ARC-News

Thursday, April 3, 2025

GOLDILOCKS PROTESTANTISM

The article "Goldilocks Protestantism" in the March 31, 2025 issue of First Things magazine excellently portrays the current state of Christianity. Brad East, the author, is an associate professor of theology at Abiline Christian University, which is associated with the Churches of Christ movement.

This movement is an attempt to restore New Testament Christianity. I'm familiar with this "Restoration Movement" because my wife and I began our missionary service in it. The Churches of Christ attempt to restore some of the basic elements of early Christianity, including baptism performed immediately after confession of faith in Christ as a necessary part of salvation, and celebrating the Lord's Supper every Sunday.

But this is just one of the many flavors of of post-Reformation religious bodies. Our own lives illustrate the current state of Christianity because we have sampled several flavors, moving somewhat painlessly from one to another as if there were only minor, non-essential differences between them. However, this points to the fatal flaw of relativism, any flavor will do, Christianity's current state.

The "Goldilocks Protestantism" article divides current Christianity into two categories: the "catholic" (in the sense of one true and universal Church including Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican), and the other group being the "evangelicals." The former has authoritative Saints, the Creed, liturgy, bishops, ordained priests. icons, sacraments, and infant baptism. The latter has none of those, just the Bible: "solo Scriptura." What then of today's Lutherans and Calvinists – heirs of the earlier "Majesterial Reformation" that rejected Rome's purgatory doctrine and selling indulgences, but retained much of the former traits? Sadly, those Majesterial heirs are less than 10% of global Christianity and are fading fast, often taking up the traits of the evangelical majority which is descended from the "Radical Reformation" that rejects all of the "catholic" traits. The article raises four issues:

First, as described in The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan Hatch, the leveling or democratizing effect the Age of "Enlightenment" or "Reason" that placed human intellect over the authority of revelation and Church. Second, evangelicals will not adopt the Majesterial traits: "They believe in populist biblicism.... The lack of tradition is a feature, not a bug" per the article.

More from this article: "Third, there is a structural instability at the heart of the Reformation vision that undermines any attempt to strike a durable middle path between catholic and evangelical Christianities. My term for this problem is Goldilocks Protestantism. Heirs of Calvin and Luther don’t want to give up, for instance, Nicaea or infant baptism or the necessity of ordination for the administration of the Supper. Neither, though, do they want a magisterium or bishops, saints or icons. Not too high, not too low. Just right. This approach is finally unsustainable."

Fourth, the Majesterial Protestants view themselves more aligned with the Radical evangelicals, even if they wished the Radicals to be more Traditional. They can't go back to the Roman Catholics whose Majesterium they have rejected. It just will not happen, so they are withering.

The basic issue is the rejection of the primary authority of "the Church of the living God, which is the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15), and instead placing the New Testament as the sole canon ("measuring rod" or "yardstick") of the truth. No, the Church, the foundation, existed for nearly 400 years before the New Testament canon was recognized. The problem with the latter view is the question of interpretation: who decides how to interpret, how to give the meaning, of the New Testament Scriptures? Since the Reformation, the idea has spread that "any cowherd or milkmaid" can correctly interpret the Scriptures. Once you reject the Church's authority and accept democratization, you're on the slippery slope of no return.

But the New Testament itself gives the clue to solve this puzzle: "knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation, just as no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:20-21). "Holy men of God," in other words, the Saints of the Church. Notice the words "just as" – they indicate a connection between the previous phrase and the next phrase: in the same way that holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit to write the Old Testament Scriptures, so also now it takes holy men of God to interpret the Bible for us, not a private interpretation by any Tom, Dick, or Harry who might or might not have even a two-year Bible School education.

So if there is just one true Church, what about the moral and ethical problems in it? And what about all the post-Reformation denominations? We must acknowledge that the Church, like the denominations, is populated by human beings who retain the sin-stained fallen nature. It is not yet the "glorious church without spot or wrinkle" (Ephesians 5:27), but will be. The truth will come out, and evil will be expunged. So we must distinguish between doctrine and practice: the Church's doctrines that have been decided by Councils of saintly bishops of the Church over the centuries, including doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation of God in Christ, His rising from the dead, the Creed followed by the formation of the New Testament canon, etc., and on the other hand the errors of sinful and sometimes heretical humans.

