If you only view mainstream media you probably have no idea what the protest in Wellington is like. You’ve been told they are white supremacists. They are also very dangerous as this video clearly demonstrates.
The ‘white supremacists’ at the Wellington Protest
The cracks in the dam are showing
The end of the Covid nightmare seems in sight. The sceptics are being proved right, and more and more people are waking up to the injustice of the government’s authoritarian response these last couple of years. The Convoy, and subsequent police brutality and politicians’ disdainful dismissal of genuine grievances has been the combustible material that will bring more to Wellington in support of the convoy and maintain the pressure on our corrupt and cowardly politicians.
Jacinda’s dismissal of the protestors as “not representative of the vast majority of New Zealanders” is only likely to push more enraged people into protests. We have seen with our own eyes packed motorway bridges. Our telegram channels have been inundated with videos from real people, not media with a set perspective to push. We are not 70-year old nanas ready and willing to believe what the nice people on the news serve up to us each night about those nasty anti-vaxxers who don’t care if everyone dies.
Read MoreGod’s Law and the Christian
It seems there is quite a lot of confusion over the relevance of God’s law to the Christian in evangelical circles today. I claim no special insight into this as I too have grown up in this confusion. We’re not under law but under grace right? So that means the law is irrelevant? Why does Jesus say he didn’t come to abrogate the law when Paul seems to say the Christian is not under the law? What about the laws around sacrifice? What about stoning adulterers? it seems so very complex. Recently, however, I read an excellent book called “By this Standard” by Greg Bahnsen which is an outline for the case of the ongoing validity of the Law.
Before you accuse Bahnsen of arguing for works righteousness, that is not what he is talking about at all. There are some things the law cannot do.
What the Law Cannot Do
- The law cannot contribute anything toward the personal justification of one who stands under its curse for violating its precepts.
- The law cannot break the stranglehold and power of sin in a person’s life.
- The law delivered by Moses never could actually make anything perfect. Redemption comes not through the law.
What the Law Can Do
So according to Bahnsen what can the law do?
- The law declares the character of God and so reveals His glory
- The law displays the demand of God upon our lives as men.
- The law pronounces blessing upon adherence to its demands
- The law provides a definition of sin.
- The law exposes infractions and convicts of sin.
- Even more, the law works to incite rebellion in sinful men.
- Consequently, the law condemns all transgression as deserving God’s wrath and curse.
- The law drives us to Christ for salvation.
- The law guides the sanctification of the believer.
- The law also serves to restrain the evil of the unregenerate.
Bahnsen definitely got me thinking about the typical “Oh that’s Old Testament stuff” that we use to so easily write off the law that the Psalmist meditated on day and night and the Scriptures that were able to make Timothy and his readers wise unto salvation.
Mainstream Media – Useless or Liars?
On Sunday I took my family to one of the motorway overbridges to take a look at the Convoy protestors passing by. I was pleased to see other happy Kiwis and their kids flying New Zealand flags, holding anti mandate and pro-freedom signs, laughing and having a good time while passers-by tooted support. The atmosphere was festive and jovial aside from the odd aggressive motorist who gestured how many brain cells they had or voiced their low opinion of freedom with profanities despite the obvious presence of young children.
Though the protest has been building as it has made its way down from the North and up from Bluff, little attention has been paid to it by the media. The attention that has been shown is designed to turn naive media consumers against the protestors. A short clip on TV showed some people flying Trump flags on one bridge – I have seen lots of footage of this event and this is the only bridge I saw Trump flags on. But because our completely neutral media has trained some segments of the population to go rabid when they even get a whiff of Trump much like Pavlov managed to get dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell, those scenes were enough to turn a number against the protestors. Propaganda has a strong effect on the weak-minded.
As the convoy continued its way toward Wellington, more organisations began to mention them. Naturally numbers were played down. People were framed as crazies. Today we had this from the objective reporters sitting behind their keyboards and watching their Twitter feeds.
We have a convoy of vehicles. Apparently, it has attracted hundreds of people in up to 1000 vehicles. Yes..really. Not sure how that works.
Those out on the bridges, those who got stuck in the traffic, and those standing on the mainstreets of towns throughout the country cheering on the protestors know that this is big, even if our mainstream media are looking the other way. Tech is on our side. We can share our videos and information. We don’t need these clowns to frame the story for us.
