Letters From All Over

I’m not sure if you’ll see this but I desperately need some advice. I’m a 19-year-old student that currently lives in Melbourne, Australia and have recently been enjoying your ‘Blog and Mablog’ videos. The points about the lack of courageous Christian leadership in the world is no greater evident than in my country Australia where we have faced the most extreme lock down laws in the world that have spanned for over 190+days since this mayhem began.

In the entire country, not a single church pastor has rebelled against these lock down laws preferring to ”stay online” and neither have any politicians (bar maybe one or two) opposed the government tyranny. With this in mind, considering the complete lack of Christian leadership in my country, how should I find a church willing to boldly preach the word of God without shutting down? Must I move to the U.S to experience the true church (and true Christian leadership) or stay in Australia and stick up with the church of cowards? Thanks,

Jacob

Changing of the Guard: In refusing to cancel in person services, would you consider having “underground” church services at some point, or do you think that public worship services are the most faithful thing to do at this point? Is it good to go underground to avoid certain negative consequences, or are those consequences part of the point at this point? Thankful for your ministry,

Chadwick

You’ve been kind enough to give counsel over email before. Thank you. I need more. I approached the elders of our church about their commitment to not follow lock down orders (as limited as they have been in Perth Australia) and shut down in-person worship. I appealed to them as a brother to be courageous and to plan better should the time come when the state called for another lock down. To their credit, they organised the congregation to gather in homes like Bible study groups rather than simply doing “zoom” church. This was better.

To the point though, they did not agree that they ought to resist lock down orders and the intern (who we now are called upon to vote in as an Associate Minister) expressed his disagreement with my position and call to courage.

They were all friendly enough but (without going into too much detail) basically did not agree with my position firstly about mask-mandates (fair enough) but secondly, and more importantly, my position about gathering in disobedience of the state’s mandate.

I’m churned up about it all and wonder if there are any courageous pastors and churches that you are aware of here in Perth Australia? Or maybe you all have room for one more refugee in Moscow Idaho?

Thank you for your courage and leadership throughout this scamdemic (both before and after).

Barry

I would like to ask a question about your most recent post, “The Changing of the Guard”. But first since I’m a first time writer, I wanted to thank you for your ministry. If I can take a few seconds to be gushy—Your writing has blessed me tremendously since I found your books about a year ago. Several years ago I became a conservative after being a Christian and a Calvinist for about a decade. (I found PragerU one week and got cage stage red pilled— why didn’t anyone tell me this stuff???). Anyway, I was confused why almost everyone at my local Evangelical church was soft left, all of my favourite preachers and Christian artists were promoting CRT and were vehemently anti-Trump, without expressing one tenth of the concern over Obama, Hillary or Biden. It seemed the only alternative was idolising Trump, which other conservatives seemed to be doing. I liked those guys more but couldn’t get fully on board. But when I found your book Rules for Reformers it was exactly what I’d been looking for for years—solid Reformed and Biblical theology with a Biblical view of government and culture. Empires of Dirt also helped me a lot there. Since then, diving into the rest of your stuff and everything on the Canon App has been life-changing for me. It’s been light bulb moment after light bulb moment. I am completely indebted to you, and if I keep gushing I will get teary, so moving on.

So to my question. I’d like to ask a practical application of what you said at the end of your post, that “We should ask for all pastors to affirm that under no future circumstance will they cancel in-person worship services.” I live in Sydney, Australia and we are once again in a hard lock down due to a few hundred Rona cases a day. I have recently joined a wonderful Reformed Baptist church which is very faithful, except we aren’t meeting right now, in order to be obedient to the authorities. I have followed your arguments re shutdowns, I agree, and I would say my church elders agree with me on 90% of the issues too. They are eager to meet again. However, we are not meeting and I don’t know if we will until these shutdowns end.

