have the Power, WE make the Law!
There is no Law above our word,
nothing we cannot steal just as we please!

“Power Justifies All Things.”

Some people hate the future… especially a future outside the control of Our Betters.

We must build the future. A future that is shaped by God, and not by todays unaccountable Aristocracy of Power.

Todo that, it is important that our children know what to do, and how to live.

But they must also understand why they live, why they faith comports with reality, and wisely determine for themselves what God wants them to do.

They must also know when to fight, how to fight, and what prices they are willing to pay to change the world for the better, to expand God’s Kingdom.

We give the tools, we give our hearts… but all children must leave home, and determine the Holy Spirit’s will for their lives, in their own hearts.

This is where prayer comes in, as well as the example of our lives.

Gab’s Response to The Washington Post

Or, the dying past meets the growing future…

…and doesn’t like it. Not one little bit.

From Gab’s Response to the Washington Post:

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This afternoon I received an email from the Washington Post. I’m going to publish it here and share my response in full.

Hi Andrew,

We’re working on a story about how pro-Trump and conservative commentators, influencers and content creators have seen their audiences change on Gab, Gettr, Rumble and Telegram over the last year. We analyzed the data for 47 accounts on those sites and found that, for the most part, everyone saw a big jump in followers or subscribers when Trump was banned from the mainstream sites after Jan. 6; the accounts’ follower growth dramatically stalled and plateaued over the rest of the year; and the few big follower jumps we’ve seen in recent months have mostly come as a response to the bans of high-profile conservatives like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter and Facebook.

The sites themselves do appear to be growing, but some of the more prominent pro-Trump figures were analyzed have seen their growth rates become very slow or even decline.

For Gab specifically, Alex Jones, who joined in 2016, went from gaining roughly 25,000 followers a month in the first quarter of 2021 to about 1,000 followers a month for the rest of the year, the data show. The Gab follower counts for some prominent QAnon promoters have also grown by 1 percent or less per month since last spring.

Have you seen that trend? What do you think explains it?

Does this call into question the ability of alt-tech sites to be able to build an audience or a business long-term – and if not, why?

Some experts told us that these platforms focused on conservative politics are naturally limited in their appeal. There’s also a good amount of competition among them, and they’re in conflict with some giant, years-old platforms where many users already have established accounts and relationships. Any thoughts on those arguments?

I’m also planning to include your comments about Gettr (“The Regime is in panic mode. So out comes Grifter to distract the masses.”). Anything you can elaborate on? Why do you think Gettr is a grift, and is the same true about “TRUTH Social”? I know you’ve spoken about this elsewhere, but I’d appreciate anything you can tell me here or link me to.

Any other responses or context we should note?

Thanks for any information you can share, and please let us know if you’d have a moment to talk. Our deadline is tomorrow at 12 p.m. EST.

Drew Harwell

When Big Tech bans, Gab expands. 

100% of our explosive growth is being propelled by the unforced errors of Silicon Valley. Tens of millions of people are visiting Gab every month because Gab is the one place on the internet where the free flow of information exists beyond the control of the Regime. Gab is the one and only platform to not bend the knee to the mainstream media, Apple and Google App Stores, banks, payment processors, Congress, and even the entire nation state of Germany. 

Outlets like yours rightfully view Gab as a threat to your business because of this, and you should. In November 2021 the Washington Post had 116 million visits according to Similarweb. Gab had 70 million. This month we are on pace to have 90m+ visits and with election season in full swing we don’t see our growth slowing down anytime soon.

I can and will send my response to you out with one click right now and get more traffic than your article will before it is even published.

Your outlet is 144 years old. I founded Gab 5 years ago and run it from my basement in the middle of the woods. 

Gab now has well over 50 candidates in the 2022 election using the platform along with multiple members of Congress and the biggest dissident voices on the internet all in one spot. We have medical doctors, nurses, and hundreds of thousands of people who do not support nor want to inject themselves with an experimental vaccine joining our platform. These people are from all different political backgrounds, beliefs, and creeds. 

