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Chapter 17, On the Perseverance of the Saints, presents the discussion of God’s superintendence of the soul inside themes already familiar to this series: “They, whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by the Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.” (WCF 17:1)
Despite all pretense, Alienists do not accept this. Neither with respect to God’s sovereign choosing of the European context as the seedbed of Christendom, nor with respect to the strictly European context of all the creeds and confessions of which the Westminster standards are the culmination. In the colonial and American contexts it’s also the matter of all the giants of the Westminsterian tradition being slavemasters, White nationalists, segregationists, and the like. And they certainly deny it with regard to throwbacks who abide in the views as all those fathers.
The confession’s stance here is that God chose and sustained the faith of ‘racists’. And not just any racists, but those whom moderns deem the absolute worst because their perspectives were derived from God’s Word. The Confession literally demands them to accept those whom they see as the worst villains in history as the heroes of the faith. And they can’t.
The disconnect is glaring.
While denying the regeneration and perseverance of Kinists past or present, they never question the faith and practice of Black radicals like Dr. Bradley, who recently wrote: “[F]rom a black church perspective, evangelicals have never had the gospel. Ever. . . . When will evangelicals accept the gospel for the first time ever?”
Nor do they gainsay the salvation of Korean PCA minister Duke Kwon, who in his 2017 LDR speech denounced White Christians as “fools,” “trolls,” and “enemies,” and the White race in general as “the oppressor” who must agree to their own enslavement for the benefit of Blacks.
The minorities socially promoted by these Alienists are simply turning about to anathematize any and all Whites who do not aid them in their crusade to subjugate and destroy all White nations and clans.
But you know who’s the real problem? White Presbyterians who still think like Presbyterians did before Loving v. Virginia, Brown v. Board, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Hart-Celler Act were promulgated from the new Mount Zion in D.C. According to these New Age Presbyterians, the White man whose knee has not bowed to Baal is the real problem.
Section 3 of the same chapter addresses again “the prevalency of corruption remaining in [believers],” once again refuting the Alienist proposition that the covenant abolishes all lineal curses and levels the behavior of all races. As mentioned previous, the Alienist view of this not only contradicts the confession, but is also the substance of the first and most pernicious heresy — Gnosticism.
Over against this new perfectionism, their regard of the fictional sin of ‘racism’ (the love of our own, commanded by God) as the ultimate sin is merely to anathematize our physical existence. And since that anathema is, in practice, leveled singularly against European stock while winking at the tribalism of all others (witness RAAN, Reformed Blacks of America, et al.), it is apparent that the Alienism in the churches is really just the same visceral hatred for Whites that defines the secular zeitgeist today.
Chapter 19, section 3 reads in full:
Beside this law [the Ten Words], commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly, holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the New Testament.
First, we note that the reference to ‘the people of Israel’ does not address general humanity, but a limited folk. In an age of liberal atomization such as ours this distinction may sound stilted, but up to recent times the primary definition of people was singular, not plural. So testifies Webster’s 1828 dictionary:
The body of persons who compose a community, town, city or nation. We say, the people of a town; the people of London or Paris; the English people. In this sense, the word is not used in the plural, but it comprehends all classes of inhabitants, considered as a collective body, or any portion of the inhabitants of a city or country.
Which Webster underscores from the Bible in the 7th, 8th, and 9th definitions:
7. When people signified a separate nation or tribe, it has the plural number. ‘Thou must prophesy again before many peoples.’ Revelation 10:11.
8. In Scripture, fathers or kindred. Genesis 25:8.
8. The Gentiles. ‘To him shall the gathering of the people be.’ Genesis 49:10.
Need I remind the reader that the Alienist repudiates this understanding of the Scripture that Webster takes for granted?
Despite all the controversy around the third use of the law, when the confession says that the judicial laws of “that people [are] not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require” (WCF 19:4), it again presupposes the continuance of ‘other peoples’. Of course, we take the ‘general equity’ clause as intending the appropriation and application of the laws in principle to unique and relative circumstances. Which is to say theonomic-based Common Law — the same as obtained in Reformation-era England. None should forget, after all, that Blackstone insisted that the Common Law was but the case-law application extrapolated by general use from biblical law.
Which means the divines took for granted that nationalism continues in the Christian age, and that certain abrogated ceremonial codes notwithstanding, the moral and judicial laws which governed the national life of old Israel likewise apply to the nations of Christendom today.
Over against which the Alienist imagines the defunct ceremonial laws to encompass the “land laws” (per North and Chilton) inclusive of all ethic insularity codes. But, as we’ve read, the language on the subject set forth here in the confession says precisely the opposite. If, as the divines conclude, the moral and judicial laws (which define and protect marriage, property, tribe, and nation) are presumed to apply to the nations of Christendom as much as to old Israel, the nations can nowise be abrogated. They, the covenant nations, like the children of Israel, enjoy the benefits of God’s laws that solidify and nurture the existence of their respective peoples (Prov. 14:34).
As if having anticipated the antinomian persuasions of the Alienist in these matters, the divines add, “Neither are the forementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of Gospel, but do sweetly comply with it” (WCF 19:8).
That is, the the appropriation of the moral and civil laws of Israel are indeed the template for governance of all covenant nations in the Christian age. As the Great Commission itself commends us, the Church was to make disciples of the nations as nations, teaching them all things He hath commanded (Matt. 28:19-20). Wherein all principles codified for Israel’s cultural, territorial, and ethnic solvency apply in ‘general equity’ to the Christian peoples now. So it is that the confession comprehends nationalism as part and parcel of the sanctification which advances as a set with the gospel and does indeed ‘sweetly comply with it.’
Read Part 7
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