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Conference on government as Leviathan and 'scientocracy' (--Lewis)

E

EarlyActs

Guest
https://solideogloria.org/ in about 45 mins at 830 PST. "Slaying Leviathan"

Dr. Jon West, Discovery Institute--mostly the science of intelligent design, but also a center for science and culture
Dr. Glenn Sunshine, church historian, S. Connecticut
Pastor Riley, Vancouver, WA

The opening talk by Dr. Sunshine last night was about what things 'belong to Caesar'. The process for sorting this was derived by seeing what things pre-date human government in Genesis. The list is important.

Then Sunshine, West and Riley had a dialogue that was taped for a Pugcast for future production. It explained Lewis' concept of 'scientocracy' and as West did an expose doc on the racism of science since the late 1800s (HUMAN ZOOS), there was a lot of ground to cover. Covid and gender 'science' was reduced to the harmful frauds that they should be.
 

Slaying Leviathan Conference - Saturday Morning Session ~ starts at 8:30 am​

8:30 a.m. — Announcements and Psalm Sing 9:00 a.m. — Law & Government in the Protestant Reformation – Dr. Glenn Sunshine 10:00 a.m. — Break 10:15 a.m. — Politics of Revelation and Reason – Dr. John G. West 11:15 a.m. — Morning Q & A Lunch

Broadcast started 10/29/22 7:15am (ending 10/29/22 10:30am)
 
Local pastor: "Crown Him With Many Crowns" is a masculine song. At this church the last verse is sung by men acapella; there are often tears in womens' eyes, hearing this.
 
The Augustinian 'City of God' book had the important impact of saying that government is going to be corrupt, because people are corrupt, unless there are checks and balances.
 
Dr. Sunshine, 8:30 session:
Luther's view of the Two Kingdoms (God's kingdom and necessary human government) sought to locate a cooperation of the human kingdom with God's, and said there was a way for the church to do so.

There is a 2 Kingdom theory in modern Reformed thinking that is totally against cooperation.

The Reformed non-Lutherans were Swiss. Their idea of government was city-based. Calvin found that the city officials dealing with the poor and the church's deacons were virtually the same task.

Calvin went back before the period of the kingdom of Israel and found two important features of the covenant:
1, consent of the governed: God asked Israel three times if it would keep the Law
2, the covenant model: both parties had to perform.

Locke secularized the covenant model as a contract and said that either party might fail and there would be consequences.

A Huguenot document is called THE VINDICATION OF THE COVENANT AGAINST TYRANNY and was spurred into existence when a French king slaughtered some 20K Huguenots in about 1570. It explained why there needed to be a way to resist a tyrant.

The Mayflower Compact was the same covenant model but not secularized as Locke chose to do.
 
Dr. West, 10:00 session:
Lessons from the 1800s

1, don't look for government for all the answers
Impact of evangelical Christians increased without being state churches
2, politics is a common ground and grace
Moral philosophy used to be taught in all colleges
3, defend religious liberty
defense of it can be found in Paul's letters, and patriarchs, and in Constantine even though he was using Christianity as the state religion. Later Christian emperors became intolerant
4, beware of utopianism
efforts like prohibitionism failed because they were external
5, dont' let your faith be co-opted.
Trans-mutilators have used 'love your neighbor' as justification
 

Slaying Leviathan Conference - Saturday Afternoon Session ~ starts at 12:30pm​

12:30 p.m. — Protestant Resistance Theology – Dr. Glenn Sunshine 1:30 p.m. — Break 1:45 p.m. — Scientocracy: Why Scientists Shouldn’t Govern – Dr. John G. West 2:45 p.m. — Break 3:00 p.m. — The Weapon of Prayer– Pastor C.R. Wiley 4:00 p.m. — Break 4:15 p.m. — The Task of the Church and the Means of Grace – Pastor Rich Hamlin 5:15 p.m. — Evening Q & A 5:30 p.m. — End of Conference

solideogloria.org

Evangelical Reformed Church

Soli Deo Gloria
solideogloria.org
 
Dr. Sunshine, 12:30 session:
Protestant Resistance theology

In Shakespearean England, the Puritans are the mainstream culture.
In France, Louis was a Catholic monarch. In 1580s the Huguenots resisted the monarchy and were persecuted. There was a book that inspired them THE VINDICATION OF RESISTANCE AGAINST TYRANTS.

Locke brought together several Christian political theory strands but in a secular way: contract, rights and balances. The paradox is that while this worked in Protestant countries and downstream, France went violently secular, reset all the past and descended into repression and confusion.

The Prologue of the US Declaration of Independence is essentially Locke's thought.

All constitutions require an essential loyalty to the constitution idea, not to factions. So all const writers were perplexed by the problem of factions which would only be loyal to themselves.

We need to recover contract, rights and balances and the Christian basis that supported them.
 
Pastor Wiley spoke on the need for prayer as a counter to the psyops of misinformation constantly coming at us.
 
Host pastor Hamlin spoke on the need for the church to meet in person no matter what, because the nature of Christian fellowship is to do so. A model for us is the difficulty of the 3 journeys to Jerusalem in the period of the Law.

Government's "love" for power is to be stopped. It overreaches the 2 other realms of governance found in the church's own charter: the church leadership and families. Government is to be limited to the roles mentioned by the apostles.

In 1890 Kiuper surveyed the American scene and said that the church has not resisted the over-reach of the government and the abdication of its actual roles in some cases.

The 3 speakers were then asked a few questions handed in. The final question asked of them to say what they expected in America in 20 years. Pastor Wiley said that we cannot give up but we must realize what depths might take place. 20 years ago a woman came to him for help because her educational worksite had just asked her to stop using the term 'husband'--so that the children who did not have fathers were not estranged. Now we have more aggressive assault on all things implied by that.

Both Drs. West and Sunshine said that we must realize God can be very surprising and pray for that. Finally we must not harm our hearts by expecting certain results, but we must simply do the good works expected of us in Eph 2 and let God deal with the results.

Anyone seeking further training in these matters is encouraged to contact RBIOC.org in Oregon City, OR, where there is online training for church leaders in materials that encourages resistance to "Leviathan."
 
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