The growth and engagement of one small subset of 47 commentators is irrelevant to Gab’s growth overall as a free speech platform for all people. If you want my personal opinion as to why pro-Trump commentators aren’t growing as fast on alt-tech platforms it’s really very simple. President Trump has turned into a vaccine salesman which is a total and complete disconnect with the overwhelming vast majority of his voting base. I say this as someone who voted for him twice.

His non-stop vaccine shilling has turned many of his supporters off completely. You can see this plainly in the comment section of the statements that are published to his reserved Gab account. As a Regime propaganda outlet I understand that you are trying to craft a narrative that alt-tech is shrinking and doomed because pro-Trump commentators are shrinking, but the numbers and reality show a much different situation here. 

People aren’t and never were coming to Gab for an online Trump rally.

People are coming to Gab for the Truth and to speak freely.

You can read more of my thoughts on Gettr and Rumble here. 

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus Christ is King of Kings

Click here to view this email as a blog post and please share it!

Also please save this link for how to get the Gab app on your phone.

It will be crucial to help your friends and family get on Gab especially since we are banned from both app stores.

Other Great Content on Gab News this week:

Being Trailblazers

You’re Doing Money All Wrong

Welcome Congressman Gaetz and Massie to Gab! 

Join the Parallel Economy

Advertise Your Business on Gab

Reach 20 million+ people who share your values

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Refuting Darwinian Gradualism, and Wheels Within Wheels

From The Discontinuous Fossil Record Refutes Darwinian Gradualism

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Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from a chapter in the newly released book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. 

Every theory makes certain predictions. The core prediction of Darwin’s theory of evolution is gradualism, which means that all the transitional changes in the history of life are not supposed to have happened as sudden big changes, but by a continuous accumulation of small changes over vast periods of time. The simple reason is that Darwin wanted a naturalistic explanation and was fully aware that sudden big changes of organisms would require miraculous events. Therefore, he mentioned not fewer than six times in his magnum opus On the Origin of Species the Latin phrase Natura non facit saltus, which means that nature does not make jumps.

If Gradualism Is Wrong

This claim is still made by Darwinians today. The most well-known modern popularizer of Darwinism, the infamous atheist Richard Dawkins, wrote in his 2009 bestselling book The Greatest Show on Earth the following remarkable statement: “Evolution not only is a gradual process as a matter of fact; it has to be gradual if it is to do any explanatory work.” This shows that gradualism is not just one optional element of Darwinism, but that it is very much essential for its success as a naturalistic explanation for the complexity and diversity of life. If gradualism is wrong, then Darwinism is refuted. 

Indeed, the fossil record is highly discontinuous and strongly contradicts Darwin’s prediction of gradualism. Even Darwin himself was quite aware of this problem for his theory and therefore tried to explain it away as a mere artifact of undersampling of a very incomplete fossil record. The famous vertebrate paleontologist Philip Gingerich once irritably remarked that “gaps of evidence are gaps of evidence and not evidence of gaps.”

Walks on the Beach

However, such appeals to the incompleteness of the fossil record are no longer tenable. Intelligent design theorist and philosopher of science Paul Nelson cogently explained why: Imagine you have a new hobby, beachcombing. Every day you walk along the shore and collect what the tide washes in. In the beginning you are surprised each day by new discoveries — shells of new types of snails and mussels, starfish, sand dollars, and driftwood, etc. But after a while you are finding mostly the same stuff over and over again, and you must be lucky to find something new that you have not seen before (like a stranded whale or a message in a bottle). When you have reached this point of mostly repetition, then you know that you have sampled enough to be sure that you have not missed much that is out there to find.

The same approach is used by paleontologists for a statistical test of the completeness of the fossil record; it is called the collector’s curve. In most groups of fossils, we have reached this point of demonstrable saturation, where we can be pretty confident that the distinct discontinuities that we find are data to be explained and not just sampling artifacts. There is another reason why we know this: If the gaps and discontinuities in the fossil record were just artifacts, they should more and more dissolve with our greatly increasing knowledge of the fossil record. But the opposite is the case. The more we know, the more acute these problems have become. “Darwin’s doubt” did not get smaller over time but bigger, and if he were still alive, he would likely agree that the evidence simply does not add up, since he was much more prudent than many of his modern followers.

