" ... Ben Bernanke is like a ship captain. He ... disregards any warning signals ... sinks the ship, 1,000 passengers drown, he saves the crew in his control tower -- five officers and himself -- in a lifeboat, and then he gets a medal of bravery for saving five people. That's Wall Street, the five people -- the rest of the country is basically bankrupt. [His reappointment is] a total joke." ~Economist Marc Faber (HT: LewRockwell.com)
My family hosted an educational and fellowship gathering this afternoon and evening at our home, and we watched Sessions 4-6 of Marshall Foster's "From Terror to Triumph." In session 5, "Bravehearts and Beauties," one of the topics of discussion was the Christian "Just War Theory."
After discussing the unsuccessful 1529 siege of Vienna (which had only 16,000 soldiers) by Suleiman and his 100,000 Muslim warriors, Marshall Foster quoted John Calvin as stating, "Until the Church finds the heart and will to care for those lost souls bound in Islam with the hope of the Gospel, we shall always be at peril." At root, the conflict was (and still is) religious, and the lasting solution is peaceful Gospel conversion, not bloodshed and violence.
However, Marshall Foster went on to discuss a Christian view of "just warfare" that was devised by Augustine and others who followed after him, including Aquinas. William Einwechter gives a helpful analysis in his article, "A Christian Perspective on Just War." In summary, the following encompasses a "Statement of Just War Principles," which Mr. Einwechter's article explains in greater depth:
The war is conducted by legitimate civil authority.
The war is based on a just cause.
The war is waged with right intention.
The war is undertaken only as a last resort.
The war is fought on the basis of a reasonable chance of success.
The war has the establishment of a superior peace as its goal.
The war is waged with proper discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.
Mr. Einwechter concludes with the following statements by Dabney and Carnell, respectively:
[Dabney:] Defensive war is, then, righteous, and only defensive war. Aggressive war is wholesale robbery and murder. If the magistrate is armed with righteous power to destroy the domestic murderer, a fortiori he has the right to destroy these alien murderers, committing the crime wholesale. The “Peace Society” used to argue that all war is sinful, from the horrors of war. They are enormous. But common sense would rather argue from this the guilt of the perpetrators and the right of punishing it in some appropriate way. Who may do it if not the magistrate? But war should only be defensive. As soon as the invader is disarmed, his life should be spared; especially as individual invaders are usually private subjects of the invading sovereign, who have little option about their own acts as private soldiers. It is scarcely needful to add that the Scriptures of both Testaments expressly teach the righteousness of the patriot soldier’s profession. The Apostle, in Heb. ii [11], teaches that the valour of the defensive soldier is one of the noble fruits of religious faith, a principle he ascribes to the inworking of God himself. A moment’s reflection shows that the rightfulness of capital punishment stands or falls with the lawfulness of defensive war.
[Carnell:] Defensive warfare is simply the use of a national police force to destroy gangsterism on an international scale. The soldier is in exactly the same position as the civil officer at the scene of a bank robbery. Each must put down perversity with force. War is the last expedient to which a nation can turn when its survival is threatened by those bent on world domination and the lust for power. There is no doubt but that war is a terrible thing, almost too awful to speak of without tears in our voices. But the consequence of not matching force with force within the collective ego is infinitely less bearable. We will destroy the very securities within which men can preach and hear the Word of Life; we will betray all of the forms that guarantee our basic freedoms; and, worst of all, we will commit a sin against the very God who has ordained that Christian citizens be subject to those who have been placed in civil office as a praise to the good and a terror to the evil.
For a supplemental, thought-provoking view of Christians and warfare, see this lecture by Laurence Vance.
I recently spent some time one evening reading through Rushdoony's Sovereignty. I certainly didn't read every word or even every page, but I had previously read through the book more meticulously and had underlined/starred key points. This time around, I mostly re-read these portions and typed some of them for future reference, which are included below. Rushdoony provided much wisdom for an era that has forgotten who is sovereign.
As Samuel Adams said, in an era during which our Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, by signing "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America," so may it be said of us in our generation: "We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come."
I therefore present the following thought-provoking points of wisdom from Rushdoony:
"Totalitarianism begins with the belief that human sovereignty or state sovereignty exists" (p. 4).
"God's government of the world begins with the self-government of the Christian man" (p. 11).
"Because He [God] is the King here and now and forever more, His law-word must govern us now and always, and all things must be reordered and remade to conform to His royal word" (p. 40).
"Failure to recognize that God is the sovereign means that He is treated as a human resource, and Jesus Christ is seen as the great fire and life insurance agent" (p. 93).
"If sovereignty has its locale in man, then morality and law will to all practical intent originate in man" (p. 104).
"Christians, by affirming the sovereignty of the triune God and the universal Kingship of Jesus Christ, thereby deny the modern doctrines of sovereignty and the people" (p. 107).
"Sovereignty is an inescapable concept. If men will not have God as their sovereign, they will soon have monsters ruling over them as their man-made sovereigns" (p. 117).
"When people today speak of 'government,' they mean the state, whereas the true government begins with the self-government of the Christian man, and government means the family, church, school, our vocation, our society, and its many institutions and agencies, and only partially the state" (p. 153).