"Heresy" is from the Greek word for "choice" – once you place the idea of choice and democratization above all else, your individual freedom of choice becomes the reigning principle over against any established truth and authority, and thus today we have tens of thousands of denominations and un-denominations, each with its own flavor of doctrines and practices. As the saying goes – "I'm not a complete idiot, there are some parts missing!" Some denominations just have a few parts missing but are fairly close to the true Church and converts can be received by Chrismation (annointing with holy oil) and renunciation of former errors. Other denominations are sects that may deny the Trinity, the pre-eternal deity of Christ, His sacrificial death and resurrection, etc.: such converts must be baptized in the name of the Trinity and then be Chrismated to join the Body of Christ, the true Church.

So many times these days I've heard people say – "I have my own religion" or "I have my own beliefs and practices." This is the "Goldilocks" approach: a little of this and a little of that, not too hot and not too cold, choosing beliefs that simply justify one's own ideas and behavior, leaving the door open to all sorts of wierd sectarianism and justifying a selfish, immoral lifestyle. There's no need for humble repentance because "I'm OK, you're OK" – anything goes. The most important thing for such people is self-realization, rather than self-denial and taking up one's cross to follow Christ, crucifying our little egos. During this time of preparation for celebrating the greatest event in human history – the Resurrection of Christ – let us turn from these self-centered beliefs and behaviors, and turn in humble repentance before the crucified and resurrected One!

You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-04-05.htm, and share it!

Saturday, March 22, 2025

The Great Commission

Note: This article is adapted from my May 8, 2021 article, to remind us of the Purpose of Pascha (Easter).

Click the pic! Yeshua, the Messiah, known to the Greek-speaking Jews in the Dispersion as "Yesous, the Khristos – the Annointed One," whose followers saw him executed, dying on a Roman cross, suddenly came back to life and appeared several times to his eleven Apostles and many of his other disciples. Click on this photo to read about all of these appearances.

Scroll down a little further in the above photo's link, where you'll see "Yeshua Appears to All the Apostles in Galilee" and issues the Great Commission as follows: "16 But the eleven disciples went into Galilee, to the mountain where Yeshua had sent them. 17 When they saw him, they bowed down to him, but some doubted. 18 Yeshua came to them and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything that I commanded you to do. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.' Amen" (Matthew 28:16-20).

On May 6, 2021 at 10 a.m., a Thursday morning our time, which was 8 p.m. their time, I had the privilege of speaking on this Scripture passage to some evangelists and their house churches in Bangladesh. I'd like to share with you what I said: first of all, in v. 17 it states that still "some doubted." When people are presented with information – an event or an idea – that is entirely beyond anything they have experienced in their lives, they often simply can't comprehend it or believe it. Someone is standing here who was dead, many of these people saw him die, but here he is! Unbelievable! And so it is today, when people hear about the Virgin Birth of Yeshua, his miracles, his death and resurrection, they doubt it because it's entirely outside of their experience. I have had similar reactions from people who have never been outside the state where they were born when I tell them about our living in Russia for 17 years.

Then in v. 18, Yeshua says – "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth." Older translations use the word "power" but the Greek word "exousia" is better translated as "authority" or the right to do something. In the first days of Holy Week, Yeshua was debating with the Pharisees, Saducees, and Scribes about his authority. They asked – "By what authority do you do these things? Or who gave you this authority to do these things?" (Mark 11:28). Then he told them three parables, all dealing with the question of his authority versus theirs. His authority was his own, from God, and legitimate, theirs was an assumed authority and was being used in an illegitimate way, only to continue their hold on power.

When you see the word "Therefore" in v. 19, you should ask yourself what's it there for: it is there to connect the previous verse about Yeshua's authority with v. 19! He is saying in effect: "I have God-given authority and I am giving you, my Apostles, this same authority to go forth and make disciples of all nations." In some older translations, it states – "teach all nations" but it is more than just teaching the doctrines of Yeshua and the historical facts about him. Making disciples of all nations is training believers to do the things that Yeshua did: he and his disciples baptized people in the name of the holy Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they healed them, they fed the hungry, cleansed the lepers, they even cast out demons and raised the dead.

