The Ignorance and Imbecility Within Christian Zionism

In the current zeitgeist, there are far too many Israelis, Diaspora Jews, and Christian Zionists who mandate such support for the Israeli government, even decry and label those who refuse to kiss that ring as antisemites (or self-hating Jews).

Discourse on “generic” Zionism must be handled with nuance, distinguishing between a belief that a people, defined by culture and ethnicity, have reasonable expectation to a homeland from that of kneejerk support for the government and/or the general conduct and attitudes of that nation, no matter what injustice, travesty and/or atrocity they commit. It should be noted that there are and have been numerous ethnicities which have been denied that ‘right.’

In the current zeitgeist, there are far too many Israelis, Diaspora Jews, and Christian Zionists who mandate such support for the Israeli government, even decry and label those who refuse to kiss that ring as antisemites (or self-hating Jews).

But even as the God of Israel has ostensibly abandoned the Hebrews/Jews not once, but twice, when they deviated too far from His ethic and ethos, this disingenuous clamor is a bit rich to anyone who is a serious Person of the Book.

The Ted Cruz–Tucker Carlson Interview

Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things . . . It doesn’t say the government of it. It says the nation of Israel. So that’s in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that.

Ted Cruz is one Christian Zionist who claims it mandatory for Christians to bless Israel, based upon his rendering of a biblical passage that Cruz could not even locate.

I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.

– Genesis 12:3

There does exist the essence of this blessing/cursing in Hebrew Scripture. But the aphorism is not directed towards Jacob/Israel, but to Abram/Abraham. Abraham is the father of many nations, including the Arabs by way of Ishmael, and the nation of faith. If, indeed, God extended this blessing/cursing beyond Abraham himself, this would require Christians to also bless all Arabs as well as Jews, even when Jews and Arabs are at loggerheads. However, it says that “all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” Honest and competent exegesis concludes, and New Testament Scripture attests, that God is speaking of Abraham individually.

I have caught and corrected a church teacher just recently, who believed that this blessing extended down to Jacob/Israel. But Jacob/Israel was not blessed directly by God.

May peoples serve you and nations bow down to you. May you be the master of your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you. May those who curse you be cursed, and those who bless you be blessed.

– Genesis 27:29

The above blessing is that from Isaac, Jacob’s father, and a blessing stolen, not a direct divine blessing. There exists yet another blessing directed towards Israel in Numbers 24:9, also spoken by a man, even a foreigner. Yet New Testament Scripture also speaks of that same generation as unworthy of entering God’s rest (Hebrews 3:7–11). Moreover, God’s blessing to the nation of Israel was conditional (Deuteronomy 28).

Simple-minded assertions, taught in Sunday School, especially in Pentecostal churches, might be short on accuracy and nuance.

Evangelicals: Israel’s Useful Idiots

Another enduring meme, especially within Charismatic circles, is that of Donald Trump as King Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BCE). The originator of this fabulism, Lance Wallnau, pointed out in God’s Chaos Candidate (2016), the coincidence that Trump would be the 45th president, corresponding with the 45th chapter of Isaiah. Hillary Clinton would have been the 45th American president had she won.

The first problem with this “prophecy” is that the numbering system is not part and parcel of the original biblical Text. Besides, Cyrus is introduced in the 44th chapter of Isaiah, not the 45th. Finally, only a handful of Wallnau’s prophecies, at best, approximate later realities, failing the biblical test of a true prophet (100%).

Moreover, America does not figure explicitly in Scripture. It is Exceptionalist narcissism to make anything in the Bible about America whatsoever.

Most ironic is the fact that Cyrus the Great is the first cosmopolitan, allowing his conquered subjects to retain their own cultural heritage, rather than be ruthlessly assimilated as had prior civilizations within Mesopotamia (i.e. Assyrians). The Greeks under Alexander merely emulated this existing system and acquired the credit.

But the extreme nativism of MAGA Trump and its prejudices represent quite the polar opposite of cosmopolitanism and its ethos.

Nevertheless, this unbiblical and historically illiterate meme persists not only in Charismatic, but strangely, even in Israeli circles, who do or should know better. By this same reasoning, there must have been a special divine anointing upon Hitler for having quickened the Zionist project which Theodor Herzl certainly did not foresee occurring within a half-century.

Jonathan S. Tobin, editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), who until recently seemed a reasonable Diaspora Jew, sponsors this idiocy, albeit with the caveat, “The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.” This has become a standard weaselly sophistry, to promote an erroneous notion which advances one’s agenda, while facilitating deniability when challenged.

But Tobin and JNS are responsible for everything that they sponsor in their ezine. When Tucker had Nick Fuentes on his broadcast, Jews did not accept any of Tucker’s disclaimers about free speech. Arguments about promoting free speech and a wider Overton Window would only be credible if JNS also gave Tucker Carlson a platform in his ezine.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Tucker Carlson: Leading Advocate for Replacement Theology?

Speaking of which, many Jews, even rabbis, have wildly extrapolated from this Ted Cruz – Tucker Carlson interview that Carlson subscribes to Replacement Theology. If Tucker Carlson subscribes to Replacement Theology, honest critical scrutiny will not find any evidence in this verbal repartee. Another Christian Zionist cited another episode as proof.

There is no chosen people. The chosen people are people who choose Jesus. That is the Christian message right there. It’s not an anti-semitic message, by the way. It’s the Christian message. It’s the core Christian message. And yet, there are many self-described representatives of the Christian faith who are daily sending a different message. And we should be very clear, whatever this is, it’s not Christianity, it is heresy. And among the many examples we could pick, we’re going to go with Lindsey Graham:

A word of warning. If a miracle pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us.

God will kill you if you don’t support Bibi Netanyahu in the aisle. That’s what he’s saying. He will pull the plug on you like a quadriplegic and intensive care. You’re going to flatline unless you support the secular abortion on demand government of Israel. That’s the Christian perspective really. That God loves some people more because of their DNA. That is not the Christian message.

That’s the opposite of the Christian message. The Christian message is universal. That’s the whole point of it. The chosen people in Christianity are those who choose Jesus. The entire New Testament is that story. And anyone who says otherwise has not read it or is lying.

Whatever dubious understandings exist within Tucker’s position, one cannot find Replacement Theology therein. For Replacement Theology explicitly replaces ethnic Jews with the largely goyim Church as True Israel. This is not what Tucker is claiming.

True Christianity insists that those, like Abraham, who put their trust in God, are ultimately the chosen, this before and after Christ. The goyim churches association with the Kingdom of God is through Abraham, not through Israel. While subscribing to a view similar to Carlson’s, no one could legitimately accuse me of subscribing to Replacement Theology.

Ambassadors for Christ, not of Israel

Christian believers are not mandated to support the state or peoples of ethnic Israel, especially when the Jews go rogue (i.e. Bernie Madoff, Harvey Weinstein, Sam Bankman-Fried, Jeffrey Epsteen), any more than Christians are mandated to support any other ethnic individual or grouping which goes rogue. This is a question of juridical impartiality, equality of treatment, based upon the same criteria of judgment.

Moreover, it is the calling of Christians to be ambassadors for the Kingdom cause of Christ. It is not the calling of Christians to be ambassadors for the cause and state of Israel, especially when the imperatives of the latter undermine the imperatives of the former. The Christian imperative aspires to see the enemies of Christ converted and saved. The Israeli imperative aspires to crush the enemies of Israeli. Hence, even the ethos and psychological dynamics are in conflict.

Eschatological Presumption

Certainly, there are promises and predictions concerning latter day Israel. However, human beings are not privy about the manner by which these shall be fulfilled.

The first great sin by Christian Zionists is that of presumption, operating upon the promises and predictions, which shall be fulfilled at the inscrutable level of God’s Sovereignty in His good time, while neglecting, even violating, the commanded counsels at the immanent and scrutable level of God’s Sovereignty. Many Christian Zionists justify acts by Israel (and become effectively complicit) which they would never tolerate if committed by other nation. Hereby, Christian Zionists become partial and unjust.

Many Diasporic Jews complain of being lumped together with the actions of Netanyahu’s Israel, objecting to the principle of collective guilt when it is applied to them, but actively supporting that principle when conducted against the Gazans. Christian Zionists ride along such hypocrisy, even though Scriptures, to whom they claim inerrant authority, repeatedly disabuses the principle of collective guilt (although not the principle of collective consequence).

