Upside Down Thinking

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2020/11/22/the-whole-world-is-turning-toward-evil/

Was all well prior to November 2020? Was Paul mistaken when he characterised this period as a present evil age? Is that only a reality when certain political parties are in power? Are the Scriptures in error when they speak of Satan as the god of this world?

From the onset the Muehlenberg commentary is riddled with pronoun confusion. Perhaps the evil is found in the 'we' that Muehlenberg employs? His 'we' confuses the Church of Christ, the citizenry of Zion with the citizenry, geography, polities, and ideologies of Babylon. That's the really troubling evil – a heretical theology dominating the Church that causes it to exist in an epistemic and ethical cloud, one that causes it to effectively compromise and lose its identity.

Did Christ misspeak when he said this age would be characterised by wars and rumours of wars? Did he not say that we shouldn't be troubled by such things? So why is Muehlenberg? The reason is because he has confused Zion with Anglo-America and the West.

For my part I would say every American president has been hostile to the faith. They have utilised lies and taught their confused citizenry (which often had a veneer of Christianity) to embrace avarice, violence, theft, and war. This is the story of American history from its colonial period to the twenty-first century. The story is no different when it comes to the British crown, let alone its empire.

During the tenure of George W Bush, I contemplated his deception and evil – the hundreds of thousands of dead and thought indeed the Church, God's people seemingly love to have it so. I have a hunch that Muehlenberg did not share my sentiments. He might have thought that a glorious period, one of great 'unity' led by a 'Christian' president. He and many like him were seriously deceived.*

Muehlenberg speaks of the remnant but he doesn't believe it. His previous statements already indicate as much. If he did, then he would know that a prevailing evil would in fact be the norm and that the Church will always be a tiny beleaguered and persecuted minority. The remnant concept is one he falls back upon when troubled but when empowered it plays no part in his thinking. He's hardly alone in this.

In fact he confuses the remnant concept with that of power. The story of Gideon for example is one of God's wisdom confounding and overthrowing the wisdom of the world. It's God being glorified in using the few to defeat the forces of the world. It's true, we as the remnant do that, but in the New Testament we learn it's not in some kind of Earthly military or political terms but in terms of spiritual warfare. And how do we win? By being led as sheep to the slaughter, by taking up the cross and counting this life and all that it has to offer as nothing.

But most importantly he fails to understand that Gideon more than anything else is a type of Christ and that imagery, analogy, and the lessons drawn from it are the primary import of that text in the Church Age.

This is the opposite of the Judaized use of Old Testament narratives that Muehlenberg is advocating. He wants Christians to wield power – to dispense with being the remnant. Like the Pharisees and Zealots, he wants a Messiah that will conquer the Romans as it were. He and so many thinkers like him are not actually interested in the Christ of the cross – let alone in His being a pattern for the Church to follow.

This is also why he confuses his juxtapositions – Communism and Christianity, as if the twentieth century Western Capitalist system somehow represented Christianity, which it did not, let alone New Testament Christianity.

He quotes 1 John 5.19 – but then adds his own caveat which is tantamount to saying, 'Hath God really said?' Muehlenberg is unwilling to accept that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one because that would also mean his precious series of Western empires is part of that lot – which it is. And so, he waters down the Scripture and sneaks in ideas that don't belong. No one will doubt that some countries and cultures are worse than others but the danger is in thinking that somehow your culture is good, even godly. It cannot be, not in this age, not in a paradigm in which the Church is a remnant. Nations under the present order are not sanctified but in the grip of the evil one, a teaching Muehlenberg (and those like him) have not only forgotten but reject.

His final wording hints at a common misrepresentation of the term 'occupy' as found in Luke 19. The concept is to abide, to keep the Kingdom charge, to shine as lights, bear witness, spread the good news, and take up the cross – to live patiently in the face of suffering as those who expect their King to return. But in the modern Dominionist context this concept has found a new kind of meaning. The teachers of that creed suggest what is meant is that Christians are to conquer the culture and 'occupy' it as an army that has seized a city and is holding it. By inserting the 'culture' angle to the equation and wrongly assuming the imperatives of the so-called Cultural Mandate, the injunction is transformed into something it is not.

The author of the article undoubtedly means well and his sincerity is not to be doubted. Nevertheless several glaring even categorical errors reign and the result is muddled thinking which runs the risk of leading the Church astray – chasing the wrong kingdom and building it by means of a non-Christian ethic. I must say in the end I was probably as disheartened by the comments as I was by the article itself.

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*His list of recommended websites is appalling. From corrupt mouthpieces like Dennis Prager to Glenn Beck, to the utterly contemptible liars at LifeSite News, he demonstrates his notions of both social conservatism and Christianity are more than a little confused.

And then we must not forget the site that published this rubbish in the American context – The Aquila Report.