After meditating on the quote above and the last few paragraphs of your post, I am wondering what your thoughts are on this situation. Were you just using hyperbole or do you really believe that Christians who share this conviction should make this issue the dividing line?

Thank you and God bless, I’m regularly praying for you and your family.

CD

Thanks for your consistent and clear articulation of truth. It has been and continues to be immensely helpful. I am increasingly convinced that we need more faithful churches, not less in these days . . . more Bible, more Jesus, more Gospel. This is of course a statement of the obvious.

Do you think there is a particular strategy that Christians ought to be thinking through regarding church planting in these crazy times? What kinds of places should churches be considering as locations for new churches? Anywhere and everywhere? Or should there be an increased focus on certain kinds of places . . . states, cities, towns, etc. ?

Kyle

We just finished reading that chapter as a family! It was fantastic. My 8-y-o son was cheering and running around the entire time. What lovely synchronicity. As to Hobbits that have found their hidden reserve, have you ever looked at the story of the Battle of Athens (Tennessee, that is)?

While not a perfect parallel, it does show what happens when men who have found their hidden reserves can do when they find their home less free than when they left it.

Zack

Would you consider writing on the lawfulness of providing fake vaccine papers and the situations in which this would be a biblical response and then cases where it might not? I hope I’m wrong, but it looks like this could be a real practical question in short order. I like the idea, but I also struggle with producing documentation that says you fell in line with their mandate. Thanks for considering.

John

I was recently watching your sermon titled “The Sinfulness of Worry”. While I found the message to be quite encouraging, I’ve had this nagging whisper of the enemy which has neutralized the effectiveness of these sermons in my life: “If we are so ‘safe’ under God’s care and have nothing to worry about, what about Jesus, all His disciples, the apostle Paul, early Christians, Watchman Nee, Corrie ten Boom’s father and sister and the list goes on?

Sincerely,

David

Would you please consider doing a segment on this Politico article or at least it’s perspective? Most everything about it is skewed to me… The US gets blamed again, the reason the Afghan army quickly laid down arms, and much more. Thank you for considering it .

Mrs Pittman

In Galadriel and the Chimp you mentioned a conversation you once had with Dr. Greg Bahnsen. I was wondering 1) what was he like in person and 2) what do you think he would have accomplished/where would he be now if the Lord had seen fit to extend his life into 2021?

Thanks for all your work!

Joe

Re: My letter to the editor on Idols & Tyranny

I misstated the current COVID-19 survival rate as “currently has a case survival rate of 99.9998%.” The basis was not cases, but total population. So it should have read “currently has an overall survival rate of 99.9998%.” I apologize for the error.

Best regards,

JM

Thank you for taking the time to answer (many of) our questions! I am a stay-at-home mom of 4 little kids, ages 5 and under (including a newborn), with plans to home school. Private Christian school (the good kind, not the Jesus-as-ketchup kind) is a future possibility but not an option right now. I am very excited to educate our children, but am currently feeling the inadequacy of my own public school education. I think my experience was far better than most public school kids because of the presence of good books (Tolkien, Lewis, Bunyan, Augustine, ancient classics, Beowulf, etc) and other elements of high culture in our home.

I have a lot of catching up to do in the reading department. I have read a lot of Lewis, Pilgrim’s Progress, plenty of your typical “classic” reads like Austen and Bronte and Dickens, but not much of the ancient classics, church history, or great Christian works. My particular dilemma is that I am currently in what you refer to as the “sweaty eyeball” phase with four little children, as well as helping my husband start a business. I am a good manager of my time and a hard worker, and am reading and enjoying plenty of good stuff, but I just don’t have the mental wherewithal to tackle tough reads like Milton, Beowulf, Cicero, Quintillian, etc. I like hard physical and mental work, and love my current life situation, but after pouring myself into blanket forts, baking birthday cakes and bread, crocheting tractor blankets, and virtually interviewing candidates for hire in the evening, I am just spent mentally before I even make it to a book. I still end up lost if I try to plod little by little. Three lines into the Faerie Queene and I’m done.