Summary

As noted from the start of this essay, there is nothing amiss in Christians believing that the Jews have a reasonable expectation to their own homeland, as do all ethnicities. The noetic errors and moral faults lie in that which exceeds this basic belief.

The greatest of noetic errors lies in conflating Abram/Abraham and Jacob/Israel which affects both statements concerning blessing/cursing as well as land claims.

Moral faults include the presumption that one understands the inscrutable Sovereign Will of God (re: prophecy) and acting upon that presumptive belief while neglecting, even violating, the commanded Will of God. Moreover, the imperatives of the Kingdom of Christ are usually contrary to that of earthly Israel, lending to divided loyalties, sensibilities, and even worldliness.

There currently exists a concerted effort by Jews to vilify and sideline Tucker Carlson (i.e. charges of antisemitism), who questions the existing status quo in America vis-à-vis Israel and the influence of Jews over American policy and interests. This is not a planned conspiracy. There is perceived need by Jews to disparage Tucker’s reputation and denigrate his influence. For Tucker, like an increasing number of goyim in America, wish to reassert national self-interests, which is perceived to have been redirected towards Israeli and Jewish imperatives. There appears to be no ethical boundaries in this effort.

If the patterns of Diasporic history have not been abrogated, the Jews shall invariably fail. A rinse and repeat cycle of Jewish migration has consistently and eventually led to economic resentments by the commons and concerns by the elites in the host country that the Jews’ have too much influence (Maîtres Chez Nous). Hanna Arendt mentioned this social dynamic in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951). The impetus behind Herzl’s Zionism was in recognition that the goyim would never allow European Jews to rise to the very top of their adopted homelands.

Many Christian Zionists have joined in this Jewish effort, unjustly slandering Tucker, such as the claim that Tucker subscribes to Replacement Theology without supplying incontrovertible proof. Herein is an example of the presumption and divided loyalties which leads to committing evil for a supposed “good cause.”

I am not the greatest of fans of Tucker Carlson for reasons other than the Jewish/Israeli question. That does not, however, justify rhetorical efforts to unjustly vilify Tucker. We ought not to desire to have the name of God blasphemed among the nations because of us (Romans 2:24). Leave the slandering for the Jews.

When the First Premise Is Meretricious

One of a league of failures in the discipline of contemporary economics is the failure to adjust true GDP of any nation by rationalizing the effects of fiscal deficits and lascivious monetary policy (or vice versa).

In an otherwise reasonable op-ed in the Financial Post regarding the current K-shaped economy, especially in the United States, an economist at some local credit union in Alberta, begins the statement, “the U.S. economy has been growing strongly since the pandemic, outpacing most developed economies.”

Certainly, at an apparent level, GDP in the U.S., as measured by aggregate demand, (not production), has outperformed most others. However, this is partly achieved by spiking fiscal deficits, and hence additional demand, to percentage levels which match the Great Depression. The deliberate purpose in the Great Depression was as means to spike aggregate demand (and break the viscious debt-deflationary cycle of the early 1930s). In this it largely succeeded, albeit at a cost. There is always a cost. So why would this not be the rationale and consequence now?

One of a league of failures in the discipline of contemporary economics is the failure to adjust true GDP of any nation by rationalizing the effects of fiscal deficits and lascivious monetary policy (or vice versa). What would be the true GDP if these were accounted for?

This is by no means an easy calculation, especially since the multiplier effect of such stimuli can be all over the map. Neverthless, in that the U.S. has been systemically priming their economy, far above the economies of their peers, it puts lie to the visage of relative economic outperformance.

A Major Cause of Economic Disparity and Class Schism

Moreover, the development of this so-called K-economy is many decades old. While caused by the ever increasing power and leverage that corporatists have, relative to labor, this increasing economic disparity has been abetted, perhaps deliberately so, by government and central banker policies of extreme fiscal deficits and loose money respectively.

Logically, such policies are inflationary by nature. However, in light of the economic leverage that corporatists have had over labor, wage rates have remained repressed. Global competition kept prices down, at least until COVID-19.

Nevertheless, that added inflationary air must go somewhere, which it did, namely into assets. Indeed, assuming that governments and central bankers would continue the madness of their loose policies, I anticipated back in 2011/2 (and told private individuals) that this very thing would produce a mother-of-all-asset bubbles.

My great irritation back in 2011/2 is that this lasciviousness would logically enrich the older generations at the expense of my children’s and grandchildren’s generations. Hence, while the present income of my youngest son and wife is equivalent in real terms to that of myself and wife back in 1991, the ability to purchase a home, the so-called North American Dream, is so beyond reasonable possibility that my son has lost even the aspiration and ambition to own one.

A one-bedroom apartment (low rise) set me back $140/month back in 1975. My weekly income was $140/week. The rent to income ratio was 23%. The ratio between that very same apartment, fifty years later, and the same job, albeit with better qualifications, is twice that now. Rentiers, not producers, are the chief beneficiaries of the present economy.

Whether deliberate or not, my father’s and my own generation have engaged in many facets of intergenerational theft. The scornful return, “OK Boomer,” is not without merit.

The Folly of Assassinating Ali Hosseini Khamenei

One of the subthemes in Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971) was the possibility, even likelihood, that in toppling one abhorrent regime, one might spawn something even more abhorrent. In taking out the 86-year-old Supreme Leader, Iran, which despite Israeli and American propaganda, had become a relatively sclerotic regime, weakened by sanctions, geopolitical isolation, internal divisions, and decline of unifying ideological fervor.

An Iranian academic, some of whose students rose to senior government positions in Tehran, once told me that at the revolution’s beginning, the regime consisted of “80 percent indoctrinated believers—largely ignorant of global realities—and 20 percent charlatans and chameleons.” By Khamenei’s final years, he said, the ratio had inverted: 20 percent believers, 80 percent opportunists who flocked around officials for wealth and privilege.

Khamenei was 86 years old. He was enfeebled and about to die anyhow. One cannot emphasize this trite fact enough. What Trump’s America and Netanhuyu’s Israel has accomplished for this Islamic clergyman is his greatest wet dream. Having already lived a full life and then dying a martyr (with promises of 72 virgins), his death now constitutes a rallying cry in the immediate and ensures him a legacy long lasting.

WHAT MAROONS! WHAT BUFFOONS!

Falling into a Pit of Their Own Making

During the 1920s, the Weimar Republic attempted to repress the NSDAP (a.k.a. Nazis) through hate speech laws, often deployed to close an indeterminate number of Nazi newspapers. Goebbels was jailed for three weeks for insulting a Jewish police official in Berlin.

The problem with such machinations is that they are endemically contrary of the spirit of free civic polities and hence prove none too effective, especially in light of sentiments favoring right-wing factions by those in the police and military.

But having established the precedent, if and when those who have been repressed acquire power, especially if they are authoritarian in nature, those powers of repression will be deployed most ruthlessly. Democratic factions, who complained about such repression when conducted against themselves, were rightfully scorned in 1933.

In like manner, in establishing the precedent and new standard of assassinating heads of state and other high officials of adversarial powers, Trump and Netanhayu become themselves legitimate targets, even within their own country, Netanhayu especially since he has been found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

Validating and Perpetuating the Narrative of Jewish Control Over America

There already exists increasing recognition that the Israeli government and Jews in America have outsized influence on American policy (“the AIPIC lobby”). Whenever that perception has occurred or has been perceived to have occurred throughout history (i.e. Weimar Republic, Seneca the Younger), a Maîtres Chez Nous (re: “Masters of Our Own House”) counterreaction ensues, much to the denigration or worse for the Diaspora.  

Jews constitute 2.4% of the American population. Yet they constitute 36 of 535 members of Congress (7%) and 10 of 100 Senators (10%). Jews dominate Hollywood, journalism, and social media corporations. Jews have often betrayed the arrogance of their outsized influence.

But there has been a bottom-up groundswell of resentment towards the outsized influence of these Jewish “aliens,” first from the Left and now from the Right, as America becomes involved reckless ventures which might regional benefit the nation of Israel but has dubious benefit for Americans, and may, indeed, prove detrimental to America.

A consistent pattern throughout Diaspora history is that Jews ingratiate themselves to the elites of the host country in which they dwell, hoping that these elites will protect them from the masses. However, whenever the groundswell of antipathy from the commons threatens the survival of these elites, Jews are hung out to dry (Hanna Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism).