Verse 20 is very important to read carefully and understand, because many preachers don't explain it correctly: they say it means to teach people the parables that Yeshua taught, tell about his death on the cross and his resurrection, and tell people to believe these things. But that's just the start, just the basic truths. This verse in older translations states – "teach them to observe all that I commanded you" but the word "observe" can easily be misunderstood to mean "watch" or be a spectator. Too many church-goers view church as a spectator sport: they sit in their pews and watch a performance by the choir and the preacher. Wrong! The Greek word for "observe" actually means to "obey" or to "fulfill a command." What did Yeshua command his disciples to do? In Matthew ch. 10 and in Luke ch. 10 and ch. 11, he sent out his Apostles, commanding them to preach the Gospel, heal the sick, care for the needy, and cast out demons. The demons of today are the false ideologies of atheism, materialism, and secular humanism that hold captive literally billions of people, saying that Yeshua was just a prophet or a moral teacher, he didn't really do anything miraculous and he didn't rise from the dead, or that you can believe whatever you want – all religions are OK – but just keep it to yourself.

So in Matthew 28:18-20 we have authority in the Great Commission, and we have a continuation of Yeshua sending out his Apostles, in Acts 1:8 – "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." Here the Greek word for "power" is "dunamis" and we get "dynamite" from this word. It means the strength or the ability to do something. In Matthew 28, Yeshua gave his Apostles authority or the right, and here in Acts 1, he promises to give them power or strength and ability to preach the Good News, heal the sick, care for the poor, and drive out evil powers.

The Apostle Peter writes about this: "God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you - not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 3:20-21). The Ark is a symbol or a type of the Church, the Bride of Christ. The eight souls – Noah and his family – were the only ones saved from the flood. So to believe in Christ and be baptized is to be in the Body of Christ, the Church. There is no salvation outside of the Church, the Body of Christ. The Apostle Peter is teaching us that the flood was a symbol of baptism. The ark is the symbol, baptism is the reality: baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit saves us, it's not simply like taking a bath to wash away the filth of the flesh, but it cleanses our conscience, our hearts' desires. We are resurrected with Christ in baptism into a new, spiritual life.

The Apostle Paul also writes on this The Great Commission: "He [God the Father] put all things in subjection under his [Christ's] feet, and gave him to be head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 1:22-23). The Church is the Body of Christ, and only in the true Church we can experience the fullness of Christ. The Bible is very important – the services of the Orthodox Church are full of Scripture, about 75% of each service is direct or indirect quotations, reading the Scriptures, or references to the words of Scripture. But the Bible isn't the source of all authority, Christ received "all authority" – he is the source – and he gave this authority to his Apostles.

The Apostle Paul writes – "These things I write to you, hoping to come to you shortly; but if I wait long, that you may know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:14-15). The Church is " the pillar and ground of the truth." In verses 1-7, Paul writes about the qulaities and duties of "overseers" or priests/pastors. The word "priest" is a shortened form of "presbyter" ("prest"). Timothy was bishop over the churches in Ephesus (ch. 1:3), and in ch. 5:17-22, Paul instructs him again about the virtues that an overseer should have before Timothy would ordain them – see v. 22. And the Apostle Paul appointed Titus as bishop in Crete (Titus 1:5-8) to ordain priests/pastors on that island.

