Tag: Martin Selbrede

A Great Big Gulp of Theology (‘Consummation,’ by Martin Selbrede)

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

We look for the resurrection of the dead – FORWARD IN CHRIST

Is history moving inexorably to the full establishment of Christ’s Kingdom over a new heaven and a new earth? And if so, why can’t we see it?

Consummation, by Martin Selbrede, is a long essay that attempts to answer this question.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/consummation

I have to admit that for all my reading, all my study, this text is hard for me to understand. That’s because you and I are here, on the old earth, saturated with sin, and we can’t see as God sees. The smoke of battle blinds us.

But if we keep reading, we come to a final paragraph in which the fog begins to lift:

“[B]ecause providence is well orchestrated to subserve the ultimate ends of consummation. History moves towards, not away from, its appointed goal, and God Himself will push it over the finish line to release the final grip of the curse from Christ’s world (Romans 8: 19-23).”

Let me quote the cited Scripture, in case you don’t have a Bible handy:

“For the earnest expectation of the creature [all created things] waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

Yes, there’s a whole lot of groaning going on in this fallen world today; but Jesus Christ has paid the fare, and God the Father will get us there.

Yesterday’s Paradise

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Light Educational Ministries

You won’t believe how on-target this book is.

I’m passing up transgender nooze today because I think we’ve all had enough of that for the time being.

Instead, we have a meaty and insightful review, by Martin Selbrede, of R.J. Rushdoony’s 1977 classic, Revolt Against Maturity. It’s a fairly long read, but well worth your time.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/rushdoonys-revolt-against-maturity

Let me share with you the crowning quote from Rushdoony’s book. Look sharp, don’t miss it–

“Yesterday’s paradise is today’s hell.”

Whooooo! He just covered the whole history of the Soviet Union in just five words!

Think, think, think about what Rushdoony says. Anything going on today that’s sold to us as the express route to Paradise… and will very likely by a one-way ride to hell? Do you think that maybe psychiatry might have the answers? Maybe we can get them from The Party… or from Science.

Amazing, how clearly this man saw the future.

‘Will God Heal the Nations?’ (Martin Selbrede)

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Will God Heal the Nations? Ep. 204 (guest Martin Selbrede)

Have you got an hour to expand your understanding of God’s word? If you do, Martin Selbrede has a podcast for you.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/audio/will-god-heal-the-nations-ep-204-guest-martin-selbrede

We live in “an injured world,” Martin says, which God can and will heal. But a major obstacle to our healing is our disbelief. Although “God will not despise the day of small things” (Zechariah 4: 9-10)… we do! We want big things! The kind of things that cost trillions of dollars, go on year after year, and never solve the problem.

Martin cites the example of Naaman, a Syrian general afflicted with leprosy (in 2 Kings 5: 1-19), who hears that there’s a prophet in Israel, Elisha, who can heal him. Expecting to pay a high price for it, Naaman loads up his valuables and sets out to see the prophet. But he never gets there. Elisha knows he’s coming and sends out a servant to tell him that if he wants to be healed, he should bathe himself seven times in the River Jordan.

Naaman feels insulted! “He wanted to do something massive,” not simple. Something expensive. He’s about to turn back to Syria when one of his aids suggests that if the prophet had counseled him to do something costly and difficult, he would have surely done it: so why not do something simple? What does he have to lose? So Naaman follows Elisha’s instruction, dips himself in this rather unimpressive stream–and is healed of his leprosy. At no cost.

The Bible gives us God’s instructions for healing deep, festering problems… and we don’t believe them. We don’t follow them. We want massive government programs. Not some simple tithe! Not repentance, not spiritual and moral regeneration!

You’ll find much to chew on in this lesson. (It refers back to Martin’s essay, “The Scope of Healing,” which I posted yesterday.)

‘The Scope of Healing’ (Martin Selbrede)

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Martin Selbrede | heroinamerica

Why can’t our civilization solve its biggest problems?

Because we’re always “abandoning the world to humanism” and respond with disbelief to Biblical solutions, says Martin Selbrede.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-scope-of-healing

Because we’re all hung up on merely personal holiness, and merely physical healing, we “barricade our hearts behind a wall of theological excuses” and fail to seek healing on God’s terms–terms that apply to the healing of nations and even to the healing of the earth itself. If only we could spend enough money! If only we could develop more powerful technology! If only government had more authority!

The money gets spent, technology advances, we grow the government–and the problems remain… often growing worse because our humanist solutions don’t work.

This is a fairly long essay, but stick with it–plenty of food for thought!

‘A Sobering Thought’ (2018)

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of angry protesters

Look at the passion poured out–for abortion. Who wants to get into a debate with these wackos?

We are given different spiritual gifts. Life would get kind of boring if we were all the same.

I have not been given the gift of verbally fencing with atheists and enjoying it. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, excelled at it–and he did it without making anybody angry. Now that’s a gift. My friend and mentor at Chalcedon, Martin Selbrede, has it. But I don’t.

A Sobering Thought

So I once confessed that I had no desire to debate, and what that did was provoke a blizzard of angry comments from atheists, most of which had to be deleted.

They would have you believe they’re a mighty multitude: that they are the mainstream and Christians this weird little minority whose only function is to annoy them. Being in tight with teachers’ unions and Hollywood gives them a lot of high cards to play with. I was going to say “trump cards,” but that would only get them mad.