This latest venture into Iran has no honest and coherent rationale, no coherent criteria for success, and no exit strategy. Indeed, the arrogance of Donald Trump deems offering any explication to his own people unnecessary for this very unpopular war from the get go.

There exists a consistent pattern in America wherein support for military adventures, which are not the result of threats to the homeland, declines with the passage of time. It explains the stereotypical quickie “get in, get out” nature of most American military adventures. The world knowing this, and a culture given to martyrdom, it behooves the Iranians to rag this current war for some time. As the Taliban demonstrated, patience triumphs over “shock and awe.”

Should this latest military adventure rag on, and American body bags pile up, American treasure be squandered, and the genuine concerns of Americans continue to be neglected, the ensuing resentment and antipathy just might be redirected towards Netanyahu’s Israel and the Fifth Column of Jews dwelling among True American Patriots, especially since there is not even an attempt this time to distinguish between American from Israeli interests. I can imagine a future moment when Americans ask, “who did this to us?”

Pushing Iran Ever Closer to the Russian Orbit

An alliance of very weak sorts already exists between the Iran and Russia. Putin’s Russia did not exactly risk its neck out for Iran in the June 2025 war. And an Iranian theocracy is not likely desirous to come under the “Christian Orthodox” orbit.

However, what would happen if the Iranian military (IRGC) became dominant (or more dominant), while continuing to be supportive of Shiite Islam, which is obviously necessary in that cultural setting. Being constantly denigrated by economic actions, and facing constant, sometimes even unprovoked, foreign incursions like the current one, will not necessity and Realpolitik override existing clergy objections to closer ties with Russia after Putin?

It must be recalled that in 1953, the CIA executed a coup against a legitimate democratic government in Iran in favor of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in order to protect mostly British oil interests from nationalization efforts. This foreign adventure gave impetus to the Iranian Revolution of 1978.

Americans might have twittered memories. The rest of the world does not. The notion that any regime change in Iran would result in the recovery of love for the Americans (or for western-style democratic capitalism) is febrile self-delusion or blatant lie to fool a people who can nowadays be fooled all of the time.

One of the self-delusions, abetted by American cultural ignorance, is that there is widespread antipathy against the existing theocratic regime. No one can say that with any certainty. And the appearance of much protest and opposition, the type of protest and opposition which actually might sacrifice lives, liberties, and livelihoods in support of an overthrow, suffers from the mistake of only considering urban populations. In Iran, as elsewhere, the political base of theocratic and conservative regimes lie in the rural towns, villages, and farmlands. The wet dreams of Trump’s America and Netanyahu’s Israel just might find that replacing a feeble supreme leader ruling over a sclerotic regime with a competent and aggressive military junta, more pliable to a thicker alliance with the Russians, and a population even more and justly antipathetic towards the Americans, a far worse outcome than presently exists. Even some Israelis demonstrate concern for this possibility.

International Contempt and Hatred towards America and Israel

In 1979, when I backpacked around the Mediterranean, I kept finding myself having, or thinking that I had to, defend America against the aspersions of largely north-western Europeans. This was after the folly of the Viet Nam War, which was entered into through duplicitous pretenses and upon false rationales. (At least, there were rationales.)

There are no pretenses and no genuine rationales this time. It is raw 19th century imperialism in order to make a proud heritage and people bow to a lawless Narcissist-in-Chief in an already unpopular war in America, entered into by defying the Original Meaning of the American Constitution and blatantly ignoring International Law (ius gentium).

How long can one anticipate the overhang of contempt and detestation towards America and Americans ensuing this unprovoked military vanity? Any lifelong student of world history can anticipate the accelerating decline of American power and influence, even within the decade. For history emphatically demonstrates that on the coattails of the loss of moral authority and the legitimacy to govern, a decline and/or loss of power ensues.

Underneath the ersatz golden glitter of Trump’s America is a crud of moral, social, and economic rot, of an economy buttressed by annual deficits which rival those of the Great Depression, and shakily supported by the wealth effect from inordinately and irrationally expensive equity markets; of extreme economic disparities which overflow into civic and political inequality and two-tier justice which precursors civic tumult, even civic conflagration, as has happened often before.

Even before Trump, the weaponization of Reserved Currency status in 2022 has quickened the demise of that status which had given America exorbitant privilege. If the Chinese and Europeans joined hands, they could plausibly replace the U.S. dollar as Reserved Currency.

And Trump has done everything in his power to provoke the Europeans and their politicos out of their complacent subservience to their once American patrons. As much as I like Mark Carney’s revival of ‘non-aligned nations’ notion in his Davos speech, cynical realism suspects that Trump’s animosities will only project another (latent) superpower into an already unstable geopolitical situation, a superpower which will be at times hostile to America, one which will be eventually surpass America in the West, especially after the latter loses Reserved Currency status and it must address the many facets of its decadence.

A Hole in the Protestant Evangelical Gospel

In Practicing the Way, Comer says, “And through apprenticeship to Jesus, we can enter into this kingdom and into the inner life of God himself.” But even if we were to adopt this approach—doing all the things Jesus said—that is not salvific. Jesus taught that a person enters the kingdom through the new birth, which is an entirely supernatural gift of grace (John 3:1–8).

In attempting to refute one heresy in a recent op-ed in Christianity Today, Michael Horton, a typical representative of modern Reformed Calvinism, introduces two.

The first of these heresies is the gospel by regeneration, rather than the gospel through faith. For while it is absolutely true that regeneration is necessarily involved in the conversion of human beings to trust upon Christ Jesus, regeneration occurs at the transcendent level of God’s Sovereignty to which human creatures are not directly privy. Knowledge of our regeneration is hinted in “The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8, BSB).

It is largely indirect knowledge through artifactual evidence. Being in the autumn of my life, I now perceive in hindsight how God choreographed my life. John Calvin also came to appreciate later in life that the Spirit’s intervention did not occur at or near the moment of his conversion. Rather, God had been at work in the many years preceding, “demolish[ing] arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

But through an extra-biblical conclusion via human reasoning of the existence of an Order of Salvation (ordo salutis) in the third chapter of John, Reformed and Calvinistic circles conceive that the first part of the chapter temporally and logically precedes that which comes later, namely the necessity of faith upon Christ

But literary precedence is no necessary indication of cause and effect. It is written of Esau and Isaac, “the older will serve the younger” (Romans 9:12).

This is not to say that ‘faith precedes regeneration,’ any more than the Reformed declaration ‘regeneration precedes faith.’ It is to insist that at the immanent level of God’s Sovereignty, the one to which God interoperates with humanity, the Gospel in its most reductionist form is explicitly expressed by the God of Scripture as “believe upon (epi) the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes into (eis) Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes into Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed into the name of God’s one and only Son.

– John 3:15b–18

Reformed and Calvinistic circles have long been guilty of conflating the transcendent and immanent levels of God’s sovereignty, often operating presumptively at the level of God’s Sovereignty, to which no man is directly privy, while neglecting the immanent level.

Hence, scant mention about trusting upon Christ is made by Horton, this being the instrumental vehicle by which a human being is justified and saved, (these two elements of Christian soteriology not being the same). For even as divine election is true at the transcendent level, we are informed about such realities, not to operate upon them.

The gospel of Regeneration

This improper overemphasis on the transcendent has facilitated, not necessarily caused, a false gospel. The fundamental problem with “‘the plan of salvation’ tracts,” which Horton mentions, is not merely reductionism and oversimplification. These tracts are heretical.

These tracts call for God in Christ to enter a person’s heart (re: regeneration) without satisfying the terms by which God can justly do so, namely for a person to trust and rely upon the freely given lifeblood sacrifice of Christ Jesus as a proper substitute that scrupulously satisfies all the attributes and principles of an exact and exacting divine and natural justice.

For an amnesty scheme was established by the Atonement of Christ upon which a person must lean in order to place him- or herself in a proper juridical status before God, who proclaims “righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne” (Psalm 97:2, 89:14, NKJV). The gospel of “born-againness,” whose saplings are traceable as far back as the First Great Awakening, conflates the transcendental and the immanent levels of God’s sovereignty. The “gospel of regeneration” diminishes, denigrates, even neglects the scandal of the Cross. 

