The Strategic Battle Of Our Time

“Though we be active in the battle, if we are not fighting where the battle is the hottest, we are traitors to the cause.” — Martin Luther

As we negotiate 2022, travelling deeper into the third decade of the 21st century, it is imperative that we discern where the battle of our time lies.

Majoring on minors

As a master strategist, his satanic majesty desires nothing more than our majoring on minors. To divide the Church militant and dissipate her resources, he lures God’s army into diversions and mere skirmishes. Anything – even legitimate but lesser priorities – to distract redeemed man from his original dominion mandate to steward the earth and shape culture (cf. Gen 1:26-28; Mt 28:18-21). Thus Paul could claim, “So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air” (1 Cor 9:24-27). His vision was clear as to the Gospel’s claim on the total man, including his corporate life in the state (see Rom 13). Paul’s Gospel purview encompassed the reconciling of “all things” whether on earth or in heaven (Col 1:15-23). This means all man’s affairs will be reconciled to God through the Gospel in this time-space world, in history. Paul thus disciplined himself so as to hit that target. It behoves us to do likewise.

The strategic battle of our day: sovereignty

So, what is the strategic battle of our day?

It is the battle over sovereignty: for the individual and the state. This is entailed in the term the “Gospel of the Kingdom of God”, or in the vernacular, the Gospel of God’s government, proclaimed by Christ and his apostles (cf. Mt 4:23; 24:14; Acts 28:23, 31). This is not the truncated gospel of personal salvation so popular among evangelicals, although it does necessarily include it as foundational. Rather it is the proclamation of God’s government, or sovereignty, over every sphere of life with cosmic and cultural ramifications, especially for the political sphere. As Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:9-10). God’s sovereignty in Christ, who is “the ruler of kings on earth” (Rev 1:5) and indeed “the Lord of lords and the King of kings” (1 Tim 6:15; Rev 17:14; 19:16), will be victorious in history.

Without understanding the nature of this battle the Christian is ill-prepared to make a mark in the current conflict.

The back-story of human rebellion: autonomy and sovereignty

To appreciate the battle, we must first grasp the back-story of man’s rebellion against God: first, Adam, as man’s federal head, stood in judgement over God’s law-word (Gen 2–3); second, man’s reason became autonomous, presiding over revelation (Gen 3:6-7; Rom 1:21, 28; 8:7; 1 Cor 2:6-16); third, man became his own would-be god, decreeing his own reality (Gen 3:5; Jn 10:34); and fourth, man consequently became autonomous and sovereign.

Now, here’s the rub. If sin is comprehensive in its impact, which it is, man’s rebellion against God plays out in all his social, intellectual, and political arrangements. This is vividly illustrated in the tyrannical empires of pagan antiquity. Man, in hostility toward God, immediately began to centralise power under tyrants, Nimrod being the first, and to build cities with occultic ziggurats to reach heaven (Gen 10–11). This was in defiance of God’s mandate to decentralise and fill the earth (Gen 1:26-28). Despite God’s judgement on Babel, these dynamics flowed through into the empires of the ancient near east and then into the Greco-Roman world, bearing great influence on the development of Europe and the West. Despite the emergence of Christendom between AD 800–1300 from the rubble of Rome’s collapse (AD 410), the Italian Renaissance (1400’s) and the French Enlightenment (1700’s) signalled a rebellion against God and a return to pagan antiquity. However these two movements only serve to bracket a third and more powerful movement, the Reformation (1500’s) – a restoration of apostolic Christianity – which in time will completely subsume the others.