The Church was established on the Day of Pentecost, when the promise of Acts 1:8 was fulfilled. God sent the Holy Spirit to give the Apostles power to go from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and then to the uttermost parts of the earth – to the Gentile nations. In Acts 11:19-26, we read how "ordinary believers" went from Jerusalem to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, where they began sharing the Good News about Yeshua. When the Apostles in Jerusalem heard about this, they sent Barnabas to help the believers in Antioch organize a local church. He sent for Saul to help him. We know that Barnabas was a Levite (ch. 4:36) and Saul (later Paul) was a Pharisee: both of them were well-trained in the Scriptures. And so, they taught the believers in Antioch, and v. 26 states – "The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch." They weren't called Christians at the time Barnabas and Saul were there, church history tells us that it was Euodias, the second bishop in Antioch, who later called the disciples "Christians" – not all the facts are in the Bible, so it's important to also study church history. But the point is this: to be a Christian is to be a disciple, you can't be "just a Christian" and go to church once a month or a few times a year, and lead a moral life. A disciple isn't a super-Christian, someone who has decided to go all-out for Christ. A disciple is a Christian, and a Christian is a disciple. A disciple is someone who obeys and fulfills Christ's commands.

There were other bishops beside Timothy and Titus: after Euodias, Ignatius was bishop in Antioch, he was the little child that Yeshua took on his lap and said – "Let the little children come to me, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Both Ignatius and Polycarp were disciples of the Apostle John. Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna. So what we see here is that the Apostles appointed well-trained and godly men to be bishops over the churches in various areas. This is how the Church is to be governed. This authority to ordain bishops and they would ordain overseers (priests/pastors) is the model established in the first century and continues to this day. These councils of godly men, bishops, are responsible to maintain true doctrine and practice.

Well then, what is the Church and how do we know if we are in it? Several Orthodox theologians have said – "We know where the Church is, but we do not know where the Church is not." There are genuine Christians, disciples of Yeshua, the Messiah – the Christ, who might not even know about Apostolic authority to ordain priests/pastors. But these disciples believe in Christ's birth from the Virgin Mary, his death for our sins and his resurrection. They believe in and were baptized in the name the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They believe that the Lord's Supper in some mysterious way beyond rational understanding is really the Body and Blood of Christ, and that when we partake of it, we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). An Orthodox priest in Moscow (he's now a bishop) once told me: "If you believe these three things, you are Orthodox, whether you know it or not."

So there are members of the Body of Christ who are out there, waiting to be taught these truths, to learn that they are in the Church, Christ's Body. They are sharing the Good News of Yeshua, the Messiah. In extreme situations ("in extremis") when no bishop or priest is available, they are permitted to evangelize, baptize, and even conduct the Lord's Supper without official ordination, but they need to eventually be organized under Apostolic authority, like the disciples in Antioch were. This is how the Great Commission works!

You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-03-22.htm, and share it!

Friday, March 7, 2025

THE RENEWING OF YOUR MIND

(click the pic!) You've likely read or heard on the news that the U.S. Department of Education (or "Indoctrination") might be shut down. Of course, the Executive branch can restructure but can't literally shut down a department that was set up by the Congress over 65 years ago, and since then the federal government has taken increasing control of the educational system.

I'm a pre-baby-boomer, born in 1943. and recall when I was in junior high school that our state's and other states' school systems were splitting at the seams because of all the "baby boom" children born after 1945 that were starting grade school. So the federal government "came to the rescue" and created the U.S. Department of Education, promising it would never interfere with the states setting up curriculum standards. The p.s. in our previous newsletter was "Why did the mouse get trapped? Because it thought the cheese was free." Now we know what has happened: gradually the DOE began placing conditions on the federal grants for education, demanding conformity to a secular, materialist worldview and excluding a traditional Christian, biblical worldview. The cheese wasn't free, after all.

A dear friend in Wisconsin passed into eternity last week from Alzheimer's. We first met when he and his wife were in college. He was quite brilliant: he went on to med school and became a physician. We watched his memorial service online, and after the burial the next day, I wrote to his wife, a public school teacher, the following:

A few days ago, this link came to my inbox: https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2025/02/27/house-vote-tees-up-billions-in-cuts-to-medicaid-disability-services/31321/ - it echoes our culture's assumption that the government is the source of an unlimited supply of money: not a whisper about private charities. As recent political events show, however, the U.S. simply can't continue running up the deficit by issuing more "funny money." And western Europe is waking up to the fact that they must carry more of the defense burden, which means less can go to their generous social welfare systems.