‘Healing the Damage Caused by Bad Theology’ (Martin Selbrede)

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Martin Selbrede | heroinamerica

“We’re only passing through… The world is not my home… Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world…”

We’ve all heard the excuses: the bad theology that justifies Christian inaction, impotence, and irrelevance. We know all the cliches. Polishing the brass on the sinking ship, etc. City of God vs. City of Man. The result is a “retreatist theology” and a Christian, most likely a Protestant, “constantly ready to flee.”

Martin Selbrede finds a corrective in the work of Cornelius van der Waal, who died in 1980. In The World, Our Home, van der Waal analyzed all the bad theology–“surrender theology”–that has seeped into Christian churches since the Reformation.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/healing-the-damage-caused-by-bad-theology

We are not called to hand the whole shooting match over to the devil and his servants! We are called to fulfill the Great Commission, to win ground for Christ’s Kingdom–we are called not to mourn, not to cower in the pews, but to work.

Over and over against we are called upon to straighten out the bad theology and put our churches back on course. Our home is the world: that’s why God put us there. The earth is the LORD’s. And we are His servants and His stewards.

Why that should be so hard to remember… well, I don’t know.

The Two Roads to Destruction

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Martin Selbrede | heroinamerica

This new essay by Martin Selbrede is about a conflict that can only be resolved by following God’s word–the tension between “the one and the many.”

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/dialectical-culture

Simply put, if “the one” prevails, you wind up with tyranny–and a loss of meaning in  all but the mushiest and most useless sense. But if “the many” prevail against the one, you wind up with anarchy (leading eventually, as it always does, to a dictatorship) and the cult of Me. It is the continual tension between social order and individual liberty.

Both must be limited: but only the Bible teaches that.

There is no hope for us in following only humanistic, statist prescriptions for order and justice. These always strand us in our state of Original Sin.

This is a challenging essay, but stay with it. That little light bulb over your head might come on.

Why Is Government So Awful?

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Dr. Punyamurtula Kishore – CBS Boston

Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore

Providence! I was musing on this question–how does government get to be so awful, that it actively abuses its citizens and favors their enemies?–when it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to post Martin Selbrede’s article, He Fought the Good Fight, from the Chalcedon website.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/he-fought-the-good-fight

Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore was persecuted and imprisoned because his sobriety-based approach to treating opioid addiction was much more successful than the conventional more-drugs-to-treat-drugs approach. For his success, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sought to destroy him.

Dr. Kishore died earlier this summer.

Although they took away his freedom, they couldn’t stop other states from embracing Dr. Kishore’s model and successfully applying it.

But to come to Martin’s point:

Isaiah 57:1-2, The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.

By contrast, the closing verses of Isaiah 56 describe the sloth, the ignorance, the carelessness, and the folly of leaders, false shepherds, who wouldn’t know a righteous man if they tripped over him.

Government gets awful as it grows to be more and more dominated by self-absorbed, foolish, ignorant, careless, shallow, venal, greedy, crooked leaders. Political science courses never explained it, but Scripture surely does. It gets to be that the leaders will persecute any righteous men or women in their midst–if they’re aware of them at all.

Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore, servant of God, benefactor of the public–well done, thou good and faithful servant! Well done.

Our First ‘Dr. Kishore’ Article

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

2 with Cape ties face Medicaid fraud charges - z* Breaking News Updates - capecodtimes.com - Hyannis, MA

Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore, persecuted hero

This is the first of Martin Selbrede’s 18 articles on the pioneering addiction treatment work of Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore and his persecution at the hands of Massachusetts medical and law enforcement authorities.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/massachusetts-protects-medical-industrial-complex

Once they’d successfully “demonized [him] as a monster,” the authorities set about discrediting Dr. Kishore’s character, ruining him financially, and finally packing him off to prison.

His crime: finding a better way to treat opioid addiction instead of just replacing one addictive drug with another.

These are long articles, but they’re important. With opioid addiction claiming thousands of victims all over the country, Dr. Kishore’s sobriety-based approach produced far better results than what the medical establishment had to offer–and for this he was severely punished.

All 18 articles are available at http://www.chalcedon.edu/ .

We Have Lost Another Saint

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Dr. Kishore (L) with Martin Selbrede

Dr. Punyamurtula Kishore, whose pioneering work in the treatment of opioid addiction set new records for effectiveness–yet landed him in prison–has died.

Our Chalcedon print magazine, Faith for All of Life, ran 18 articles about him by Martin Selbrede, starting in 2014. All 18 are available at http://www.chalcedon.edu/ .

Dr. Kishore, frustrated by the ineffectiveness of the medical establishment’s approach–replacing one addictive drug with another–came up with a sobriety-based treatment program instead. It worked. At least, it worked much better than the old way. And they couldn’t forgive him for that.

Dr. Kishore sacrificed his good name, his livelihood, and his freedom for his patients. He fell ill in April of this year and died on June 20. A movie about his life and work is in post-production.

We don’t know how many lives Dr. Kishore saved. We wish he could have lived to see his methods adopted in all 50 states (several have already done so) and his work publicly vindicated.

For the details of Dr. Kishore’s work and sacrifice, see Martin Selbrede’s articles on the Chalcedon website.