An Appropriate Timescale

Of course, we have to consider the appropriate timescale in Earth history to estimate whether some event in the history of life is abrupt or not. In human history, we would not consider an event that lasts many years (say, decades or a century) to be abrupt. But in biological or geological terms, the appearance of a new group of organisms with a new body plan within, say, a window of time of 5-10 million years is very abrupt indeed. Why is this so? Because the average longevity of an invertebrate or vertebrate species (not an individual organism) varies between 2.5-10 million years. This means that a transition that required 5-10 million years happened within the lifespan of a single species! This is much too short to allow for Darwinian evolution to explain the required changes.

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From Michael Denton on Fine-Tuning: Wheels Within Wheels

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On a classic episode of ID the Future, host Casey Luskin sits down with Michael Denton, a Senior Fellow of the CSC who holds a PhD in biochemistry. Denton is the author of Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, which has been credited with influencing both Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe. Here they discuss his sequel to that book, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, which explores various striking ways that Earth and the laws of nature are finely tuned for carbon-based life and, in particular, creatures like ourselves. Denton argues that when it comes to evidence of fine-tuning in the universe, the more you look, the more you find. Indeed, he has continued to find so much evidence of this fine-tuning that he launched a more recent series of books on the subject, The Privileged Species series. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

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Darwinism exists only via inertia at this point.

And academic grant money.

And government patronage/protection.

All are slated to end: as a near-certainty within this century, and within a few decades if we push against the idols, to encourage their toppling and fall.

As a certainty, the financial and cultural foundations of the Establishment will continue to rot, regardless of what we do.

But the more we fight against evil elitist nihilistic lies, the greater the Divine reward.

In time and on earth, for ourselves and our children.

And in eternity, too!

From the Past to the Future

The Dying Past

Terry Mattingly of GetReligion wrote a good piece, worth digging into: Return of ‘nuns’ growing weed: A Rolling Stone puff piece on this emerging religious group.

It’s worth your time to read.

He quotes the Rolling Stones article, Our Ladies of the Perpetual High, twice. Here:

In the middle of California’s Central Valley, in a modest milky-blue home on one acre of farmland, lives a small group of nuns. They wear habits and abide by a set of vows, but as the door opens, it’s clear that the Sisters of the Valley, as they’re known, aren’t living in a traditional convent. Because as the scent wafts out, it’s unambiguous: It’s the earthy, pungent smell of weed.

When we visit, five women live in the home: Sister Kate, 62; Sister Sophia, 49; Sister Quinn, 25; and at the moment, Sister Luna and Sister Camilla, both 34, who are visiting from Mexico. Sister Kass, 29, lives off the property with her two children and her partner, Brother Rudy, the collective’s crop manager. On this sunny day, the Sisters of the Valley home is flooded with golden beams of light; a cream-colored piano stands against the wall with an ashtray and joint placed on top. Sister Kate picks it up, lights it, and thoughtfully inhales as she sits down to play “America the Beautiful.” She’s using a piano-learning app filled with Christian songs and national anthems — the two genres of music she dislikes the most. But there is an underlying motive: “The Christian kids nearby have contests, so if I do a lot of practicing in a month, then I can beat them,” she says with a raspy laugh. “There is some gratification in beating the Christian kids.”

And here:

A now-defunct religious order, the Beguines date back to the Middle Ages. Due to a multitude of unmarried women and a desire for spirituality, all-female groups found a way to live in devotion without officially joining a religious order. These women, who lived communally and supported themselves by making cloth or caring for the sick, stressed living like Christ; they were spiritual, and some even delved into mysticism. “We are not trying to romanticize the past, but there are things we like about it,” says Sister Kate. “It’s the way that these women worked in harmony with nature that we are trying to emulate.”

