The brave members of the Escondido Theology
Meanwhile the R2K Sanhedrin is desperate to silence all those Reformed voices speaking out against the Third Reichification of nursing homes and hospitals and Ethical Review Committees.
You have, of course, noticed all those Reformed pastors and elders speaking out against the Third Reichification of our hospitals and nursing homes, haven't you? Likely you yourself have a Reformed pastor or session in your own community that regularly pickets your county nursing home. Your hospital. A graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary who writes letters to your state's board of medical ethics...
You do have a Reformed church in your city--even one--that does something the R2K Sanhedrin thinks they shouldn't do, right? You do know a Reformed pastor who uses his church's pulpit to denounce your governor or mayor, don't you? A Reformed church session who has written your city council to complain about their taxpayer dollars being used to fund Planned Parenthood's infant slaughter?
What? You've never heard of any such action on the part of any Reformed pastor or church session anywhere in the country? You've got to be kidding me!
You say you've begged your pastor to warn his flock against falling into the murder of their Grandma Does or their unmarried daughter's unborn child, and he's refused? He won't even mention it in the safe confines of his own congregation's private sanctuary? He says he's not going to polarize his congregation? He's not going to stray from that straight and narrow path of robes and liturgy and erudite pulpiteering on the thirty-three abuses of God's Moral Law?
Well, your pastor must be the exception proving the rule.
Surely we must be surrounded by Reformed pastors and churches warning us of the moral and spiritual dangers of the riot of bloodshed that has taken over these United States of America. We must be engulfed, inundated, positively drowning in Reformed men with M.Divs from Westminster and Reformed and Covenant who are known for prostituting their pastoral and Gospel calling to political sectarianism!
It must be everywhere.
But of course, I'm joking. Even if we thought the Escondido Theology R2K storm troopers were right in calling down fire from Heaven on pastors betraying their Gospel calling for politics, we'd look around and wonder where on earth these pastors and sessions are? I mean I have a pretty broad knowledge of the Reformed church in these United States and, for the life of me, I can't think of even a single church anywhere that lets out a peep about politics or takes the first step toward clothing the naked public square as righteous Lot did.
These R2K men working hard to gag Reformed pastors and elders really have no one at all to gag. And they know it.
Rather, they exist to legitimate the universal behavior among Reformed pastors and sessions of absolute silence over the mass bloodshed and growth of secular totalitarianism prevailing across our country.
Their cries of "Wolf!" serve the purpose of covering the naked cowardice of Reformed men's silence with fig leaves of principle. There is no danger anywhere of Reformed pastors and elders betraying their Gospel calling for prophetic witness in the public square. Even if it were wrong, not to worry because such men don't exist. We are all comfortably numb and it's so very nice to have the R2K Sanhedrin elucidating for us how very principled we are in our cowardice.
Meanwhile...
Last night, I read a story in Wired detailing how our government has thrown out legal checks against spying on citizens of these United States in its surveillance of phone conversations, e-mail, and everything digital. Specifically, the NSA is building huge buildings and working towards exaflop, zettaflop, and yottalop supercomputers to assist its normal work of spying on everyone and everything around the world, including you and me.
One of Wired's sources for the piece is William Binney who worked for decades at the top level of the super-secret NSA as a senior crypto-mathematician responsible "for automating the agency's worldwide eavesdropping network. ...the 68-year-old spent nearly four decades breaking codes and finding new ways to channel billions of private phone calls and email messages from around the world into the NSA's bulging databases. As chief and one of the two cofounders of the agency's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center... Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program." Binney states:
They violated the Constitution setting it up. But they didn't care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn't stay.
Verizon was also a part of the program...and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency's domestic eavesdropping.
That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five. So you're over a billion and a half calls a day.
Following the above quote, Wired reports, "Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security."
"Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the datamining begins."
"You can watch everybody all the time with datamining...financial transactions or travel or anything. ...Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone's life. The NSA also has the capability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time."
Sitting in a restaurant not far from NSA headquarters... Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together:
"We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state."
Of course, yesterday in a hearing on Capitol Hill where he was questioned concerning Wired's allegations, NSA chief Keith Alexander said no, no, never ever, and absolutely not.
Forbes concludes its report of Alexander's denial:
Don’t expect a more detailed response from the NSA to Bamford’s (Wired) story. The fact that Alexander doesn’t even know how to pronounce the name of the journalist who has written three definitive books on his agency’s history demonstrates how little accountability NSA feels to its critics. Instead, the agency’s parallel realities–-one described from its official sources and another by the whistleblowers emerging from behind its classified walls–-will likely keep diverging.
Brothers and sisters, we are citizens of a representative constitutional democracy with heavy privileges and duties that flow from that system of government. We are not under a Roman Emporer. We are under ourselves and we ourselves have the legal duty to guard the commons God has been pleased to bequeath to us from the hard work and shed blood of our faithful Reformed forefathers who created these United States.
If we learn anything from the Early Church under the Roman Empire, it's that empires like Rome and the Secular West must oppress and kill every Christian who believes all authority in Heaven and earth has been given to the Lord Jesus and we must go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything He commanded knowing He is with us to the end of the earth.
Intolleristas are bloodthirsty for exclusivists. It was this way with the Early Church under Rome and it's this way with the Late Church under Western Secularism. Separation of church and state is the death of Christian evangelism and discipleship unless Christian evangelism and discipleship becomes as vapid as the R2K monomaniacs.
Christian life, worship, evangelism, and discipleship are utterly incompatible with Western Secularism's pluralism. Every single time a man under the Lordship of Jesus Christ tries to clothe our naked public squares, he will be shouted down by those convinced they don't have gods and they don't worship and they are as broad-minded and tolerant as can be.
And if that man escapes the priests and priestesses of tolerance, on the way home he'll be cornered by the R2K Sanhedrin who will beat the tar out of him for giving Reformed copaceticdom a bad name.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
Want to get in touch? Send Tim an email!