"God's law-word gives man the way to dominion, and dominion is not domination" (p. 165).
"Law once meant a religious and moral force; it now means statist power and coercion. The modern state has seen itself as the messianic savior of man, as the great culminating hope of the ages. The state, republican or democratic, Marxist or fascist, is the supposed solution to human ills and problems" (p. 189).
"The state cannot provide an ethic, because its rule rests on power, coercive power. In the modern era we are seeing again what destroyed the Middle Ages, the transfer of law and justice from God to the state. This means also the transfer of every department of human life to statist control" (p. 198).
"There is no recognition or admission that law or justice can exist above and beyond the state. Man thus is trapped in a closed world, the state" (pp. 198-199).
"Sovereignty and rule are attributes of God, and to claim the right to rule in one's own name is a claim to sovereignty or divinity" (p. 243).
"In our time, the state has declared its independence of God, and the church has withdrawn from the necessary relevance of Christian faith to the state and to every other sphere of life. Both are under the judgment of God for their course of action and their rejection of Christ's crown rights" (p. 259).
"Statist atonement is destructive, not regenerative, because the state is a false savior" (p. 275).
"As the state's incompetence grows, so too does its claims to authority, its claim to total relevance, and, in time, its claim to totalitarian power" (p. 319).
"There is no abstract justice existing in independence of God" (p. 323).
"Political conservatives seek justice in a return to constitutionalism, forgetting that what may have been good in the past was due to men's Christian character rather than a form of civil government" (p. 339).
"If we invalidate authorities on the evidence of any sin or error, we guarantee anarchy" (p. 379).
"We live totally in God's creation of total meaning, and hence of total accountability and responsibility" (p. 380).
"Man lives his life in time and history; to be indifferent to the past and the future is to be ignorant and incompetent in facing the present" (p. 391).
"The state or civil government can be a ministry of justice under God, or it can become a parasite" (p. 397).
"It [a desire to control populations genocidally] is still endemic among intellectuals, who love to believe and propagate the myth of overpopulation. It is basic to abortion, and the good liberals who advocate abortion do not tell us that a very high ratio of the murdered babies are black; this would lay bare their racism" (p. 404).
"A census now enumerates far more than a head-count; the questions asked grow more numerous and detailed. A census now is an important aspect of statist planning; its purpose is the welfare of the people as determined by the state" (p. 418).
"The nations of the world in the twentieth century have been progressively wedded to counterfeit money, i.e., to fiat currencies. Counterfeiting reality is thus basic to their way of life" (p. 431).
"The atoning work of Christ is denied by the modern state as having any relevance to its structure. The atonement, however, makes it clear that God's law and justice are ultimate and basic to creation, and all things are fallen and distorted apart from it" (p. 432).
"The error of Greco-Roman thought, reproduced by both church and state in the medieval era, was the assumption that the one sovereign must be on earth" (p. 458).
"Our Lord defines greatness in authority and power as a faithful, humble ministry under God to men" (p. 465).
"... Christianity is being disestablished and humanism established as the religion of the land" (p. 468).
"Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him" (Psalm 2:11-12).
In "typical" times, when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) releases its Quarterly Report, it's probably safe to guess that barely anyone outside the banking industry, the economics discipline, or the ranks of financial analysts, notices. However, when the FDIC releases its Second Quarter report in the near future (typically, this happens about 55 days after the end of the quarter, and today is day 56), many eyes -- domestic and foreign -- will be watching intently.
Bill Sardi wrote this on August 21: "The FDIC is required by law to maintain a reserve ratio, or balance divided by insured deposits, of 1.15 percent. It was at 0.27 percent as of March 31. It could be near zero at the current moment." He says that banks are hiding losses on their books from loan defaults and that the day of reckoning might be nigh at hand:
Now if just a small portion of American bank depositors hear that the FDIC had to tap into the US Treasury for funds, and these depositors feel their banked money is at risk and want to withdraw some of it, the mother of all bank runs could ensue. This could create the day of reckoning that many have predicted. A short banking holiday would have to be declared and who knows what happens from there – troops in the streets, issuance of new currency, martial law? Don’t think those in the Federal government haven’t made plans for such an occurrence.
The FDIC faces a spiraling number of bank failures and it may have already tapped into its line of credit at the US Treasury, which is also out of funds, facing $1.8 trillion in over-spending this year. Asian bankers are not likely to loan that much money to the U.S. this year in fear of fanning inflation. So the US Treasury and Federal Reserve must resort to printing the money, a practice that will surely diminish the purchasing power of the US dollar. Federal tax revenues are rapidly declining as more and more tax payers face job layoffs and home foreclosures.
Governments are known to distract their citizens from the realities of a collapsing economy by issuing declarations of war or other contrived emergencies. A flu pandemic would serve as a perfect cover for the sour economy, brought on by loose lending practices and other excesses that were not opposed or detected by regulators.
Ian Mathias wrote this yesterday: "The FDIC will provide their second-quarter report tomorrow, which among other things will include a look into the DIF and their infamous bank 'problem list' ... could get ugly. We’ll keep you up to speed."