Part of the Sisters of the Valley business plan involves devoting their work and life to the cycles of the moon, which they believe is what their ancient ancestors did. Their harvest ceremony, which takes place during a full moon, begins with a reading from the “Book of the Beguines,” a pamphlet written by the enclave. “There’s no such thing as a ‘Book of the Beguines,’” Sister Kate confesses. “They were all burned. We make our own readings. We have to imagine what our ancestors would have said, what they would’ve done, and how they would have reacted to local political forces. Our closing prayer is from Season Four of Game of Thrones,” she says, laughing.

The Rise of Sheliaism

What is Sheliaism? Mattingly explains:

Forget politics for a moment. The headline on Rod’s post — “Christianity Declines — But Not ‘Spirituality’ “— is what connects that Pew data to this new Rolling Stone feature. Dreher wants to note a renewed surge in a tend that has been around for decades (think “Sheilaism”). Here is a key passage:

“America continues to transition to its post-Christian reality. … One of the most interesting, and unexpected, developments is that in the US, relatively few of these people who are falling away from Christianity are becoming atheists. Rather, they are cobbling together a bespoke bricolage religion, one designed just for them.”

Before this, I expect nothing from the pastors and the denominations than the safe bromides and the powerless hand-wringing of decade after decade, after decade.

Satan couldn’t have asked for anything more.

The Surging Future

Believing Christians who insist on having the Kingdom of God expand will have to forget the forever-failure Christian professionals, and go another way if they want to inherit the future.

I like Marinov’s perspective on this – and many other – issues.

See: And in One Holy Local Church: The Ghettoization of Protestantism Parts 1-3 (audio)

(Or get the book here)

And take a listen to Don’t Plant Churches, Build Covenant Communities

There is also, from the Freedom Conference: The Way of Wise Rebellion, The Biblical, Christian Duty to Rebel and the Q&A session.

My favourite? Missions in the Big Cities, Parts 1 & 2

But don’t forget Isaiah: The Prophet Of Christendom.

Always remember where you come from.

Summary

Never mind the stoned nuns. They are merely living the future liberal road of the liberals and the progressives, after the bankruptcy, discrediting, and de-legitimization of their One True Deity, the Self.

True: most progressives adore the State first, and the Self second. But when the State loses power – “the only thing that really matters” – then the haze of marijuana beckons.

When the God of Power collapses, there is always the God of Escape.

In contrast, keep an eye, and build up, those annoying Christian children. Raise as many as you reasonably can, raise them to be entrepreneurs who trust in God (not some guild, and not the State), raise them to love God first and also their fellow man.

Raise them to be literate, and numerate, with both wisdom and also knowledge, with a love of truth, personal righteousness and holiness, and public justice and the rule of law over all, impartially.

Yes, even pagan anti-Christian women deserve to be respected as God’s Law demands: their lives, their property, and their liberty.

And if they waste all three? That is something they can answer to God for, when the time comes.

We must not waste any of those mighty gifts: we have a holy Kingdom to expand, and a world to build. We must be good tools in God’s hands, filled by His Holy Spirit.

The inhabitants of hell are in the heaven of their own choosing. Each is his own god and universe. For them, there are none now to contradict their will: they can say eternally, My will be done! No fire, however, burns more bitterly than the fires of guilt and egocentricity. Man in the isolation of hell cannot grow: he consumes himself endlessly. The redeemed, however, both in this world and in the world to come, have community and growth. Because they know themselves to be God’s creatures, saved by His grace, they know the truth of Paul’s words:

“7. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.
8. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s. (Rom. 14:7–8)“

We then have God’s plenty to grow on, and His law-word to live by. The denizens of hell have the paltry and stinking world of their own soul.

The reprobate want themselves and their will, and hell gives it to them eternally. This is their judgment.*

The Sermon on the Mount, by R. J. Rushdoony
As quoted by Andrea G. Schwartz,
in An Endless Monologue in an Empty Room

Sheliaism is as much a road to hell as any other vision, religion, gospel, ideology, or philosophy that despises the Lordship of Christ Jesus and the Authority of the Scriptures.

Let’s not delude ourselves about escaping reality.