My specific question is what reads you would recommend for someone in my situation? Are there any great works that you recommend as “highest priority” classic reads that would be more reasonable to tackle in the rip roaring chaos? Anything that might work well as an audiobook? Should I even worry about this right now?

Mallory

There are several healthcare pros I work with who are looking for a little help making some decisions about the vaccination.

On the one hand, it is clear the federal government has removed it’s brains and replaced them with squirrels crossing a busy side street. Those in the media demanding rationality to us holdouts just spent the last 18 months losing their minds, and experts demanding trust have squandered their credibility. For us bourgeois folk in the US, COVID is the latest thing in a long line of trumped up terrors that give us something to do. Existential threats in first world countries are nothing if not cures for ennui, not to mention political maneuvering. That power ain’t going to grab itself.

The hospital where I am an ER nurse is mandating the vaccine under threat of disciplinary action, which I was hoping would be loss of screen time. Turns out it is termination. The university where I am in my last year of a nurse practitioner master’s program is requiring it too. Being the sole income for my family (and I have my in-laws living with me too) the threat of termination is a heavy one. On the other hand, if there is going to be any vaccine mandating, one at a private hospital where there are patients with COVID sneezing in your eyeballs, seems fairly reasonable. I also don’t think the vaccine is unsafe, and is at least marginally effective at preventing infection, based solely on the studies thus far. 

But I want to continue to resist just because I reject the premises all this nonsense is based on—the elevation of safety to the highest ideal to which humanity can attain. Feel like maybe some of the colonists back in 1770 might have said to those dressed up in their Indian costumes, “Geez, it’s just a tax on tea! It’s not going to bankrupt you. Just pay it.” True, they could have paid it, but the point was not the amount of the tax but that the tax did not come from a legitimate authority. So I want to resist for the sake of principle.

However, being the sole income for my family (and I have my in-laws living with me too) the threat of termination makes me need to seriously consider if this is the hill I am dying on.  Anyway, I’ve been going back and forth and there are a few coworkers just on my unit that are in a similar position. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

Tim

Greetings from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Your ministry and that of your various family members has blessed my wife and me tremendously. Thank you.

We are happy members of a PCA church, despite the fact that we land much further to the right on many issues. The teaching is edifying, the pastoring is faithful and the church is growing in maturity. We are also fortunate to be a part of an excellent homeschooling community. That said, we have begun to question the wisdom of living here in New England. Our children are not being sacrificed, nor are our principles, but everything is an uphill battle. This battle has only intensified over the last year and a half. So much energy is expended to live as we ought and we often wonder if it would be wiser to live in a different part of the country. We are confident that we were planted here by God, and there has been tremendous fruit and blessing throughout our time in MA. How do we know when/if this season is coming to a close, or if we are to not grow weary of doing good here over the long haul?

Stealth PCA Reader

I have been on a Canon-Press kick as of late, devouring anything I can read or listen to that you produce, so thank you for that.

In Mere Christendom you wrote: “My point here is that the approved voices—however much they know about how—do not know anything about where or why, and as John Bunyan might say, there’s an end on it.”

I am failing to find the connection to Bunyan. Could you clarify what you meant by that? Thanks.

Gary

I just wanted to take a quick minute to thank you for your faithfulness to God’s word and to the work of Christ during a hostile time. Your courage is a bright light of encouragement to me. My hope is that emails like this are so common that they are an encouraging background noise, but my fear is that those encouraged by the true biblical leadership of yourself and a handful of others are dwindling. So I figured I’d write you and let God use it as He wills. I am a freshly medically retired army ranger from 3/75 ranger regiment out of Fort Benning, GA. I couldn’t thank God more for allowing me to be injured to the point that he ordained me to be retired when He did, I have some solid brothers that are still there and it has become a dangerous place for anybody with a true biblical worldview. I know that God has given me a unique background to better reach our veteran community in desperate need of Christ, and any other means that He desires to use me.