Even if this was not the deliberate intent of Reformed/Calvinistic circles, it is logical for the authors of such tracts to advocate the “gospel of “born-againness” if, indeed, “regeneration precedes faith.” But neither can faith logically or temporally precede regeneration because of anthropological inability, nor can regeneration logically or temporally precede faith due to the due process principles of justice. For God cannot grant the Sentence of life eternal, which is irrevocable, before the moral/juridical authority (exousian) to do so, which requires the conscious consent of a potential convert to accept the terms of the amnesty scheme provided from out of the Atonement of Christ Jesus. A convert enters into a Covenant, which, by definition, is a form of agreement, which, by definitional nature, requires consent.

But to all who did receive (elabon) Him, to those who believed into (eis) His name, He gave the right (exousian) to become children of God.

– John 1:12

The receiving of Christ Jesus is not passive. The Greek verb is in active voice, (the one doing, rather than it being done to him/her). It speaks of aggressively grasping Christ through trusting upon Him by which one has juridical right and authority to become a child of God.

This understanding produces a conundrum for Reformed/Calvinistic circles, who insist that regeneration must ontologically precede faith due to the total inability of the natural man to trust upon Christ. There is a complicated solution to this riddle, which is beyond the scope of this essay. The short answer is that REGENERATION IS FAITH, the former an operation at the transcendent level of God’s sovereignty, while the latter the immanent manifestation. This conception is much easier for a former IT professional to get his head around. The complementarity of light as either particle or wave, but which cannot be perceived concurrently in both manners, is one didactic help. The Mind–Brain Identity Theory, although erroneous, is another. Neither does regeneration precede faith nor faith precede regeneration, resolving the endemic ontological-juridical conundrum.

Nevertheless, the call of this heretical gospel of regeneration to ‘invite Christ into our hearts,’ instead of ‘trusting upon Christ,’ not merely in the talisman of His lifeblood, but in His entirety, is rooted in Reformed/Calvinistic misunderstanding.

Conflating Justification With Salvation

Salvation in all its limitless magnitude is secured, so far as human responsibility is concerned, by believing on Christ as Savior. To this one requirement no other obligation may be added without violence to the Scriptures and total disruption of the essential doctrine of salvation by grace alone.1

The second serious soteriological heresy, one with formal 20th century origins via Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871–1952), but one which has bedeviled Protestant streams from its 16th century inception, is in truncating (a.k.a. cutting short) the terms of Salvation. That truncation is rooted in conflating Justification, the formal juridical basis underlying a believer’s salvation, and Salvation, which is its ontological reality.

It’s interesting that you [Trevin Wax] shift from justification to salvation there because, though those aren’t the same thing…we have to train ourselves to use words accurately . . . The word “salvation” and the word “justification” are not interchangeable.

In conflating Salvation with Justification, as many Protestant Evangelicals do, such are susceptible to believe that one is saved, merely by trusting upon the talisman of the lifeblood of Christ Jesus. Some venture that because one “sincerely” assented to these terms but once, perhaps in a one-night Altar Call hookup, one is thereby forever wed to Christ, regardless of how unfaithful the whore one thereafter acts.

Much more then, being now (nyn) justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

– Romans 5:9 (KJV)

Scripture attests to this semantic distinction. For that which has occurred in past and is now present (re: justification) cannot semantically be the same as that which will be (re: salvation). From the perspective of God’s transcendent sovereignty, Justification is premised upon His moral/legal authority (exousian), Salvation upon His omnipotent power (dunamis).

The Terms of Justification

Because God is formally committed to govern the cosmos with moral authority (Latin: auctoritas), buttressed with hierarchical authority and omnipotent power, all that He does must conform with the attributes and principles of righteousness and justice. (There exist ‘things morally indifferent,’ which permit latitude of action: Francis Schaeffer’s ‘freedom within form.’)

God as the Sovereign and Judge of the cosmos cannot therefore exonerate moral criminals (a.k.a. sinners) without first scrupulously satisfying the attributes and principles of Justice. (Justice, like righteousness, ontologically flows from His being yet remains epistemologically distinct from that being.) The Sovereign of the cosmos is not akin to a capricious Roman Caesar with a Nixonian complex,2 whereby “the sovereign is not bound by the laws” (Ulpian), even those of his own making. God would otherwise come under His own condemnation (Matthew 23:3, 7:2; Romans 2:1, 3, 19–21). Moreover, if the Sovereign of the cosmos is willing to bend his principles in the here and now, even if for benevolent cause, what subject of this Sovereign could reasonably trust that such a capricious despot might not bend his principles in future, whenever the whim overcomes him?

Hence, God cannot reasonably and justly grant any moral criminal amnesty apart from scrupulously satisfying all the terms of an exact and exacting Justice. If God, for instance, forgave a person with one sin to his/her name, why not a person with two sins. And if with two sins, why not three sins, and so forth in infinite regress. The divining line between the sheep and the goats would become arbitrary and capricious. Hence, God devised a just means by which moral criminals could be exonerated through exploiting the infinite ontological value of Christ Jesus, the God-man, as a proper legal substitute for the mass of humanity who come to believe upon Him, including and especially the terms of His amnesty scheme. How the Atonement of Christ scrupulously and comprehensively satisfies the exact and exacting attributes and principles of Justice is beyond the scope of this essay. But in short, under the juridical principles governing substitution:

  1. The substitute must be of like kind as that which is substituted, hence the incarnation of Christ in human form. (Hebrews 2:14–17)
  2. The substitute must be without blemish, without any sin. (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15)
  3. Under penal justice, the substitute must suffer the same qualitative kind of sentence as that which is substituted. In biblical terms, death is defined as full severance from the Godhead.
  4. The ontological value of the substitute must be equal or exceed the (collective) ontological value of that which the substitute substitutes.
  5. For conscious beings, the substitute must give free consent to act as that substitute (John 10:17–18). It is injustice for a judge to order an innocent party to recompense for the crimes or misdemeanors of another. However, there is no injustice if that innocent party freely offers to compensate (and, just as critically, the moral criminal accepts the terms of that free offer).

The Gospel as it pertains to Justification, which grants the formal juridical basis for a believer’s salvation, rests upon the ontological merits of Christ alone. Nothing can be added or subtracted from Christ alone. Under the strict juridical logic of Justice, if one adds conditions to the terms of Justification, every condition must be perfectly satisfied. No mortal can perfectly satisfy every condition that is dependent upon him or her. Moreover, in adding any condition to Christ alone, one is inadvertently suggesting that the infinite ontological worth of Christ is insufficient. Justification is premised upon the lifeblood of Christ alone. (“The life is in the blood,” Leviticus 17:11).

The Terms of Salvation

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but to all who crave His appearing.

– 2 Timothy 4:6–8

However, just as Justification is not semantically the same as Salvation, nor are their respective terms. For salvation in this life involves a trust upon Christ Jesus which endures to the end of life through many dangers, toils, and snares. (“But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved,” Matthew 24:13) For while God preserves those whom He has elected at the transcendent level of His sovereignty, it is incumbent upon a person who would be saved to premise or base his/her life and operate his/her decisions and actions upon the tenets of that which they subscribe, the philosophical definition of faith as provided by James 2:14–26.

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling (the immanent). For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose (the transcendent).

– Philippians 2:12b–13

For it is not the person who trusts and relies upon the talisman of Christ Jesus’s lifeblood in His atonement who shall be justified, but the one “who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26), in His completeness, upon His person, assertions, command counsels, and promises. For while the lifeblood of Christ Jesus suffices, in itself, to scrupulously and completely satisfy the exact and exacting Justice of God, granting formal juridical standing before the Divine Judge and Sovereign, these other elements in Christ serve as instrumental means by which one’s faith endures to the end, even faith in the talisman of Christ’s lifeblood. Herein, one does not need to be perfect. One only needs to retain a genuine, unwayward, and discernible trust upon Christ, even if tattered and faint. It is the existence of the conduit of trust that matters, not its thickness.

Hence, Michael Horton is wrong, and heretically so, when he insists that “Discipleship is not the gospel. It is the fruit of the gospel. For discipleship is part and parcel of the Gospel.

Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them: He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid his foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the torrent crashed against that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears My words and does not act on them is like a man who built his house on ground without a foundation. The torrent crashed against that house, and immediately it fell—and great was its destruction!”

– Luke 6:46–49. Cf. Matthew 7:24–27.

For God in Christ is a metaethical consequentialist. The ethical and prudential good are deliberately intended to produce the ontological good in the context of the telos of each covenant. (The Old Mosaic Covenant was never intended as a way to personal salvation via works or retained membership (a.k.a. covenantal nomism). That covenant was a social covenant, purposed for the survival and thriving of terrestrial community (Deuteronomy 4:5–8).