When we were kids, churches and other charitable organizations carried the bulk of the load for caring for the disabled and elderly. But when the government started Medicare and Medicaid, religious non-profits simply couldn't compete with seemingly unlimited federal funds. In essence, the government was acting as a monopoly that drove charities out of business: they can't compete against "free money." Now, most formerly Christian-based hospitals are secularized and get most of their income from government-funded programs.

But it has turned out to be almost worthless "Monopoly money" that's hardly worth the paper it's printed on. A first-class stamp cost 2 cents when I was a kid, now it's 73 cents. Cheryl [my wife] used to cry if we spent over $10 a week on groceries when we were a just-married couple: now we rarely spend less than $100 a week on groceries. It's all because of deficit spending, a hidden tax that's caused by this inflation.

In our online "Daily Prayers" there's a frame at the bottom of the screen that shows James 1:27 and lots of cross-references. The verse number "27" is also a link: try it – it goes to "Living Faith That Works" to show how faith (our prayers) is and must be inextricably linked to good works. Faith without works is dead, so faith that doesn't produce good works is dead faith. My point is that it's high time for the church to take back its duty and calling to combine faith with works, prayer with agape-love for our neighbors. We can no longer look to the government to foot the bill.

If I, without having enough money in our checking account, were to write a check to pay our bills, it would bounce: we call it a "rubber check" ...so I'd quickly get a cash advance on my credit card and put it in the bank. If I were to print several hundred-dollar bills on my printer to cover these bills, it would be counterfieting, a crime. But the government has been doing both of these things for at least the past 65 years, borrowing money by issuing treasury bonds and printing more paper money that's not backed up by our economy's output.

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." – Thomas Sowell, economist

Now the chickens are coming home to roost: just the interest in 2025 on the U.S. deficit – our country's "credit cards" – is $322 billion dollars, outpacing outlays for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ benefits and services. The assumption that our government is the cure for all society's ills no longer works. In terms of the worldview being taught in public schools and higher education – both funded by the government – that ideology is bankrupt as well. We need The Renewing of our Mind!

The materialist (or more correctly, the "physicalist") mindset / worldview, which posits that the universe consists of only matter and energy, no longer holds up to scrutiny. Biologists are beginning to realize that blind, random chance can't explain how living organisms develop: there seems to be a design, a logic or goal in view that isn't encoded in the genes, and random chance cannot be design-seeking or goal-seeking. Astrophysicists now acknowledge there's something "out there" that they call "Dark Matter" or "Dark Energy" – they say makes up at least 95% of the universe. It is something we can't measure or perceive with our strongest telescopes, but without this "dark," non-material, something-or-other, they say the universe couldn't exist, it wouldn't hold together.

The caption under the cover image of my book The Good News of Yeshua, the Messiah quotes "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and was God” (from John 1:1). Also, Colossians 1:16-17 states – "For by Him [the Logos] were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things are held together." The living Word, the "Logos" in Greek, is the Logic and the Meaning of the universe!

Without the design and logical structure of God's creation, it would not hold together, it would fall apart. In Hebrews 4:12-13 we read - "For the Word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart. There is no creature that is hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." In Revelation 19:13-15 we read – "His name is called 'the Word of God.' The armies which are in heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in white, pure, fine linen. Out of His mouth proceeds a sharp, two-edged sword, that with it he should strike the nations." Read also section "1.6 – On the Word and the Son of God: a reasoned proof" in The True Christian Faith, the first systematic theology of the Christian faith. We are approaching the purpose, the goal, of the universe. We need to tune in our minds to the Mind of God. It's almost game-over time, my friends!

You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-03-08.htm, and share it!

Thursday, February 20, 2025

Get Aboard the ARC!

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days."

"Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death."

"Only morality can help the West against communism's well planned world strategy. There is no other way."

"All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the 19th Century."

"Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism; radicalism had to surrender to socialism; and socialism could never resist communism."

"Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free."

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn became a Christian while undergoing the beastly treatment he endured in Soviet concentration camps. Millions of people in the West who had read his books championed him as a leader of resistance to communism, and advocated and petitioned for his release, including myself. But when the Soviet regime exiled him to the U.S. and he began giving speeches about the decline of the West, American elite universities and mainstream media reacted by dropping him like a hot potato.

