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Romans 1: 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
Romans 1: 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.
Clearly, we are governed by such people. If anyone had any doubt about this before, there can be no doubt today.
Where has such behavior led in the past?
Leviticus 18: 24 ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. 25 For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants.
Deuteronomy 20: 16 “But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, 17 but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 18 lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.
People will cry, “Oh, that’s not fair; that isn’t just.” Don’t be fooled. God is very patient (He gave the Canaanites centuries), but He isn’t mocked.
Romans 2: 2 But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things.
We live in a wicked land, ruled by wicked people. God’s judgment is true.
Amen! The Bible calls out the evil of those in power all over the place. Worldly power is very rarely if ever presented positively, either. It's why I can't align with the New Christian Right or the Right Wing Post-libertarian guys. They all think they can create a righteous power structure to defeat evil and reconstitute some kind of Christendom. But even Christendom wasn't righteous. The political and religious leaders were very corrupt and ungodly. The only answer to unholy leaders is to spread out authority as broadly as possible so that powerful people are held accountable by other powerful people when they cross the line.
ReplyDeleteThat is another way of saying that I am still a libertarian or classical liberal politically, and a born again, Spirit-filled, Bible believing, God loving Christian religiously.
How was Christendom not righteous? I mean, it wasn't perfect, whether we're talking about the Roman Catholic Church or the temporal kingdoms, principalities, city leagues, and independent cities, but surely you'd agree it was more libertarian and more Christian than today's socio-political structure? After all, the Middle Ages was a polycentric political structure based on property and personal and familial bonds of loyalty. Compare that with our current system of monopolistic territorial jurisdiction of public property.
DeleteThe problem I have with the Christian Nationalist guys is that they put too much faith in the modern state, which is inherently liberal (constitutional, democratic, secular, founded upon twin pseudoscience of social contract theory and popular sovereignty, etc.).
"The only answer to unholy leaders is to spread out authority as broadly as possible so that powerful people are held accountable by other powerful people when they cross the line." So you're on board with Hans Hoppe's vision of a Europe of a thousand Lichtensteins?
My two cents: I would take the division of power structures model of the Middle Ages or otherwise take my chances with monarchy, as per Hoppe, all the time they will care about the long term value of the kingdom, and half the time we might get a benevolent ruler.
DeleteLook at the kings who ruled. None of those guys were models of virtue. They were all about conquering land, punishing blasphemy, and changing the definition of blasphemy to suit their own interests.
DeleteYou had Christians dieing at the hand of other Christians for crimes of conscience. You had monarchs who were nominally Christians and relatives going to war with one another in World War 1, which was the end of it all anyway.
Christian Nationalists don't trust the modern state really. They definitely are anti-Constitution. I mean they can for a Protestant Franco. I'm not against all that they are for, but they are bad on history, bad on theology, and bad on liberty.
Yes. I more or less support the thousand Lichtensteins idea. I even think monarchy or other forms of government are fine. I just don't think we should hold up Christendom, including the Eastern Roman Empire as the pristine example that others do.
Bionic, me too, but part of my thought when mentioning of Christendom was the Byzantine Empire which was top down and the opposite of a division of power. No thanks.
DeleteRMB,
DeleteYes I agree there were a lot of bad men in power during that time, as there always seem to be (Jesus does say that Satan is the prince of this world after all), however, the division of powers of Western Christendom (and I am mostly talking about the West), the polycentric and overlapping nature of its authority structure, and the power of the Church to act as an independent authority, to restrain or at least contend with temporal powers, was some kind of magic to build up the tradition of liberty in the West. I think something like this will be necessary to defeat the modern state system and usher in not a libertarian Utopia, but a more honest and humble form of politics, like in Christendom, and as Tolkien would have liked, where those who rule us do so on the currency of their own names and reputations and not by some abstract thing called the State.