Or trying to reshape reality into our own image, for that matter.

We must obey the Lord of Reality, Jesus Christ, to win the future.

We must exercise lawful, God-directed dominion over the creation, and insure the supremacy of His Law over all creation and all men — including ourselves!

Our children must do so, as well, so they can be victors over the snake, regardless of his lies and his delusions and his venom and his empty promises of “being your own God”.

Christian Ignorance of Christianity

From How Well Do American Christians Know Christianity? by Lee Duigon

—<Quote begins>—

During the reign of Josiah, King of Judah, the Lord’s Temple in Jerusalem was renovated after a long period of neglect. As the repair and cleanup work proceeded, a priest discovered something.

Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the LORD given by Moses … And Shaphan carried the book to the king … saying, Hilkiah the priest hath given me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.
And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes … saying,
Go, enquire of the LORD for me, and for them that are left in Israel and Judah, concerning the words of the book that is found: for great is the wrath of the LORD that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the LORD, to do after all that is written in this book (2 Chron. 34:14b-21).

The Holy Scriptures had been left on the shelf and forgotten, and the young king was appalled.

The church in America has not yet reached that point-not yet-but according to a new report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, we may be on our way.

The Survey

“On average,” Pew reports, “Americans correctly answered 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey … Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7.”¹

—<Quote ends>—

This article was written in 2010.

I bet it’s definitely worse now.

Except… for those Christians who are homeschooled.

The future rides with them, to the extent that they use what they have learned to expand the Kingdom of God, and are willing to pay the price for victory.

And there WILL be a price.

No Christian stands above Jesus Christ, His Master.

—<Quote begins>—

“The flames of destruction are licking at their world, and the walls of discipline, which are the mainstay of civilization, are crashing down around them, and they are busy straightening pictures on a burning wall. One minister spent a morning recently preaching against the rise of ‘gosh’ and ‘darn.’ Another spent the evening hour preaching against the miniskirt and dress.

“Is this what men are called by God to do? Is this the gospel, or the great commission given to all Christians? Are we to preach on trifles, or do we truly have a great commission?”⁶

Yes, the problem is in the church-more specifically, with the preaching and teaching in the church. And since Rushdoony wrote those words in a California Farmer essay sometime prior to 1991, the situation has gone from bad to worse.

Tibetan prayer chants, goddess worship and “feminist theology,” same-sex “marriages” or “commitment ceremonies,” dance interludes, and so on and so forth, have all been seen in churches lately, in lieu of Bible-based preaching and instruction. At this year’s Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly, some of the “worship services” were indistinguishable from Mardi Gras: there is video available for those who need to see it before they can believe it.7 It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine how anyone could learn anything at all about Christianity in such a church environment.

[…]

6. R. J. Rushdoony, A Word in Season (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2010), 69-70.

7. See, for instance, “Liturgical Abuse: Puppets (WCCTA 2008),” May 14, 2008, (video)

—<Quote ends>—

Not all churches are worthless… but far too many, certainly the majority, are.

God’s people, who hew close to God’s Law-Word, are going to have to support each other. And build each other up, when it comes to the essential of the faith.

These essentials definitely include the authority of the Bible and the authority of God’s Law, but it includes more than that.

Our law-hating, Rapture-escape Christian forefathers have created the situation we are in, far more than any number of humanists or deviants or immoralists or socialists. Neglect of duty, cowardice, faithlessness, and complacency have their reward.

We must repent, and follow the instruction of Christ, if we are going to leave a better inheritance for future Christians.

And it doesn’t start with the denominations.

It starts at home, with homeschooling.

Lions and Lambs

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.

Isaiah 11:6, English Standard VErsion

We are far closer to that day today, than we were 2,000 years ago.

Give it another thousand years or so, before it happens in time on this earth as an unremarkable fact of life.

No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.

ISaiah 65:20, ESV

There is still sin and death, so Christ has not returned yet during this predicted time.

But already, people are called “young” when they are in their 30s and 40s in the West. Give it another two centuries or so, for this prediction to come to pass.