Well, the FDIC has not released the report today as of 7:54 pm CDT, so we will have to wait until tomorrow or another day. I will be interested to see whether the deposit insurance fund (DIF) even has a balance by now and how the troubled bank list is shaping out.
What are the practical implications of all this? First, if the FDIC's resources have been depleted, the organization will have to tap its line of credit with the Treasury Department. This will add to the growing budget deficit and will engender less confidence within debtors abroad, notably Asia. Secondly, if bank depositors lose confidence in the system, start to "panic," and withdraw their funds, a dreaded "bank run" could lead the federal government to declare a "bank holiday" (as was done in 1933 under FDR) to suspend payments from banks to depositors. Your deposits would be frozen in such a scenario. Could this happen? It has happened. Of course it can happen again.
I'm not necessarily suggesting withdrawing all your money from your bank. You can do so if you believe this is the most prudent course of action, but I would at least recommend having a contingency plan in the event that a bank run and bank holiday should occur in the near future. The fractional reserve banking system is inherently unstable, and when statist backup plans start to fall apart, the system can easily totter on the verge of collapse.
A Gathering to Watch Parts 1-3 of Marshall Foster's "From Terror to Triumph"
Our family hosted a gathering for men and young men earlier this month to watch some of Marshall Foster's From Terror to Triumph video series. I was grateful to hear Dr. Foster speak in Boston last month at the Reformation 500 Celebration, as I am always encouraged by his vision, wisdom, and insights. His video series on the history of God's works in Western Civilization is a wonderful tool for discipleship and springboard for fruitful discussion.
Our family enjoyed hosting twelve men from our community for fellowship in Christ, rich discussion, intellectual stimulation and learning, and some delectable goodies prepared by my Mom and sisters.
Briefly, here are some notes from the lectures:
SESSION 1 - Introduction
We live in a time of fear and terror, in which men are paralyzed and have no solutions for taking action.
As Christians, we have been too concerned with one issue after another rather than with seeing a unified picture and coherent, big vision.
Studying history has numerous benefits, and Churchill said, "The farther back you look, the farther forward you can see."
Premise #1 in any study of history is that God is reconciling the world to Himself for His will to be done in time and on earth as it is in heaven and eternity.
God has clearly revealed this strategy of reconciliation in Scripture, from beginning to end, as a bottom-up, generational, exponential, internal-to-external, family plan.
Five principles of the strategy: 1) individuals must be redeemed; 2) God gives family dynasties to 1,000 generations; 3) the gates of hell will not prevail against the commissioned, victorious church; 4) legitimate civil government must be limited; 5) God's blessings flow from His people to bless all men through His common grace.
There are really only two worldviews: Christianity and obedience vs. paganism and rebellion, the latter of which has resulted in various terrors throughout history. Our enemies cannot win, but Christians and the church are to blame for lack of obedience to God's commission.
SESSION 2 - Apocalypse Now
Historians refer to "the glory that was Greece" and "the magnificence of Rome," but when we focus on the internal rather than externals, we find that Rome was the culmination of ancient paganism.
Rome was premised on the idea that mankind could produce without the one true God, and it produced greater terrors than the world had ever known.
Rome got caught up in the five deadly sins of the ancient world: 1) human sacrifice, 2) tyranny and worship of leaders, 3) enslavement or execution of enemies, 4) rejection of God's law, and 5) persecution of believers. All of these evils have been present in every culture that has rejected God and His Word.
Dr. Foster provided various examples of each "deadly sin" and concluded with a description of the downfall of Rome at the hands of Alaric I and the Visigoths. Christians at the time, including Church Fathers Ambrose and Jerome, thought the world was ending.
SESSION 3 - The End is the Beginning
An unstoppable army of liberation was quietly permeating the Roman world. Although just ordinary people, they were changing the world without money or power and in the face of tremendous opposition.
The God of heaven has a plan for history, which will inevitably come to pass. We are called to remember and understand His mighty deeds in history.
Dr. Foster recounted stories from Severus, Theodorus, Telemachus, the Theban Legion, Constantine, St. Augustine, St. Patrick, Columba, and St. Boniface, among others, whom God used mightily to advance the Kingdom and stand up against fierce opposition toward the faith.
These faithful men and others were witnesses and testimonies of Gospel transformation.
Theology is the determining factor in history. Our view of God determines our view of man, government, and living in freedom or slavery. Writings from men like Augustine show us the absolute sovereignty of God and lead us away from compromise with a power-mongering state.
The Kingdom advanced mightily between 350 and 800 A.D., and this was a powerful time of Christ working, as Lord of all, to change the course of history and lay a foundation for His Kingdom through His people.
It is easy to become pessimistic or even angry, to lose vision and hope, in our troubled times. But I appreciate Dr. Foster's emphasis on the rule and supremacy of Christ and His Kingdom as an unstoppable, conquering force in time and history. We are called to fight for Christ's crown rights, so may we be faithful to learn, understand, apply, and teach, as leaders and disciple-makers in our generation.
Lord willing, we plan to watch the remainder of the series in future gatherings, and I will try to post some more thoughts as we watch the lectures.
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