Do you ever get the feeling that nothing you do, personally, serves God and His Kingdom in any meaningful way?
You can stop fretting. It’s God who advances the Kingdom; we are only honored to be His servants.
Mark Rushdoony addresses that issue in a recent essay for Chalcedon.
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/no-heroes-in-the-kingdom-of-god
We can’t all be Martin Luther or Mother Theresa. But we can all be faithful.
I seem to be doing an awful lot of Bible stuff today. Well, when’s a bad time for that?
This heartening essay is by Mark Rushdoony for today’s Chalcedon Blog:
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/as-bright-as-the-promises-of-god
We are not just to believe God’s promises, Mark writes, not just to refrain from doubting them, but “to live in terms of their certainty” and “to live and act in faithfulness to the certainty that He will accomplish it.”
That’s what makes them certainty: He, not we, will accomplish it.
But He does like it when we work with Him.
Mark Rushdoony wrote this timely reminded of where we and our world are going. It’s a Chalcedon blog piece: “The Operation of God’s Perpetual Providence.”
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/the-operation-of-gods-perpetual-providence
Eschatology, he says, has got to be “our ‘big picture’ of where history is going.” And we find that information in God’s word.
For God’s providence is never turned off, He is never not on duty. He will do all the things He has said He will do, and we who are His people are, by His loving grace, a part of that. We are not orphans: we have a Father. And a place in Christ’s Kingdom.
Something to remember, in this evil age.
In the Ancient Near East, there was no universally-accepted calendar. The same kinds of “discrepancies” are found in every kingdom’s annals.
In this April 30 Chalcedon blog post, Mark Rushdoony tackles the question of whether the Bible is accurate as to matters of historical fact.
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/cherry-picking-at-our-peril
Critics like to point to supposed “discrepancies” within the Bible: for example, when it comes to stating how many years were in the reign of a king of Israel or Judah. At that point in world history, there was no widely-accepted standard of timekeeping, no universal calendar. Nor, within the same kingdom, was there any agreement as to when a king’s reign actually began or ended. So naturally the numbers will differ, here and there.
The point is, the Bible is 100% reliable and, as the Word of God, 100% authoritative–even when we can’t understand some of the historical details.
If your faith stands or falls by how well the numbers tally in Kings and Chronicles, there’s not much to it.
I’ve been waiting eagerly to share this with you!
Why is the Far Left Crazy so crazy? Why are we confronted with so much sheer loopiness–“transgender,” “open borders,” “everything is racist,” and so on, endlessly–which, far from landing its proponents in the madhouse where they belong, are offered to us as genuine public policy options? Options that we’d seize in a New York minute, if we weren’t racists and biggits etc.
Mark Rushdoony explains it clearly and convincingly. It’s their ideology that makes them so patently irrational. In their Darwin-inspired world view, chaos and revolution equal “progress,” and it’s always a good thing to tear down the old to make place for the new–never mind their relative merits, new is always better!
There is a method in their madness.
That’s why they must be utterly defeated. May God equip us for that righteous task!
Esther and the Persian king
One of the hardest lessons for us to learn, in such an evil and confusing age as this, is how to walk by faith and not by sight: because if we walk only by sight, most of what we see is bad. Mark Rushdoony discussed this in his blog post yesterday.
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/no-weapon-that-is-formed-against-thee-shall-prosper
The Book of Esther, in which the name of God does not appear, shows how God governs history, intervening at need. Our God created us with free will and respects it, even when our will is bent to evil: but he will not let evil prosper in the long run. As Isaiah said, “No weapon formed against thee shall prosper” (Is. 54:17).
How many times would God’s people have been wiped off the face of the earth, had He not intervened? As history, the Bible offers many examples of this truth.
And we do well to learn them.
There do seem to be an awful lot of churches these days that don’t measure up to anything like a Biblical standard. Some are all but stand-ins for Antichrist. It’s discouraging to see what they do and hear what they say.
Mark Rushdoony said something to me, years ago, while I was writing my series on paganism in the churches–something I have not forgotten. He said all these churches, all of them, in all their sometimes rather silly multitude of denominations, belong by right to Jesus Christ; and the Lord has His people in all of them. It is these people who constitute the Church. Christ’s people. If there are none to be found within the congregation of any particular church, it’s only because the last one finally left. But wherever that person is now, he still belongs to Jesus Christ.
We are not alone. The world is wide, and we have more brothers and sisters than we will ever know.
Pastor Wang Yi… in bonds for Christ
In this recent Chalcedon Blog post, Mark Rushdoony introduces us to a modern-day hero of the Church–Pastor Wang Yi, imprisoned in China since Dec. 9 for his stand against rampant statism.
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/a-rising-tide-of-faithful-believers
Pastor Wang is different because he refuses to criticize other Christians, or even to defend himself against their jabs at him. The battle, Rev. Rushdoony reminds us, is against “forces of ungodliness, not other believers.”
Not always easy to remember, is it?
Walking by faith and not by sight isn’t easy. These days, pessimism about the future seems to come natural–at least to me. Heck, I just wrote about some “famous” person teaching small children that abortion is “part of God’s plan.”
Chalcedon President Mark Rushdoony has addressed the problem of pessimism: his words are a much-appreciated tonic.
https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/are-you-pessimistic-about-the-future
Who wants to be in Miss Abortion’s shoes on Judgment Day?
Pagan “gods” are not supposed to do this!
“Hereby know you the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God…” (1 John 4:2-3)
We tend to forget how truly revolutionary the Christian message was and is, in the apostles’ time and also in ours, to this day.
Mark Rushdoony offers us this reminder:
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/a-perpetual-reminder
Jesus is the golden stairway that unites life on earth with its Creator and sustainer in heaven. This was very, very hard for First Century intellectuals to swallow! And still is. But the doctrine that Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, was born in the flesh as we are, to live and work in our world, winning our salvation, is absolutely necessary to the Christian faith