The deliberate unwillingness to abide by the full counsel of God insidiously enervates and imperils any faith that exists. Faithful abidance insidiously strengthens and solidifies any faith that exists. But unlike the juridical “mechanics” undergirding Justification, this is a psychological dynamic. For as one, who has walked the path to the Celestial City, has observed, violation of even the most peripheral of biblical counsels has an insidious habit of redirecting its efforts towards undermining one’s faith in the essentials of the Faith (re: Yeast Principle: Galatians 5:9; 1 Corinthians 5:6; Matthew 16:6, 12).

So, while the ethos of obligation is not directly imposed under the New Covenant, there is a way by which abidance is “naturally” enforced.

The Pilgrim’s Progress

This understanding is not new theology. While I have yet to find a formal treatise which makes this distinction and dynamic between Justification and Salvation, it is implicit within John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).

HHumanity is, by virtue of its sin and injustice, exiles from Eden, the land of Milk and Honey, or the Kingdom of God. This expulsion is not merely a matter of justice, but also of prudence. Allowing unrepentant moral criminals to reside within a pristine environment allows that pristine environment to be corrupted and eventually destroyed.

The atonement of Christ provides God with a justamnesty scheme allowing exiles the legal authority to immigrate to Kingdom of God. Justification, the formal juridical basis of Salvation, accomplished through the atonement of Christ, is appropriated from out of faith. Yet, that convert must still endeavour to come to that Kingdom. Mere assent hardly brings the immigrant to Ellis Island, so to speak.

Hence, an exile begins an arduous and perilous journey to that Promised Land, just as Bunyan’s Pilgrim sets his course on the narrow and winding path to the Celestial City. Herein, Justification by Faith serves as the Wicket-gate. It becomes the badge of legal authority which grants legal entry into the Kingdom.

CHRISTIAN: Then why did you not enter at the Wicket-gate which is located at the beginning of this way? Don’t you know that it has been written, “He who does not enter in by the door, but climbs up some other way, that same person is a thief and a robber?”3

However, if one lacks a committed faith in Christ in the whole of His being, in His assertions, counsels, and promises, one is liable to turn back (apostasy), go off course (heresy), fall into one of the many traps (persistent sin), or become distracted along the way (re: Vanity Fair). One shall never reach the gates of that Celestial City and may even lose the badge of legal authority on the way. In all who fall away, there exists some critical deficiency in their faith.

This is not “works righteousness” nor “Lord Salvation.” One is neither justified due to works. Justification requires resting upon the finished work of Christ alone. Yet, Salvation is instrumentally accomplished through one’s works and their natural cause-and-effect ontological consequences, in order for one’s faith to endure unto the end, including keeping practical faith in Christ’s atonement for one’s Justification.

Reformed Soteriology

Horton’s understanding, typical of that within Reformed and Calvinistic circles, assumes that once one genuinely accepts the Terms of Justification, a manifestation of regeneration or born-again-ness, that convert will just magically follow the example of Jesus as the fruit of the Gospel. But there is no rational basis or dynamic by which that convert must follow the example of Jesus under Reformed/Calvinistic soteriology. Herein, there is and has long been a hole in the Protestant Gospel.

Or do such folks think that that God, the wise Sovereign of the cosmos, would leave Himself exposed to a lawless grace?

The best Protestant Evangelical minds acknowledge that this riddle remains inadequately explained.

I would want MacArthur to go deeper in his analysis of the nature of saving faith until he discover not only that it must yield obedience, but why it must…The reason that is important is that we will guard best against the accusation of salvation by works if we can show that something in the nature of faith itself produces obedience, rather than merely saying that it is always somehow accompanied by obedience.

Rather than the convert willfully pursuing holiness and peace, without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14), the Reformed/Calvinistic acolyte is liable to passively await upon some stirring within him- or herself in order to do that which is biblically incumbent. Herein, that acolyte is in soteriological peril. For it will be found that such a convert’s faith, if not corrected, does not effectively and ultimately rest upon the God of Scripture, but upon the priestly mediator of his- or her psyche.

This is not some straw man assertion from one who belongs to another theological stream. It emerges from one whose heritage was Reformed Baptist, which is at the intersection of European Protestantism and American Evangelicalism.

This misplaced trust is best manifested by the poor sods who are presented the false “gospel of born-again-ness” in which that acolyte “invites Christ into his heart.” For not only does God, who is scrupulously committed to righteousness and justice, have no juridical authority to grant the Sentence of eternal life via regeneration prior to the Verdict of “justified.”

“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”4

That poor sod finds that his/his epiphanic moment with the (Neoplatonist) One does not seem to take. That person may try and try and try as J.D. Greear did. More often, such “converts” will abandon a “gospel” that has proven to fail, often with derisive contempt, sometimes with committed hatred for having caused psychospiritual pain and waste of time.

Copyright © 2026 John T. Hutchinson

  1. Lewis Sperry Chafer, “The Terms of Salvation”, Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 108, Oct-Dec 1950, p.389. ↩︎
  2. Richard Nixon, Nixon/Frost Interviews, Part 3, May 19, 1977, edited by David Frost, Monarch Bay, California: David Paradine Productions, 1977. “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” ↩︎
  3. John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678; [REPRINT] Buffalo, NY: Geo. H. Derby, 1853, Chapter 11. ↩︎
  4. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, London: MacMillan, 1865, Ch. 7. ↩︎

The Precious Metal Market Crash of January 2026

For it was the WGC report on Thursday, not Trump’s choice of Fed Chairman on Friday which provoked the crash in gold (8.5%) and silver market (25.5%) markets.

By the 19th century, a “Common Sense” movement had arisen in America, wherein practical reason and everyday common sense sufficed to understand the world. Whatever its merits, common sense is certainly in short supply in the markets nowadays. A quip by a corporate or civic authority or a market “expert,” and “investors” are off to the races and on rarer occasions, heading for the exits.

The precious metal market has defied common sense for many months. Beyond fundamentals, this market, especially silver, has behaved in the classic pattern of a manic market top. Silver prices increased, usually on the upside, by two to three percent daily in the last months of 2025 and even greater in the last month. For this reason, the CME thrice raised its margin requirements in the last month. Moreover, the closing daily price of silver rose from around $70 USD per ounce in the beginning of January to $115 USD just two days ago.

Grady, you don’t have special powers. You don’t have the ability to look at a guy and “just know” because you’re a scout with special powers. I’ve watched you sit at kitchen tables for years and tell the parents of a 17 year old kid, “Trust me, when I know, I know, and when it comes to your son, I know” and you don’t.

– Moneyball (2011)

Scornful mirth arises when, on the eve of a crash, “experts” at big financial institutions, such as the Bank of Montreal or the Bank of America or Joseph Cavatoni, senior market strategist at the World Gold Council (WGC), promise the sky’s the limit. Not all institutional and self-anointed experts engage in shill boosterism.

It is especially irksome when the representative from the WGC promotes these claims on the very day that his organization publishes its annual year-end Gold Demand Trends report. For it was the WGC report on Thursday, not Trump’s choice of Fed Chairman on Friday which provoked the crash in gold (8.5%) and silver market (25.5%) markets. These were down as much as 12% and 33% respectively.

However, it was on Thursday morning, when the WGC released its report, that the gold and silver market fever broke. At 1:00 am (EST), when Reuters reported on the WGC release, February gold futures were over $5,600/oz. By 10:40 am, futures had plummeted to $5,100, a drop of 9%, before the ‘buy the dip’ momentum crowd restored the price to just shy of $5,500 by 7:40 pm. The price thereafter dropped to $4,700 by 1:30 pm on the following day before recovering to $4,909/oz.

The Pin Prick Trigger

The WGC report revealed that gold demand plummeted for end users, for jewelry by 19% year-over-year, and central bank and institutional accumulation by 37%. The slack was taken up by “investors,” who nearly doubled their purchases.

We in the GTA area observed this pattern recently in the Toronto condo market. During the FOMO mania, sales of condos, many on spec, climbed through the roof. Many condos were mere shoeboxes, perhaps livable as university residences, more useful as high-priced hookers’ lairs. Investors were pumping up condo prices among themselves, hoping to sell before they had to take possession. Inevitably, Wiley E. Coyote eventually found no terra firma under its feet.