The prolific journalist and author Rod Dreher's recent column on Substack "Should We Climb Aboard The ARC?" summarizes the three-day conference of the world's thought leaders brought together by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC).

Dreher wrote – "politics are necessary to civilizational renewal, but not sufficient... ultimately, our civilizational crisis is a crisis of meaning, and that means, at bottom, a religious crisis... nearly every good thing about our civilization came down to us because our ancestors were Christians. God knows they were flawed, as all of us are, but the moral code that guided them, and by which they measured their success or failure, was that of the Bible."

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) website contains a rich, read-worthy series of written articles and videos. A simply wonderful article, "Soul Trader: Identity in a Digital Age", explains the difference between machine-computed information and human comprehension, and between humans as mere thinking animals and souls who happen to have a human body. You do not have a soul: you are a soul who happens to have a body.

Another excellent article on their website is "Family Matters: Why Our Choices Determine Our Economic Prosperity" that tells us how family breakdown is directly linked to spiralling government budgets and population collapse. For example, "An analysis of European fertility has revealed that marital fertility rates are at least 2.6 children per woman, and up to 6 times higher than non-marital fertility rates – a stark reminder that the family is the key to population growth." In other words, fornication and the resulting abortions are a direct cause of population collapse.

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) "is an international movement with a vision for a better world where empowered citizens take responsibility and work together to bring flourishing and prosperity to their families, communities, and nations" that aims to reconstruct out crumbling western society that has sold its Christian heritage birthright for a mess of relativistic pottage. It actively posts on social media, including on LinkedIn:

"The 'twin unrelenting drive [of] individualism and secularism' has marched through our institutions. But what has it left behind? It turns out that freedom from all higher authority also means the loss of a higher purpose. Freedom from all human obligation also means the loss of meaningful relationship. With nothing greater to believe in, no place to belong to, and no community to walk with, our young people are facing a bleak future. It appears a civilisational twilight is on the horizon for the West. Yet we have hidden within our inheritance the values upon which our civilisation was once built: human dignity, truth, justice, peace."

As you can see, the above "ARC" concept ties in very well with our ARC program we've been developing over several decades for "Building the ARC" – the Agape Restoration Community concept. At this link you'll read the "why" for our ARC, and on our "Brief Overview of the ARC" page you can get a one-sheet brief overview on "how" to do it, and a second document: "Biblical Basis for the Agape Restoration Society," a 10-page paper including four full-page sketches of our plans (just updated this week!) for "Agape Restoration Communities."

We must do more than simply articulate the current malaise in western society and voice some vague generalities about recovering our Christian heritage with a few references to some Deity upstairs in the heavens: "politics are necessary to civilizational renewal, but not sufficient." We must return to the true, original Chrisitian faith as spelled out in the Nicene Creed and preached and practiced by the Early Church. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:32-33, if God did not become incarnate in Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ did not die for our sins and rise again, "If the dead are not raised, then" (we might as well) "eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Don't be deceived! Evil companionships corrupt good morals." Christ is the Only Way to overcome western society's post-Christian moral malaise!

Get the full article on our ARC-News blog at blogspot.com.

You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-02-22.htm, and share it!

Thursday, February 6, 2025

'POPULATION COLLAPSE' IS ALREADY HERE

(Click the photo.) The world's population collapse isn't "going to happen"... it's already here. The article "You can’t stare down reality: population collapse has begun" explains that many people dismiss warnings about the world running out of people. They attack the messengers as sensationalist gloom-and-doomers or pronatalist fanatics who care nothing for the environment and would force procreation by religious edict.

But by 2100, populations in some major economies will fall by 20 to 50 percent, based on UN projections. This includes Europe, North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, India, the Middle East and North Africa. The global support ratio of working-age people to senior citizens was 9.7 in 1997. Today it's 6.5, projected to be 3.9 by 2050. In "Global North" countries it is 3.9, projected to be 2.0 by 2050. Seniors will account for a quarter of global consumption by 2050. While we should continue combating the birth dearth, let’s face it: our reality is a decreasing fertility and a youth deficit that will sharply reduce the working-age component of societies across the globe. This is not sustainable for modern society: it is collapsing.

