by Pastor Andrew Isker Introduction In Acts, the church is the New Covenant People of God. God’s people are in a similar situation as Israel…
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Dostoevsky vs the World
by John Heers, First Things Foundation
Freedom is a hard thing. It can be confusing. It is essential to the understanding of both law and love. It presents itself as both a means to an end and as an end itself. It seems to be everything and nothing, all at once.
One way to make sense of freedom is to understand it as an inside thing and as an outside thing. As an outside idea, freedom can be found in political theory. It is a word we associate with the American flag, or the word democracy. This freedom has to do with freedom from laws that restrict us and our desires. For the founding American Fathers, freedom was first and foremost a freedom from the overreach of government. In history this kind of freedom presents as “outside” freedom: things outside of me that constrain.
Introduction
Can you think of the boldest stand you have ever taken in your life? A time when you knew you were right, where you stood publicly for something true and just and everyone else around you opposed you? Do you remember what that felt like? That is the kind of boldness that went with the apostles everywhere they went, particularly in Jerusalem and Judea. So far, since Pentecost, we have seen miraculous signs by the Holy Spirit, and nearly everyone encountering Him has repented. But now, the gospel faces opposition. Now there are enemies with teeth like knives and a serpent’s sting ready to pounce. Now we see the war in the heavenly places manifest itself on earth. And still, Christ’s church, filled with the Holy Spirit, remains bold.
Science-Fiction, Hollywood, and the Technology of Antichrist
by Thomas Millary
Weston’s Evolving Worldview
The worldview of sci-fi has spilled out from fiction into pop-intellectualism from the beginning. Father of the genre HG Wells was also a social critic, whose books such as The Open Conspiracy and The New World Order provided extensive arguments for a Fabian socialist ideal of global government, in which traditional religion and nation states are done away with and humanity is brought under the control of a benevolent scientific elite (whose rule would include population control).1 Such techno-utopianism is simply the flipside of the cosmic meaninglessness portrayed in Wells’ science-fiction literature, both indicating the displacing of God by the evolutionary process. The spirit of Wells is alive and well in contemporary figures such as Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of books such as Sapiens and Homo Deus, and the World Economic Forum’s favored public intellectual.
Science-Fiction, Hollywood, and the Technology of Antichrist
by Thomas Millary
“The Art of Dreaming”
After decades of obsession with movies and pop-culture, Jasun Horsley realized that Hollywood is hell. His book “16 Maps of Hell: The Unraveling of Hollywood Superculture” documents numerous case studies of disturbing figures and events within the history of the entertainment industry, as well as the damage he personally accrued through buying into the Hollywood myth (including failed attempts to become a filmmaker himself, a failure that he is now thankful for). Underneath all these personal and historical examples of Hollywood darkness and deviance, he finds an underlying pathology, an explanation of how and why the film industry has played such a significant role in mass-dehumanization. Hollywood represents “an advanced alienation agenda.”1 “Simply put, both as individuals and as a collective, we have been lured—and lured ourselves—into a counterfeit reality, a dream world. Hollywood, as a place and a state of mind, is both a primary causal agency of this condition (over the past century), and a crucial (because visible) symptom of it. It is the equivalent of a metastasized tumor on the world psyche.”2
The Binding New World Ligament
by John Heers, First Things Foundation
Most people in the world accept the idea that capitalism is an economic system. For most people capitalism is a thing you use, a system in which you participate so as to gain benefits associated with money. Most people think of capitalism as a slip ‘n slide, something with which you engage in order to enjoy society while also cooling off. For Americans, capitalism is something we use. It’s not something we’ve become. But I think this is wrong. Capitalism, history tells us, is a narrative about human existence, and most of us in the West aren’t telling the story, we are, in fact, living it. We are the products of capitalism.
The first clue that this may be true is the word itself. Capitalism.
Look at the ending. The “ism” suffix tells us a great deal. “Ism” words connote belief.
by Joel Salatin, Plain Values
I don’t own a horse. I don’t keep a horse. That’s precisely why I’m qualified to address the issue—I don’t have preconceived notions about keeping horses. I have thought and yakked about it quite a bit, though, because one of the most common questions people ask me is about keeping a horse.
Whether for recreation or work, in my experience, some of the worst ecological abuse is in horse lots. Many of my friends keep horses, and I’ve been to many places that keep horses, from full-time equestrian outfits to the honeymoon-is-over-seldom-ridden situations.
Introduction
In each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), as Jesus preached against the wicked and perverse generation in Israel, He made a statement that has puzzled many Christians even to this day. “Blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, that will not be forgiven.” Many people hear this and are terrified, “what if I committed the unforgivable sin? What if I have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit? How do I know my sins can be forgiven or not?”
If blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an unbeliever speaking against the work of the Holy Spirit on earth, no one who doesn’t believe in Jesus could ever be forgiven. So, surely that is not it. But then what does this mean? What is this sin?
The cosmic tale goes ever on
by The Saxon Cross
History is dead.
Or, so I was told.
For a long time, I believed it.
Not because I wanted to, but I could see the world around me. It was plain as day that I did not live in the world of my heroes.
Myth and legend had ended, history had marched to its lackluster end, and we were all fated to live out our days in a lethargic, decaying, neo-liberal hellscape.
Consume product. Work for corporation. Vote. Die.
The banal reality of the modern west seems almost designed to crush the very souls of its populace.
We grew up in a world where nothing ever happens and there is nothing left to discover.
by Gabe Harder
Defining the Covenant
To this point, it should be clear that the “covenant with Hagar” is key to Wilson’s brand of soft supersessionism. What’s equally clear, however, is that this particular covenantal arrangement evades precise definition, and what elements have been made plain at times appear entirely incompatible with a historic Reformed covenant theology.
A historical reading of the “covenant with Hagar” is, of course, impossible. Although God makes prophetic promises to both Abraham and Hagar concerning Ishmael’s future, “nothing is clearer [in Genesis 16-21] than the singularity of the covenant God made with Abraham and the passing down of that covenant through Isaac and not through Ishmael. There is, thus, no Hagar covenant.”1 Paul simply does not teach that “unbelieving Jews are in covenant with Hagar.” The phrase used by both Wilson and Sumpter, “the covenant with Hagar,” appears nowhere in the passage. Paul is clear that his appeal to Genesis is allegorical; the covenant, therefore, is not with Hagar, rather Hagar is the covenant (Gal. 4:24).
by Gabe Harder
Introduction
Doug Wilson’s “American Milk and Honey” is now available. There’s a great deal in the book worth commenting on, and I anticipate engaging with that material more broadly in the near future. In the lead-up to its release, however, Moscow has not been silent concerning Israel, the Jews, and antisemitism. Not only has Wilson himself blogged extensively on these issues, but just the other week Toby Sumpter threw his hat in the ring with a blog post1 largely affirming many of Wilson’s convictions. Then Canon Press published a video of Pastor Wilson and company discussing right-wing Twitter’s response to all this with Andrew Isker.2 While a number of Wilson’s arguments deserve further analysis, I’d like to dedicate this article to examining one of the more curious features of his account; the so-called “covenant with Hagar.”
Alienism, Violence, and Power.
Sinn Féin Leader Mary Lou McDonald said that the stabbing that occurred in Dublin is “just a shocking, unexpected, random incident” as protests and fires were started in reaction to an Algerian Migrant knife attack outside of Gaelscoil Colaiste Mhuire, a school for young children, leaving a teacher in her 30s and a young girl in critical condition still in the hospital. As the news broke out, riots took place, the media cycle was up in arms about “Hate” while anyone with a functioning mind was asking why was there an Algerian stabbing children in Ireland?