If the real gold market was finding far fewer end users, this would be more so for the real silver market. Even the mid-year Interim Market Review by the Silver Institute had predicted that industrial use of silver in 2025 likely declined by 4% from 2024, 3.5% below earlier estimates that year. Decline was partly due to technological proficiencies (re: “progressive thrifting,” some substitution with copper). Another report expects “silver jewelry and silverware demand to decline by 4% and 11%, respectively.” But these prognostications were prior to recent price spikes in silver.

Economics 101 insists upon an inverse relationship between price and demand. While the silver market was entering its sixth year of supply deficit, extraordinary price spikes have an irritating habit of briskly reversing that trend as in the early 1980s.

Moreover, the gold to silver price ratio had declined from 104x (April 2025) to 46x on Thursday. The recent historical average is 68x. Just as excessively high ratios suggest a faster runup in silver prices in 2025, a corresponding excessive low ratio suggest a much greater reversal for silver in 2026.

A Little Gully

The shills are already out in force suggesting that yesterday’s crash was merely a typical and much needed correction. Something structural has changed according to them. (“And once something is anchored, the discussion changes.”) It is different this time.

“Buy the dip” momentum speculators will likely see this crash as opportunity, as their “ancestors” so thought in early 1930. A day trader might be wise to anticipate extreme volatility in the days to come, rather than heavily shorting the price of silver. There shall be many margin calls. With present margin requirements at 9%, many dealers will be hurt and demand higher margin rates going forward. This may instigate further prices declines.

Nevertheless, silver prices shall eventually decline to market equilibrium, if not below. If demand for gold by central bankers, financial institutions, and end users was precipitously dropping when the price of gold was $4,135/oz, how much more so when the price is $4,900/oz? If the price for silver has tripled in under one year, how sustainable is end-user demand?

Despite claims by shills, silver is not legal tender. It is not a currency and cannot be so if daily prices rise and fall by several percentage. The same is true of crypto currencies. The whole telos of currency is to provide financial and economic stability. If the complaint against 1970s style inflation was unpredictability, leading to less business investment, how much more so for a wildly fluctuating “currency?”

With supply deficit constraints, silver cannot be accumulated in bulk as a reserve. If countries are now accumulating silver, it is for the critical purpose of secure industrial supply. While there is a long-term business case for increased demand for silver, much higher prices incentivize technological proficiencies and open mothballed silver mines. There are reasonable economic limits to the price of silver. Anything above that limit is a plaything for the rentiers at the expense of the producers.

A Canadian Declaration of Independence

So, while a solipsistic America, or portions thereof, saw in the Carney Doctrine, espoused at Davos, a surreptitious dig at their idiot emperor occupying the White House, I perceived a coherent, cogent vision and plan, one with general geopolitical ramifications, to be sure, yet ultimately a pronouncement, Maîtres Chez Nous!

I once visited an old work colleague who went into business for himself after the company to which we had both worked had folded up. His factory seemed [to be] a thriving place. However, there was flaw in the business model. His company had only one customer.

I recall reading about suppliers in the Great Depression, whose only clients were Simpsons or Eaton’s. These flagship department stores had such greater leverage over their suppliers that they could literally dictate the price that they were willing to pay.

This lesson, learnt in adolescence, never left me. When I became self-employed as an IT consultant, I had six main clients with roughly equal revenues, such that the business could easily survive the loss of one or two clients.

All my life, Canadian politicos have permitted this nation’s economy and, indirectly, this nation’s sovereignty to be vulnerable to the caprice of American dictates. Currently, three quarters of our exports flow to the U.S., with exports constituting a third of our economy. In effect, over 20% of our economy currently involves exports to the U.S. Only 1.64% of the U.S. economy involves exports to Canada. While the collapse of all trade [to the U.S] would not result in the same degree of decline in GDP, that is one whopping economic leverage.

But while Canada has been vulnerable to the caprice of American dictates, only on rare occasions has this become a real crisis of modest proportions. We have generally benefited from the goodwill and prudence of multiple administrations since WW2. And when crises of modest proportions have occurred, it has been the policy of Canadian politicos to placate the U.S.

But as America has become a hubristically evil and unjust nation, we can no longer count upon the goodwill and prudence of their politicos. Nor has this nation the military and economic might, in of itself, to fight against the American behemoth, as impressive as the recent chutzpah and bravado may have been. Moreover, as one Globe and Mail pundit put it, kowtowing to Trump’s narcissism and rapine will only encourage more predatory feints.

This nation is left with but one alternative, which should have been deployed many decades ago. . . Canada must stop playing in the same sandbox as the Bully of the sandbox. Our trade must circumvent the Americans. Let us strike a balanced deal with the Japanese, Koreans, and/or Germans: An Auto Pact in exchange for the type of goods that the Americans are tariffing (i.e. aluminum). Place a cease and desist on all American car plants in this country and end all purchases of their cars. Most of our automobile employees could be transferred to the new Japanese, Koreans, and/or Germans plants that are built here. Car part plants are to be redirected towards these new auto chains. . .

This was written in February last year. Yet, it seems that another Canadian of far greater stature and political clout has thought likewise, independent of my nickel’s worth. Mark Carney went further than I, suggesting that our country should participate in a mesh of overlapping alliances based upon different shared interests and realms of concern. Taking my cues from Otto Bismarck, I am dubious about bringing such policy complication into government which requires a genius level of statesmanship to navigate and sustain. For after Bismarck was unceremoniously dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, his balancing act was left in the hands of that selfsame idiot.

Nevertheless, after one full term and one year of the Trumpian imbecility, the whole world appears to be navigating around the United States, a facet of natural socioeconomic law, hardly requiring a degree in political science to have anticipated. Trade agreements, inconceivable but a year ago, or having long been stagnating (i.e. EU-Mercosur, EU-India) have been hurriedly signed this last year.

One partisan pundit from the National Post scornfully compared Mark Carney to Willy Loman (re: Death of a Salesman, 1949). But Carney is doing what Canadian politicos should have been doing decades ago.

Carney’s Davos speech is not some fanciful aspiration. Carney has been operating upon this doctrine laid out in his speech this year. Hence, Carney is a conviction politician, something quite rare in our pedestrian politics. This has been especially true of Carney’s Liberal Party, whose pretentions to being the Natural Governing Party, have merely required placing their fingers into the air to discern the current direction of the political winds, and stealing and incorporating the ideas of the Right and the further Left.

A Radical Cultural Difference

The Davos speech shall not be properly understood by contemporary American narcissism which thinks that everything is all about them. American hyperbole on both Left and Right has also acquired the irksome habit of seeing every rhetorical ripple of discourse as constituting some crushing checkmate over their ideological, cultural, and sociopolitical adversaries. This habit appears to be a manifestation of a deeper longstanding cultural motif wherein the American must always be right, to victor, to dominate.

I noticed this when I backpacked around the Mediterranean in 1978/9. The Canadian psyche, on the other hand, appears to be one of just getting along; on reaching consensus. When I visited a suburb north of Pittsburgh in 1997/8 to network a branch office there, a naturalized American from Canada in that office voiced the irritation that his American colleagues had with their Canadian counterparts who delayed their decisions until everybody at their end got on board. For good or ill, this complaint confirmed my observation from twenty years prior. I am not particularly “Canadian” on this count.

Yet it is evident that this American need to victor and dominate contributes to the current profound schism which threatens civic conflagration. Our muddled moderation has so far served the common good by preventing our social fabric from tearing apart, although Trudeau Jr.’s divisive lurch to the Woke Left appeared to inaugurate that devolution that we observe in America and Europe.

Why can’t Americans and Canadians get along?  More specifically, why hasn’t talk about a US-Canadian union ever really caught on?

The two countries have far more in common than might be expected. They share a common language, a common geography, even a common economic landscape. Both are nations of immigrants, particularly Scottish immigrants who in the nineteenth century served as “the shock troops of modernization,” in Bernard Aspinwall’s phrase, providing the first echelon of industrial labor for an emerging America — and for a unified Canada.

Given the commonalities, more than one commentator (including media personality and former Canadian citizen Kevin O’Leary) has raised the specter of a U.S.-Canadian economic union, even a North American monetary union, with Canadians retaining their national sovereignty while enjoying the benefits of integration into the much larger, and substantially more tax-free, U.S. economy.

In their general cultural ignorance, even of their own heritage, and an unquenchable avarice for Canadian natural resources, many Americans are conveniently deluded into thinking that our two peoples have much in common.