What accounts for this birth dearth? Our ARC-News lead articles in the Nov. 30 and Dec. 14 issues of last year provided several reasons: The first is the "Age of Reason" in the West that exalted human rationality and its ability to analyze and control the natural, material world. Some call this the "Age of Enlightenment" but it should more aptly be named the "Age of Endarkenment" because, as St. Paul wrote – "although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:21-22).

Second is the industrial age, which ushered in the ability via steam engines, electricity, and oil products to vastly expand mankind's ability to produce material goods. This caused us to further change our focus from the world as God's creation to a world that is just waiting to be exploited for mankind's material gain and comfort. Education became completely secularized. We now have homes with central heating and cooling, kitchens full of modern appliances to make life easier, cars and smoothly paved roads to drive on, and unprecedented wealth per capita. But we've also polluted our air with petrochemical exhausts, our waters with microplastics that cause infertility, and our land with radioactive and poisonous chemical waste.

Thirdly, this ushered in the idea that we no longer needed traditional morality to have "the good life" as people accumulated more stuff and money. The pursuit of pleasure and possessions replaced the pursuit of holiness and glorifying God. By the latter half of the 20th century, the idea that the "Great Society" welfare state would provide for our every need means we don't need to bother with having children to take care of us in our old age, "the Pill" and abortion broke the link between sex and reproduction, schools began handing out condoms and the Pill to high school students without parents' knowledge or consent, and college campuses became places of rampant bed-hopping.

The first article quoted above mentioned the study “Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality” from the prestigious McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), It tells that modern society has made us dependent on the secular state for education, healthcare, and retirement so that we don't need to take care of ourselves, struggle and study to learn a profession, earn our own way, raise a family, and provide for our old age: the government will provide for us.

We have become fat and lazy: most people spend the majority of their waking hours in front of a screen, either with their noses glued to their smartphones, staring at a computer, or watching TV – usually over the Internet. This has resulted in about 50% of young men not meeting the physical or intellectual standards for military service, "a population that does not want to serve, and that is too fat and dumb to serve effectively."

The "all-powerful, all-wise social welfare state" has run out of gas, money and people. It can no longer collect enough taxes to provide all of the services and benefits that it has promised and that the people have voted for. Creating "fiat money" out of thin air by simply issuing more bonds has resulted in cheapening the value of currencies in nearly all developed economies: I remember that when I was a child a first-class stamp cost two cents and a candy bar cost five cents. Now they cost about 30 times as much! This inflation is the result of financing the social welfare state by issuing "funny money" and thus devaluing our currency.

Inflation is not a law of nature, it is a man-made, government-made way of deceiving people into believing that they're earning more money so they and the future generations can pay more taxes. Even the laws of nature are not the final word: Information Science is the transformation of meaningless bits of raw data into "data structures" of meaningful information. The universe is not merely raw matter, it requires structure and information to exist; astrophysicists now know that there's something beyond human ability to comprehend, even with the best scientific instruments: they call it "Dark Matter" or "Dark Energy" that makes up over 95% of the universe and without which the universe cannot exist or hold together.

We cannot continue deceiving ourselves into thinking that life will always go on as usual, that the secular state is able to solve all social and economic problems. It is high time – even past time – for us to repent of our overweening pride, our greed and laziness, to turn away from this postmodern mentality that everything will continue getting better and better. We need to return to faith in the real, supernatural God who has revealed Himself in the Living Word, the Logos – the true Logic and Meaning of life – "Who is the icon of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him (the Logos) were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things are held together" (Colossians 1:15-17).

You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-02-08.htm, and share it!

Thursday, January 23, 2025

EXPERIENCE THE FULLNESS

See Colossians 2:9 below: after verse 9, click on the cross-reference to Col. 1:15 about Christ, the Annointed One: "Who is the icon [image] of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation"; then scroll down in the bottom frame to verse 19: "For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him". This is repeated in the cross-reference Heb. 1:3 – "His Son is the radiance of His glory, the very icon [image] of His [the Father's] person" ("image" is "eikon" in Greek).