Nonetheless, the Enlightenment spawned not only rationalist philosophy but also modern political theory that dominate the modern era. Indeed, these are coming to maturity and full manifestation in the present cultural iteration. The fault-line for this occurred in the French Revolution of 1789. It was the logical extrapolation of Enlightenment philosophy, of systemic unbelief and apostasy (see Groen van Prinsterer, Unbelief and Revolution). It was the harbinger of a revolutionary era, erupting across Europe in the revolutions of 1848, continuing into the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Cultural-Marxist Revolution of Gramsci and the Frankfurt School with its long march through the Western institutions, manifest in the current culture wars. The revolutionist scheme was to replace the Christian monarchies of Europe with an atheistic secular-state. Whether this was the full-blown atheism of the French and Russian Revolutions, or the republican moderation of the English Civil War and American War of Independence, or the moderation of classical parliamentary liberalism, the idea of the state had been shifted from God to man. The only difference between these various traditions is one of degree. In the name of enlightenment utopia – of progress – these revolutionist ideologues have turned Western civilisation on its head as it plunges into the abyss of a new paganism and a reiteration of Rome’s fall. From this collapse they plan to rebuild a new world order of global governance free from the constraints of nationalistic politics. But with that fall – currently in process – the Church must be ready to rebuild and, to borrow the globalist’s own catchphrase, to “build back better”; to learn from the flaws of both the modern and Christendom eras so as to see an increase of God’s government on earth (see Isa 9:6-7). Therefore, we must understand from Scripture God’s design for man’s social relationships, for the state and for politics. Our definition of the state – and hence, our politics – can therefore belie our Christian orthodoxy. If we are orthodox in every aspect but this, we are in fact heterodox, and hence heretical.

The pagan power-state: its presupposition

So, let us briefly overview the functioning of the pagan power-state. Autonomous-man, in rebellion against God, delegates his assumed sovereignty to the state. Therefore, in every humanistic political system human autonomy is presupposed: the people are thus viewed as sovereign, not God. Under the so-called “social contract” of Enlightenment political theory they are the source of authority. The state consequently exists not by divine decree but by human decree, by virtue of the social contract: it is the people who institute the state. This is the common view of the modern era regardless of party-political distinctives, whether left or right, socialist or capitalist. The state thus serves as the corporate alter-ego of the individual autonomous-man in rebellion against God. As a would-be god, man corporately delegates his sovereignty to the state. Hence, Hegel appropriately heralds the state as god walking upon earth. Even the potentates of pagan antiquity (who possessed no doctrine of the state) consolidated their position over the people by serving as their mediator – indeed, the priest-king, the lightning rod – between the human and divine. Membership of a sacral society, unified in the person of the dictator god-king, ensured ascent through the “chain of being” to the divine. It was in him that the fusion of the cosmos ­– of man and nature, of all things – was realised and in fact divinised. Hence, Caesar Augustus was heralded as the saviour of the world, and his advent as the reconciliation of all things, as a new world-order. In this way the potentate’s political control, in fact, emanated from the people. So, in this sense the people are sovereign, not the king, nor God. Whether monarchy, republic, or democracy is immaterial, man is his own god. In the words of Protagoras, the first Humanist, “Man is his own measure”. All political persuasions share a common presupposition: human autonomy and sovereignty. They thus all function as pagan power-states, animated by a pantheistic religion of nature worship. As an aside, this worship of man and nature is the religious rootage of the modern environmental movement. As a god, man schizophrenically presumes to control the weather, and yet, suicidally legislates against productivity for the protection of nature. The pagan power-state and environmentalism are thus fellow-travellers. This was presaged by pre-war Germany, providing the roots of the modern green movement (see R. Mark Musser, Nazi Ecology: The Oak Sacrifice of the Judeo-Christian Worldview in the Holocaust).

This religious humanism therefore explains not only the demonic nature but also the messianic assertion of the secular-state throughout the 20th century: from communist to fascist to secular-humanist. These political systems have one claim in common: to be the saviour of mankind. Furthermore, replacing the providence of God, the welfare state now provides for mankind from womb to tomb, meeting every physical need. In the third decade of the 21st century the secular-humanist state has come to full maturity.

The current cultural iteration: the covid crisis

The covid-crisis has been manipulated to create a mass psychosis so that entire populations compliantly yield their remaining liberties to the messianic state for the promise of medical, social, and economic salvation. This is the open conspiracy of globalist organisations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) to which their published documents testify. Germany of the 1930’s also serves as the forerunner of today’s global psychosis: the former mindlessly scapegoated the Jews; the latter, the unvaccinated.

