By Ehud Would
One of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes is titled It’s a Good Life (hereafter IAGL). Though the television version isn’t available for free in any significant online platform, the radio adaptation is.
I’m sure others have noticed what I have in this story, but to my knowledge, this may be the first such assessment to reach publication. The fact is it’s an analogy of Christ’s advent and dominion as seen through heathen eyes. Yes, it’s a Christmas story, albeit inverted.
By Davis Carlton
The Gospel Coalition continues its agenda of blaming all of America’s problems, past and present, on the ubiquitous evils of white people. Ron Burns has posted an article authored by Presbyterian pastor Reed DePace on his congregation’s “repentance” for their evil racist past. Interestingly, DePace considers himself “Hispanic American,” so when he mentions the sins of “our forefathers” he’s really talking about your white forefathers. DePace pastors Historic First Presbyterian Church, founded in downtown Montgomery, Alabama in 1824 and now affiliated with the PCA. DePace describes the perennial success of the church which at its apogee in the 1920s reached a membership of 2,000 and maintained a membership of 1,100 as late as 1961. After this point the church experienced a precipitous decline and today only boasts about 50 active members. This naturally caused DePace and the leadership to inquire as to what has been going wrong. Why has God seemingly cursed their ministry efforts?
By Bret McAtee
In Genesis 10 we have recorded the table of Nations. Chapter 10 ends with these words:
32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, BY THEIR NATIONS; and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood.
Genesis 10 is the effect of the cause that is listed in chapter 10 and is placed out of order in order to put chapters 11 and 12 in stark contrast. (Nimrod and Babel seeking to make a name for themselves and Abraham being promised by God to make a name for him.)
By Ehud Would
I recently viewed a remarkable film — Frank Lloyd’s Children of Divorce, a 1927 silent film now digitally restored and available free online. Definitely worth viewing.
Not to worry, this review avoids any significant spoilers.
Sure, modern cinephiles sneer at silent films, but cinematically, this one is quite well done. What’s more, it offers a rare gestalt with respect not just to divorce generally, but its central role in the fall of the WASP aristocracy, that linchpin presaging the internal collapse of broader WASP society.
By Davis Carlton
One of my Facebook friends recently posted that we are approaching the year 2020, the first year of the decade in which ostensibly conservative Christian denominations will capitulate on the sodomite agenda. I think he’s right. There may be a few stragglers by the end of the upcoming decade, but I believe that traditional Christian orthodoxy will be mostly dead by the end of this next decade. A book I recently read helped me to understand how purportedly conservative Christians are abandoning the authority of the Bible and any semblance of Christian doctrine. The book is Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God by Eric Seibert who is a professor of Old Testament at Messiah College. I borrowed this book thinking that it would wrestle with difficult texts in the Old Testament. What I found instead was an altogether radical proposal in which the author suggests that the traditional Christian understanding of divine inspiration is wrong and needs to be replaced.
By Bret McAtee
“There are alternatives to Tribalism; whether we are talking about massive tribes of white liberals or micro tribes of city league bowlers in Topeka. On the secular side of things those alternatives would include massive Nationalist ideologies like “Nazism,” or Internationalist ideologies – Communism, which is the kind of thing that happens when tribalism tries to scale. Mass ideologies, like petty tribalism, demand loyalty and empathy and to hell with outsiders. The only real alternative to an insider vs. outsider mentality is the Christian faith. Because the claims of Christ are ultimate because He is the head of the Church these claims originate from outside the cosmos, which means His claims trump every other claim. I have a tighter bond with someone who is baptized in the Triune name but who lives in Tehran than I do with my next door neighbor who is not baptized.
By Colby Malsbury
GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH:
70 AD – the destruction of the Temple and the ushering in of the final judgment upon Jewry.
451 – the Council of Chalcedon codifies Christian orthodoxy for one and all times.
1054 – the permanent schism between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East.
1517 – Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door.
2019 – Kanye West says that Christianity is ‘lit’, or something.
What, too soon? Well, I’m sure Ye will settle for being included as a footnote in this historiography. He is a humble sort, after all.
Martin Luther burns a papal bull, and perhaps future traditional Catholics burning the edicts of the Amazon Synod?
By Davis Carlton
The traditional Catholic world is abuzz over the Amazon Synod currently underway in Rome. The synod is a gathering of bishops selected by Pope Francis ostensibly to discuss issues related to the evangelization of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon region in South America. The reason for the uproar is the synod’s “working document” titled Instrumentum Laboris. The document was principally authored by former priest turned Marxist firebrand Leonardo Boff. The document is suffused with pantheist language that has routinely become incorporated into liberation theology. Accusations of apostasy in the mainline Roman Catholic Church are nothing new for radical traditionalist Catholics (commonly abbreviated as RadTrads or just Trads), but the anti-Christian (“Mother Earth”) language is so apparent in this synod document that even Catholic bishops such as Athanasius Schneider and Cardinals Raymond Burke and Walter Brandemuller have called the synod for what it truly is; apostasy. I doubt that this apostasy will come as a terrible shock to our readers. The apostasy of Rome is simply trailing mainline Protestantism at this point.
Symbolism is Not Entirely Subjective
I’m no expert on the occult, so this post is simply intended to provoke thought. Additionally, frank talk regarding the occult use of phallic and yonic symbolism is unavoidable for any worthwhile discussion of this subject matter. I have sought to address this in the most modest and dignified manner possible, and have pixilated portions of one particularly salacious image.
It is commonly noted that modern urban Christians find the agricultural illustrations of Scripture to be foreign and obscure. What is less commonly appreciated is that most Christians today live, eat, and breathe in an Enlightenment atmosphere, having received the materialist worldview they were taught in government schools as an unexamined first principle. Thus, things like the necessity of blood atonement, the dedication of first fruits, the supernatural role in fecundity, etc., matters once understood on an implicit level, now seem strange and mystifying. Such also is the case with rightly comprehending symbolism.
By Davis Carlton
Few among us had the foresight to see this coming. I certainly didn’t imagine that I would be writing a response to an ostensibly orthodox Presbyterian pastor arguing for the legality of bestiality. Nevertheless, this is where things stand. We truly live in strange times. The comments that I am responding to are from a Twitter thread on the account of Rev. Chris Caughey, who is a Presbyterian pastor and hosts a podcast called Glory Cloud about the theology of Meredith Kline. Evidently Caughey is not a fan of patriarchy. He begins by alleging that “patriarchy is advocated not by men – not even by mice (what an insult to rodents!) – but by cockroaches who are utterly terrified when light is shined on the darkness of their teaching.”