What is this "fullness" all about? Here's the answer: read verses 9 and 10: "For in Him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and you have this fullness in Him, Who is the head of all principality and power" when you've been "buried with Him in baptism" and "raised with Him through faith in the working of God" (verse 12)....

Next, click on all of the cross-reference links after verse 10: you'll see this "fullness" is a major theme in all of the Gospels and the Apostles' letters. The Messiah – the Christ – came to make us perfect and holy like Himself: these cross-references that use terms like "holiness," "transformation," "walking in the Spirit," "partaking of the divine nature," etc., all describe what is called in Eastern Christianity "Divinization" or "Theosis" (←get the two free booklets on these topics!). Read carefully all these cross-references, especially Mt. 5:48; Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2 & 30; 1 Cor. 10:16; 1 Cor. 15:49; Eph. 4:11-16; Heb. 12:14 and Heb. 13:4-6; 1 Pet. 1:14-16; and 2 Pet. 1:3-4, so Theosis is a very scriptural doctrine.

We are called to be saints or holy ("holy" and "saint" are one and the same word, "hagios" in Greek), to partake of Christ in communion ("koinonia" in Greek) – the Lord's Supper, thus to become partakers ("koinonoi") of the Divine nature, to participate in His glory, so we must strive for and pursue holiness (Heb. 13:4-6). Holiness and perfection are possible in Christ! Don't think so? Henry Ford once said – "There are two kinds of people: those who think they can't, and those who think they can. Both are right."

What you really believe is reflected in how you behave. A "norm" is a target or goal that is expected of us. The norm for us is holiness and perfection. When people say they want to be "normal, just like everyone else," they really mean that they want to be average, not different than most others. But holiness and perfection aren't just the average, they are higher norms. You don't need to be smart or rich or strong, though, in order to be holy and perfect. If you have experienced Christ, the visible image, the icon, of the invisible God in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells, you're on your way to experience this same fullness that is in Christ. God partook of human nature so that we can become partakers of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). How should we then live (behave)? Get The Benedict Option and related articles and books, many of them free.

You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-01-25.htm, and share it!

Friday, January 10, 2025

AGAINST CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

(Click the pic!) Is Christianity really dying? The author of the article "Against Christian Civilization" paints a rather morose picture of Christianity on its last legs, but is it really Christianity that is dying? Or is it the mashup of "Judeo-Christian faith" and secular humanist democracy that is dying? The secularized, democratized version of Christianity that says you can reinterpret the faith to suit the latest liberal ideology certainly ought to die, and is. It has devolved into Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), defined in Wikipedia as follows:

1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

The idea of "religious freedom" has devolved into a vague belief that you should be nice to people because it's nice to be nice: it is a logical paradox, circular reasoning, It's like when a mother tells little child to be good and the child says – "Why?" So she answers – "Because I said so!" That appeal to mom's authority might hold until the child's teenage years, but then evaporates when the kids are introduced to "freedom of thought" and begin to feel their hormones and explore alternatives. The attraction of satisfying one's desires often wins out over the fuzzy moralism of "Because I said so!"

And then the next generation – the "fuzzies" – is taught that there's no moral authority, you can do whatever you choose, it has no moral compass at all other than the pleasure principle. If there is no resurrection from the dead, no eternal reward or punishment, as St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:32, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." They may theoretically believe that some sort of deity exists somewhere "out there in space," but deep down, their real belief system is the pleasure principle. What you really believe determins how you behave.

So now we've come to the logical conclusion of this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) ideology – satisfying one's urges, feel good about oneself, try to be nice to others if it's convenient and doesn't interfere with one's selfish desires, the government can and should take care of all our problems, etc. – is unravelling. People are beginning to see it doesn't work, so they are returning to the ancient Christian faith that is based on eternal beliefs and behavior: the article "Believe it or not, Christianity is making a comeback" tells us how many leading figures in modern western society have realized the bankruptcy of MTD and have returned to the fixed, eternal truths of traditional, "orthodox" (and often big-O "Orthodox") Christianity.

We must pray that this trend among leading intellectuals and social media heros will spread to the masses!