During the 1980’s the humanist attack was on the Christian schools movement, but today, in the name of public health under a fabricated pandemic and arbitrary decrees, it is on health-freedom and hence, contravenes biblical quarantine laws and freedom of conscience. Vaccines are mandated and lockdowns enforced in defiance of existing laws, constitutions, and international codes. Not to mention the overriding of Christ’s headship of his Church, decreeing when and how it may convene its public assemblies. The official narrative of the covid-crisis defies critical thinking, demanding a blind obedience to the state for social privileges.

Conclusion and application

So, in conclusion, what must we do? And how can we respond proactively rather than reactively? If the crisis looms larger than God and his purpose for history we’ll respond reactively, opting for crisis management only. But if our vision of God and his purpose is biblically and theologically clear we’ll respond proactively to the mandate to occupy until he comes. We’ll develop and adopt intellectual categories and strategies to rebuild the foundations of Christian civilisation.

The one non-negotiable is to reaffirm Christ’s lordship – his sovereignty – over all aspects of life from the individual to the state. This entails two things: 1) our own walk with God and the processing our own rebellion; and 2) the redefining of the state, not as a social contract, but as an institution ordained by God: “For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom 13:1). Furthermore, Paul states that kings and magistrates – i.e. the state – are “God’s servant” (Rom 13:4); and therefore must be subject to his standards for all those that would serve him.

The implications of this are foundational. It implies the notion of a secular-state instituted by autonomous-man is: 1) not biblical; 2) illegitimate; and 3) under judgement. Because rebellious man has played God by instituting his own pretended secular-state his politics are under the judgement of God. The story of history is exactly that, of the judgement of God on pagan power-states, from antiquity to the modern era, one civilisation after another. He withdraws his common grace – his hedge of protection – from a culture and hands it over to its own devices (see Rom 1:24, 26, 28). Post-Enlightenment, this is where the West has increasingly been over the last 250 years.

Man’s attempt to govern apart from God is not neutral; secularism is the political manifestation of man’s hostility to God. Consequently, when it comes to the secular-state there is nothing more intolerant than tolerance. Why? Because it is founded in the atheistic presupposition of a materialistic and immanentistic closed system beyond which there is no appeal. There is no transcendent God nor transcendent law. All is arbitrary and capricious. Like the law of the Medes and Persians the decree of the state is inviolable—it is absolute. This absolutist revolutionary spirit then imprisons and spills the blood of any who dare resist. Study the 20th century—the bloodiest century of human history through state sponsored war and genocide (see Gil Elliot, The Twentieth Century Book of the Dead; RJ Rummel, Death By Government). But two centuries earlier – in the name of fraternity, liberty, and justice – the French Revolution dissolved into a blood bath, paving the way for this revolutionary era. Atheism hates the truth and especially the Gospel. It is vehemently intolerant, persecuting to the death all dissent. In the current iteration this same spirit is exposed in the war against birth-assigned gender and traditional marriage, abortion as a human right, draconian pandemic laws, covid-inspired police brutality, social media lynch-mobs, and cancel culture. The neutrality of the secular-state and of autonomous reason are a myth. Christ’s maxim stands true: “Whoever is not with me is against me…” (Luke 11:23).

If we are to rebuild Christian civilisation we must, therefore, return to a biblical definition of the state as ordained by God. And this ordination is both by right of creation and redemption. The former, unregenerate man cannot escape and the latter, regenerate man can advance. The doctrine therefore of the Christian state and the role of kings and the civil magistrate as defenders of the faith must be recovered. This is not to deny the notion of sphere sovereignty, but it is to assert that the separation of church and state is not the separation of Christianity from the state.

With the imminent collapse of the Enlightenment political project – of the state grounded in autonomous-man – the prophetic scriptures will again be realised—kings and magistrates will again serve the Lord and his Church:

Kings shall see and arise, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you. … Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame

Isa 49: 7b, 23.