However, from the very beginning of our own history, Canadians have had a different mindset than the Americans, for better or worse. Beyond (1) the Québécois quadrant, the Anglo-Saxon colonials were largely made up of (2) those escaping or expelled from the losing side of the American Revolution. The (3) Second Great Awakening and other religious revivals largely escaped our borders, most of which were anti-intellectualist. Even as of 1971, (4) Blacks only numbered around 35,000 in Canada, constituting 0.2% of our population, mostly concentrated in Maritimes. Blacks do not figure in any national trauma. We never acquired, nor had opportunity to acquire, (5) an imperialist mindset through which the Americans have arrogantly lost their soul and their virtue. Although most Canadians dwell along a thin line which parallels the US–Canada border, (6) the extensive and barren north continues to figure in our cultural imagination. The American Frontier was closed over a century ago (c. 1890).

These half-dozen distinctions alone, each of which bear their own ideological/cultural imprint, should suffice to demonstrate the radical differences between our two peoples.

The radical, lift-yourself-by-your-own-bootstraps atomism of the American mindset finds little resonance in Canada except within a geographical stretch from the BC interior to the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Few here consider the notion of the common good as equivalent to Communism, like almost half of American rubes do. (Nor were the American Founding Fathers and generation averse to the common good. Three of the thirteen original colonies had “commonwealth” in their nomenclatures. Oh! How the American mind and soul have fallen!)

No Canadian conservative, who values their reputation and livelihood, would boldly voice favor of the elimination of the minimum-wage laws (i.e. George Will) or the right of an employer to terminate an employee with impunity, without cause, even without compensation, as do many of the Red States. The radical economic disparities, which overflow into civic, political, and social inequalities and two-tier justice, which are historically known to contribute to social schism, civic conflagration, and the end of free civic polities (i.e. Democratic Athens, Republican Rome), are not yet as well developed in Canada as they are in the United States.

We have fought two skirmishes with the Americans. Our very Confederation is rooted as a response to the American Civil War. Why would any sane Canadian want to be a part of the American Woman, the American whore?

A Declaration of Independence

This country weaned itself off the teats of an imperious and duplicitous Britain after the First World War, officially in 1931. However, it seems that Canada merely replaced its mother, so to speak, with an American wet nurse. Canada has become an overgrown tweenager, still living in the attic, sniping about its effective lack of independence. If Canadians lack for an imperialist mindset, it is partly because we still think like provincial colonials.

So, while a solipsistic America, or portions thereof, saw in the Carney Doctrine, espoused at Davos, a surreptitious dig at their idiot emperor occupying the White House, I perceived a coherent, cogent vision and plan, one with general geopolitical ramifications, to be sure, yet ultimately a pronouncement, Maîtres Chez Nous!

As expected, a petulant toddler in his second childhood decreed a 100% tariff on all Canadian goods. It is doubtful whether this Narcissist-in-Chief sees in this seminal cri du coeur anything beyond an eloquent dig at his misrule.

But from the American standpoint, if Carney’s vision catches on in this country or, indeed, everywhere, despite the certainty of temporary decline in economic fortunes, courtesy of an imperious power losing its grip and geopolitical standing, the Carney Doctrine poses an insidious and enduring ideological threat.

For many overgrown tweenagers, the prospect of losing a life of economic ease and security overcomes the endemic desire to spread their wings and take responsibility. And already, among the business and conservative crowd, they grumble that they want to go back to Egypt.

Hence, in the absence of any viable, let alone cogent, alternative vision, this moment becomes a test of manly maturity so to speak. As for me and my household, being a vision not very different from my own, this seems preferable, even if perilous, then continuing to be hitched to the geopolitical Titanic.

Blood and Iron

It is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided – that was the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.

– Otto von Bismarck (1862)

History may not repeat. History may not rhyme. Yet there are undoubtedly parallels between epochs. While identifying the proper parallels is possible, the exercise is fraught with errors by those dabbling in historical analogies. Many errors are the result of partisan disingenuity, who posit analogies not motivated by pursuit of truth, but in pursuit of advantage. Yet even for the minority, who honestly seek some framework, however inchoate and porous, by which to understand the times, existential complexities make the task exceedingly difficult.

We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.

Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, is doing his level best to mimic Bismarck. But neither Miller nor his master have anywhere near the same level of Bismarck’s genius. Indeed, neither Miller nor Trump are even at the level of that buffoon, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1888–1918) who dismissed Bismarck in 1890.

Bismarck, at least, recognized the limits of Prussian power and navigated and enhanced Germany’s position within Europe in light of those limits. The Trump administration vastly overestimates America’s relative power.

Continue reading “Blood and Iron”

Prevarications of the Anti-Zionists

I have elsewhere commented that contemporary Israelis and Diaspora Jews contribute to their detriment, especially with regard to the propaganda wars. At the same time, the Jews’ enemies often prove to be the Jews’ best “friends.”

Last month, I was compelled to confront a church leader who was promoting some of the propaganda from Israel My Glory and other Christian Zionist ezines. I have no problem with advocacy on behalf of Israel, so long as the claims have a modicum of correspondence with objective realities. But some of the claims, this leader was perpetuating, were so obviously and embarrassing nonsensical that it discredits the Christian witness to spread them.

Moreover, his Christian Zionism was so zealous that I felt compelled to remonstrate that I was under the assumption that we were ambassadors on behalf of the cause of Christ, not an ambassador on behalf of Israel.

No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. – Luke 16:13

One could replace “money” with “Israel,” especially when there exists a wide variance between the concerns of God and those of a mostly secular Israel. The general issue of divided loyalties was the crux of the matter.

So, when a video labelled, “Zionist Pastor Jack Hibbs: SUPPORT Israel Or Else,” was pushed onto my YouTube feed, I took the clickbait. In this 9 minute video, its author, Peter Hager, excerpts twenty seconds of a discourse at an unknown conference.

Host:[From] a theological standpoint, if we think that God will break, what He described as an everlasting covenant with them, how does our covenant of salvation stand?
Jack Hibbs:You don’t have one. If God breaks His covenant promise with Israel, then you now have no assurance that you’ll make it to heaven as a believer.

The ever so brief clip is lifted from out of a longer discourse (33 minutes). Hager provides no link to this video in order for the viewer to understand the context, the minimum requirement of an honest advocacy. (The discourse was between Jack Hibbs and Tony Perkins on October 18, 2025, at a Pray Vote Stand Summit, sponsored by the Family Research Council.) Jack Hibbs follows up his claim of no assurance with the following logic.

Because if He breaks that one, He can break anyone he wants. The good thing is, the great thing is, his nature is that he’s not a man that he should lie. God keeps all of his promises.

From the Evangelical standpoint, the God of Hebrew and Christian Scriptures made promises to ethnic Israel. God has also made promises to all who would come to believe upon Christ Jesus for their salvation. If God violates the former promise, there exists no reasonable grounds for security of person and peace of mind that He will not violate the latter promise.

This is not so much a theological argument, but rather a logical one. It is well substantiated and well known throughout the world that Donald Trump does not keep any trade agreement, which is similar to a covenant, to which he signs. Hence, it is no longer worth the time and effort negotiating any new trade agreement with the Americans. Only a few nations have done so, contrary to the bloated promises by Trump back in April. And those who do, like the effete officials of the European Union, are playing for time, until such time that they can defend themselves. Perhaps, at that time, the Chinese and the Europeans can forge a framework by which the EuroYuan becomes the reserve currency. Regardless, the geopolitical position of America will be much diminished within the decade. And with the end of the Pax America, (just like at the end of the Pax Europa in 1914), the whole world will be chaos.

Serpentine Polemics

According to the ranting Hager:

So, now you have no assurance that you will make it to heaven if you do not accept. You know they say usually in the evangelical church, you know what they usually say is ‘if you do not accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will burn in hell.’ Well, now it’s ‘if you do not accept your Lord and Master is the state of Israel, you’re going to burn in hell.’

In truncating the Perkins-Hibbs’ video clip, Hager has disingenuously misconstrued Perkins’ and Hibbs’ argument. The rest of Hager’s rant (7 minutes) is sophomoric commentary, at one point insinuating venal motives to Hibbs’ position (grifting) without any attempt to provide evidence to substantiate that claim of corruption.

With all due respect, I have all the respect in the world for people who truly believe in Christ, who believe that living a pious life is the path to salvation.