My main purpose in writing you was to let you know that God is using you and your ministry mightily. The other reason is that I am moving my family to the Boise area in a few months (we would hope to be out closer your way in a handful of years or so). I was wondering if you had any connection with any churches down that way?

Thank you for your time, and once again for being a faithful brother. God bless you, your family, and the work of Christ through you.

Nate

I have not encountered such a scenario, but I was just wondering how you think it should play out between a husband and a wife where the husband does not want his wife to take the vaccine for either health, political, or spiritual reasons, and the wife wants to get the vaccine. Does Jesus limit the man’s authority from placing such a prohibition upon his wife? If not, then the wife would be in sin if she goes against her husband’s prohibition to get the vaccine, right?

Not trying to trap anybody here, I am genuinely interested in better understanding the nature of the relationship between a husband and wife according to Scripture.

As always, thanks for all you do.

Rope

RE: Are We Still Talking About Vaccines? Yes.

The Personhood Alliance, a coalition of organizations that take an explicitly biblical view of personhood and ethics, has done extensive work on vaccine ethics that I think you’ll find not only edifying but a resource to share.

RIcardo

On June 22,2021 I downloaded the VAERS data, and then again August 10.

For 2021 only: as of June 22 Deaths 2309, as of August 10 Deaths 5909

That is a 156% increase in under 50 days!!

VAERS captures ONLY a fraction of adverse reactions, and there are many other severe reactions—clearly death is the big one!

Blair

I’d like to express my great enthusiasm for the person’s suggestion in this week’s letters for a Reformed study Bible for Canon Press to release. Not sure how or if something like that can be pulled off, but if you all think it’s worthwhile, a crowdfund might be a good way to get the resources for it. I think a lot of people would participate.

Sam

I am working through my views on stuff regarding Church, Eschatology, baptism. I have moved from Dispensational, to Premil, yet I value very much both Amil and Post mil positions. I heard about a view of New Covenant members who are also non elect, a presbyterian view, and not a Baptist view, so I heard. The blood of the covenant (Heb. 9), applies to the non elect New Covenant members in some way. I am wondering how this differs from a view as follows: Christ’s Oblation applies to all mankind not just the elect,

Christ’s intercession applies only to the elect

John Owen argued against this in his work, The Death of Death in eth Death of Christ. I bring this up only because I have been called 4 point Calvinist because I hold this view some what. Not unlimited atonement, but unlimited oblation. How is the Presbyterian view of the blood for the covenant being applied to the non elect different than my view of limited oblation?

Any one can answer this please, I do not know Presbyterians to ask, and my brothers who are dispensational already think I am sketchy enough as it is for my eschatological views lately. Thank you for your time.

Raymond

Thank you for your clear thinking on the many issues you engage. The one I’m writing about is qualification for Elders, and particularly that of having faithful children.

How do you see that applying to children who have been adopted, especially those of some maturity and out of difficult circumstances? How do covenant promises apply or not apply here? Should an elder be disqualified for the egregious sin of a member of his household, even if he’s only had influence for a short time?

Thank you for your ministry,

N

“aaaaaasshole.” I happened to be within earshot when that guy on the scooter called you an asshole a few weeks ago. It was not remotely a ‘scream,’ as you’ve attempted to characterize it, but rather the tried and true, old school way of calling out a blowhard charlatan in public. The date of the piece you wrote [“20% of a wave”] leaves no question that you were quite well-triggered on that beautiful summer day when a noble Moscow resident called you an asshole—with ample reason—right there on Main Street.