Interestingly, some of the best Southern Agrarian intellectuals (Weaver, Tate, Bradford) understood the lack of this centralized religious authority as a weakness of the antebellum South. They had the polycentric, patrimonial, feudal culture of Christendom but without the unifying social authority of the Roman Catholic Church. They had Christianity, but it was a highly decentralized, individualistic, and nearly anarchic form of it ---in other words, one that had little social authority or power, especially in the face of the advancing and highly organized liberal-progressive state.
Small private states based on property, personal bonds, customary old and good laws (and maybe some good new ones a la Rothbard/Hoppe), and one big hierarchical Church is my prescription for a better world. This is our best chance to keep the prince of this world at bay. But it is a fool's hope at best.
It certainly isn't religious and ethnic pluralism under the absolute centralized secular state, and that's the direction we're headed.
Amen. Some of the crazy stuff in the Epstein files are likely non-factual claims (like squeezing baby poop out of intestines like caviar...), but I would bet my bottom dollar that these people love raping kids (or at least 8th grade and up, whatever you want to call that), and used this as a means of knowing who they could trust in their gigantic financial schemes. If you rape kids, well then you're in the club and we can trust you because we are all mutually compromised. Demons love to destroy innocence.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to know what to believe about these newly released Epstein files. I think part of it is a "limited hang-out" to get people to over-commit on weak claims in order to hurt their credibility. But I think it's clear that it ain't Russia but Israel that's involved with this operation, and they are still protecting the identities of people who were Epstein's accomplices and clients. Also we can hope that Trump, Patel, Bondi, and Bongino ruined their careers and their lives over this.
Yes. I also don't see it so much as blackmail (as if such wealthy powerful people would be so stupid to put themselves in harm's way), but more like "I can be trusted to be in the club."
DeleteThis entire episode strikes me as the closest in my lifetime to exposing to larger masses how entirely corrupt the system and the men who rule are. I really hope that the people don't let this opportunity pass, but I am not holding my breath.
On one of the conservative websites I regularly visit, the main daily article deplored what it viewed as a distraction from the real problems of the day, popular obsession with the (redacted) release of the material contained in the (as the President put it) " hoax" documents. One of the chat room responses replied accurately: "If learning that the global ruling classes are utterly depraved is not important information, than what is?" So, "What is to be done?" By the current governing class, I fear nothing will be: "Put not your trust in princes." On the other hand "Arise, O God, and judge the earth, for all the nations are Thine."
ReplyDeleteI know people just like this, so sucked into the Trump bandwagon they can't think straight. Even if all it was is a pedo ring, wouldn't this be enough to want to see some hang on the gallows?
DeleteBut it is so much more.
Agreed. It is the biggest issue in the last 20 years. If this is really how real power is brokered in the West, then we all need to know about it. Okay so Covid might have been a bigger deal, but Epstein is right up there.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me that Epstein is bigger. Epstein was at the heart of a circle that produces much of the misery in the western world - likely including everything associated with covid, especially the money printing (which I still think was the initial reason for the lockdowns).
DeleteI think Epstein is bigger too honestly! The Covid regime largely still has some plausible deniability. 'We only did that because we cared'. 'If we didn't do this it would have been much worse'. 'We got the science wrong'. It's hard to convince people they did this maliciously. With Epstein, it is a window into the shady world of the most powerful people and the agendas they care about, and it is all just dripping with pure evil, evil beyond the imagination of many.
DeleteWhat surprised me was how chummy Bannon and Epstein seem to be. I guess it's not much of a stretch to connect someone like Epstein with his numerous connections to Israeli intelligence and a Christian Zionist right-wing populist like Bannon looking to be the leader of the successor ideology to the Neocon era.
I think it was funny that these two did not like Pope Francis. Kinda makes me like Francis a little more.
Of course Ron Paul came out of this looking like a warrior saint. He's mentioned a few times but only to commiserate how much they hate him and can't rely on him to support Israel, etc.
Yes regarding Ron Paul. They can't stand a principled and honest politician, unless he or she is principled and honest about their dishonesty and corruption.
DeleteLike Lindsey Graham: Dishonest and corrupt on principle - everyone knows what they will get from this type. I think that's how most people in power like their politicians and those at the top of the government machine.