Nor does Hager understand the Evangelical Faith that he impugns. For biblical Christianity insists that the “pious life,” virtue, righteousness, etc. is not the path to salvation. For no person can be perfectly virtuous and just, which proves to be a reasonable, if humanly impossible, standard. For if the Divine Judge judges according to the pious life, and does not insist on ethical perfection, He has an impossible juridical conundrum. For if God accepts and saves persons with x moral crimes, whereas all others are damned, what about persons with x + 1 moral crimes, or x + 1 + 1 moral crimes, in infinite regress. What is the non-arbitrary, non-capricious juridical divining point which separates the sheep from the goats.

Hence, Christ Jesus voluntarily offered His life (with its infinite ontological worth) as a substitute for the mass of human beings who accept the divine amnesty scheme through trust upon Christ Jesus’ atonement. Herein, a person is justified, the formal juridical basis of salvation.

Such a person must also trust upon all the other aspects of Christ, that is practically operate upon His assertions, counsels, promises, etc., this not in order to be deemed worthy of justification/salvation. Rather, these serve as instrumental means by which one’s trust in Christ endures to the end (Luke 6:46–49).

Know of What One Critiques

When I was in Morocco in 1979, I had the typical youthful habit of denigrating the locals on the basis of Western standards. That is until a Syrian mid-level military official on holidays upbraided me. His point was that one should seek to understand persons and societies within their own cultural and social context. I have never forgotten this invaluable lesson and loathe myself for not remembering the man’s name. (“Honor to whom honor is due.”) For while my views of Islam and Muslim culture have not much changed, understanding inculcates a nuanced Dickensian perspective, rather than a Manichean stick-figure one.

Hager may reject and critique Christianity if he so chooses. But one should, at least, know what one is rejecting and critiquing.

[Evangelicals have] been brought up in this world to make them believe that if they dare question the person who stands at the podium that they’ve committed a mortal sin and that they must repent for their entire life.

Hager is so lazily ignorant about Evangelicalism to the point of sophomoric slander. I recall one pastor, nearing retirement and world weary, complaining that organizing his congregation to common cause was like herding cats. I recall old black ladies in my youth with no theological credentials contending with the pastor over his interpretation of certain passages. ‘Battling Baptists’ is a common epithet thrown at one denomination. Almost all Protestant Evangelical churches nowadays are in state of a schism and church/denominational splits.

Moreover, Protestant Evangelicals do not subscribe to “mortal sin.”

Who Is Peter Hager?

With such all-encompassing lies, dissembling, and other deceits, one might expect Hager to be one of those rubbies, one encounters in down-and-out downtown bars. Or an unemployed youth in his twenties or thirties living in his parent’s basement.

But his resume is somewhat successful. He attended Rutgers University, although it is unclear whether he acquired any degree. He is a commercial realtor for Keller Williams Realty in Plantation FL, and prides himself for building “a solid sales pipeline through years long trust-based relationships.” I do not how one builds long trust-based relationships without intellectual and moral integrity. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

More interestingly, Hager was campaign manager (2020) and now senior advisor for an unsuccessful Democratic Congressional candidate, who lost twice in 2020 and 2024 Florida primaries to Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Considering the latter’s reputation, deserved or not, Jen Perelman’s bid to overthrow this incumbent was near impossible in the first place.

A Hyperpower Lost in Its OWN Lies and EXCEPTIONALIST Self-Delusions

So justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter. Truth is missing, and whoever turns from evil becomes prey. – Isaiah 59:14–15a

Even before Trump rode the escalator down in the summer of 2015, I was noticing the increasing frequency of the lies and deceits committed by both factions in the U.S. Certainly, lies and deceits were increasing worldwide. But America, always wanting to be the winner, has also become the champion in prevarication.

What is remarkable is the flamboyant nakedness and brazenness of these lies and deceits. Either the perpetrators think that their interlocutors are really stupid, or they are intuiting, ‘I know that you know that this is a lie. What are you going to do about it?’

But it becomes difficult to conceive how a free civic society does not disintegrate in the face of a pandemic of lies and deceits. The ties that bind any society together require, at minimum, intellectual and ethical integrity and the keeping of promises.

I have become increasingly irritated with the counterproductive dissembling by Jews, Israeli and Diaspora, and their allies; defending in Gaza, for instance, what has become morally indefensible. Yet, their adversaries seem to be worse in this regard. I found little in Hager’s rant that was not fallacious, if not disingenuously so.

The fundamental problem with many Christian Zionists is not their belief that God will keep His covenant with the ethnic descendants of Jacob for the sake of the Hebrew Patriarchs.

 The problem is the sin of presumption, actively operating upon promises belonging to the inscrutable transcendent will of God, (as if they knew how God will fulfill those promises), rather than upon the commanded will of God. Hereby, such Christian Zionists tolerate and justify injustices, travesties, and atrocities by Jews which they would not tolerate if committed by any other ethnic, cultural, and/or religious group. Hereby, such show themselves partial and hence unjust. In so doing, “the name of God is blasphemed among the nations through you.”

The Church as “True Israel”

While numerous seminarians and other pundits have weighed in on this “controversy,” and while much of what is said here has been said elsewhere, it behooves to stomp upon this presumptive notion until all the guts have been forcibly oozed out.

Continue reading “The Church as “True Israel””

On Heresy and Heterodoxy

Dispensationalism has recently borne the brunt of many aspersions of dangerous heresy, usually from Reformed types. New Covenant Theology has also been subject to similar aspersions in the past. Reformed types have historically been prone to label those who disagree with them as heretics, an indication of arrogance and lack of grace.

After the Council of Dordt (1618–9), Calvinists went on a witch hunt against those of Arminian persuasion, this during a lull in the Eighty Years War (1568–1648). Those of Arminian persuasion were demoted, excommunicated, exiled (i.e. Hugo Grotius), imprisoned, even executed. (I am not an Arminian and spent most of my life within Reformed Baptist circles.)

Reformed types attempted to declare Amyraldism heretical in 1675 (Helvetic Consensus). As John Frame’s essay, Machen’s Warrior Children, observes, this spirit within Reformed circles led to schisms within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) over matters, not essential to the Faith. Reformed types go beyond what is written (1 Corinthians 4:6), with regard to what constitutes heresy, and are hence prone to schism and oppression, the latter element discernible in seminarians nowadays, who in their arrogance, lord it over their congregants.

But nothing and no one should be deemed heretical unless their notions and conduct are explicitly and incontrovertibly deemed heretical by Scriptures. Heterodoxy is a sufficient epithet. To go beyond is to invite psycho-social suffocation and sclerosis within an Assembly.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities and continue to grow in them, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

– 2 Peter 1:5–8

Scriptures expressly declares that as one’s knowledge and understanding increases, one will be increasingly productive and effective. Purification of doctrine will also lead to ontological benefit within the context of the New Covenant. “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:16, 20) has also application to doctrine.

That being the case, it is in a Christian’s own self-interest to increase knowledge and purify their doctrinal understanding. Unless waywardness reaches thresholds, delineated expressly and incontrovertibly by Scriptures, external interventions are unnecessary.

God will correct error, often through the deleterious consequences which naturally result from living according to the errors that one believes. A problem arises in those who promulgate errors, but do not live according to those errors, and hence never realize their errors (Matthew 23:3–4).

While I perceive many flaws in existing theological covenantal/dispensation frameworks, I cannot nor have ever deemed subscribers to those quite complicated frameworks, as heretics.

It is quite possible that the logic of those errors may lead to heresy downstream. A Christian, usually a Dispensationalist, who subscribes to Zionism, with the expectation that God will restore ethnic Jews to their homeland in the latter days, is not a heretic.

That is unless and until he/she goes beyond merely observing, and starts justifying, even participating in, travesties and atrocities committed by the Israeli government and society, which he/she would not do if committed by anyone other. Such are hereby acting upon their own private understanding of the inscrutable Sovereign Will of God, instead of the declared Will of God. Many sins are involved in this: presumption, partiality, and the idolatry of choosing Israel over Israel’s God and the cause of Christ. But generic Christian Zionism is not heretical.

Another principle can be observed in the 2 Peter 1:5-8. One’s productiveness and profitability is dependent upon a number of elements, not merely knowledge, understanding, and doctrinal purity. I conceive these conditions within the construct of bottleneck. If one is unkind and unloving, as indicated by unjustified aspersions of dangerous heresy, all of one’s knowledge, understanding, and doctrinal purity become unprofitable.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

– 1 Corinthians 13:2