I’m writing because you’re wrong about those who have been and will yet be compelled to express disapproval and even hatred for you in the public realm. You feebly try to assert—because it’s the only possible way to bolster your narrative—that these are the very same people who held “No Hate” signs at some random event you attended a quarter of a century ago. They’re not the same people, because times have changed in “our little town” as a result of the choices you’ve been making. By now, those calling you out know how and whom to hate just as well as you and your wingnut associates. And they’re not the ones reliant on cherry-picking dusty bits of ancient fantasy (aka, the “Bible”) to justify their disdainful treatment of others—no, that’s all you. You always have “others” that you’re trying to demonize, and you desperately want these “others” to be sanctimonious and thus hypocritical. So you do your best—which isn’t much—to paint them that way. But the real sanctimoniousness emanates from you, because by now it’s consumed your entire being.

You disingenuously claim that one of your goals is to have people demonstrate good will toward you in public, yet what you write is transparently intended to instigate. You goad people into some sort of middle-school war of words, with the fictitious wrath of your “god” as the presumptive punishment. You know that people hate you, because you want certain people to hate you—you actively invite their hatred by heaping smug scorn on those you consider to be less than fully human (people of color, liberals, feminists, “homos,” Democrats, Moscow City government, etc.).

You’re far from being the innocent hayseed poking his head through the canvas at the county fair, and getting hit with an errant wet sponge. In reality, you’re the carnival sideshow barker, extracting tithings from your yokels for a prurient peek at the targets of your hatred. Your knuckle-dragging klan is the obvious enemy of the rest of us because you make yourselves the enemy every day—with you holding the bugle as the self-appointed field general. Your pasty, puffy rhetoric invites hatred, and it’s crystal clear that this is fully intentional. Some of your rubes are perhaps decent people, forced again and again to brush off your more extreme drivel as being somehow irrelevant to your fundamental character, requiring an enormous and tiresome benefit of the doubt. But the doubt is bubbling to the surface and it won’t be ignored much longer.

That you are a self-loathing closet-case becomes more apparent with each bit of writing you do, because everything from your keyboard is merely projection. What you hate within yourself—what tortures you to no end, acutely aware that your own “hardened hypocrisy” has become your “central virtue”—is exactly what you’re driven to call out as being damnable or at least disqualifying in others, no different than the multitude of nearly identical hack ‘evangelists’ and ‘conservative’ politicians before you. Considering your fevered proclamations regarding cross-dressing and the like, it’s surely just a matter of time before you’re exposed ‘in flagrante delicto,’ and it’ll be deliciously entertaining when your “smartly dressed [students] speaking Latin on Main Street” are titillated into employing this very phrase to describe their freshly disgraced dear leader. Perhaps your inevitable exposure as a fraud will be deemed newsworthy (on a regional scale at any rate), but we here in Moscow will merely sigh and say, “yes, of course, we knew this was coming.”

We who have no taste for your backwash-laced Kool-Aid, that is. But what about those who do have a taste for it? How must it feel for these families you call “immigrants” to uproot and move to a weird little university town on the Palouse, only to learn that their cult leader is roundly and rightfully scorned by those aware of his utter awfulness as a person in this modern world? To find he is so despised that random passersby in public—right there on Main Street!—visibly revel in the opportunity to call him an “aaaaasshole”? You can try to twist it any number of ways in an effort to save face, to redirect mockery at “others,” but enough of your idolaters will wonder what on earth they’ve gotten themselves into. Certainly enough to make a difference. They’ll think twice when the collection plate comes around or the next dead-eyed, mouth-breathing cultist runs for a position on the City Council. Because now they live surrounded by people who feel the duty to call you an “aaaaasshole” to your face, and we’re only too eager to share what we all know about you.

The real irony is that the more people you succeed in bringing to Moscow, the more interaction they’ll have with me, and the guy on the scooter, and the ever-growing majority of Muscovites who see through your convoluted charade and joyfully anticipate your inevitable downfall. Your underlings will liberate themselves when they unavoidably come to realize they’ve been following a blathering hypocrite—an “aaaasshole”—of the first order.

AO