And so, at a certain point, like now, as the protestors all arrive in Wellington, it becomes harder to lie to the people. So the article changes. Unless you happened to have a screenshot of the original wording, you might never know. It’s like the memory hole in 1984.
Now there are hundreds of cars, in fact up to 1000 vehicles and several thousand on Parliament’s lawn. Never mind all the thousands of people who have been out in support over the last few days in every town, suburb, and motorway bridge.
So what can they do now? Back to the old tactic of smearing these protestors. Karen, sorry Carol wound down her window to give the thumbs down to free choice and freedom and someone apparently threw a can to her side of the road which caused her to feel unsafe. The protest organisers have made it clear that the protest is to be peaceful, so this is not endorsed if it even happened. But Karen, dear Karen; we feel unsafe living among fascists like you who think it is perfectly acceptable for a government to force people like us to be vaccinated against our will.
Do we have anyone interviewed from the protest to give information about what they are protesting about? Don’t be silly, that would take effort and some semblance of objectivity. To be fair, a woman who saw the protest drive through was reported as saying it was huge and took 45 minutes to pass.
We are then told Ardern is too busy to come and talk to the protestors. Too busy to see the people to whom she supposedly ministers and whose lives she has destroyed with her policies over the past couple of years. Too busy? Too scared! That spineless jellyfish Luxon also is refusing to show. Not only that he has made it clear he does not want his MPs to attend either. Why? Because he is pro-vaccination and thinks the mandates are fine at this point in time. In other words, when enough the current finally moves to see them as wicked and evil, jellyfish Luxon will float that way too. Right now, there are thousands of unrepresented Kiwis looking for a leader. And Luxon, you’re not him.
Shepherds – how is your flock doing?
The failure of the New Zealand church through the pandemic ought to be clear to all except the most blinded by now. I suspect that when we eventually get back to normal, the church won’t look like it did in 2020. Many individual churches have been weighed and found wanting. The rot that was already in some of the timber but painted over with nice glossy paint so that the average Christian didn’t notice it has been exposed for just about all to see. It turns out paint over dry rot counts for nothing when someone comes along and squeezes that timber hard. So what has happened to the flock?
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Game Plan? Be the Crazy Prophet Guy
Lately I’ve been thinking about how we get out of this mess. Sure Ardern is dropping in popularity – surprisingly slowly given her government’s incompetence and wickedness. I think part of the problem is that so many Kiwis have bought the “Health Issue” narrative, and because they have done everything they have been told, they are relatively unaffected. Unfortunately, many of these ordinary Kiwis think they are getting a balanced and fair representation of the state of things when they switch on the 6 o’clock news or read Stuff. Before scoffing at their naivety, which let’s admit it, would be cathartic, we should consider how to wake these Kiwis up. We don’t want a third consecutive year ruined by these authoritarian tyrants.
Read MoreSums it Up Nicely
I have been told to take a new drug (three times), for a variant it wasn’t designed for, from a company I don’t trust and for a new disease that we still don’t fully understand. And I’m told it is totally safe by politicians whom I rarely believe, who don’t care and refuse to listen or debate the evidence. – Tim Ordei
From here.
Under Shepherds, Represent the Great Shepherd
Some readers of Sojournal may be disappointed that for months now we have moved away from our typical content and focussed on issues covid, particularly the mandates and the tyranny that is being imposed on a once free people. I make no apology for this. Nor are words like tyranny out of place, contrary to the opinions of well-meaning friends who think I’ve gone off the deep end. I am not a slave, and I will not be dictated to by a deity grasping state about what I will put in my body. To hell with that. And I mean that quite literally – that grasping authoritarianism is reminiscent of the evil one himself and clearly signals its diabolical origins. So covid dominates, because this is the issue of our time. This is where the battle currently is, and to ignore it is a dereliction of duty for those who claim to be followers of the king. Unfortunately in too many churches in New Zealand, covid and the issues arising from it have been studiously ignored and ‘spiritual’ matters focussed on. All hell (literally) seems to be breaking loose in our little country, and many under-shepherds of Christ seem content to lull the sheep into a false sense of security rather than train them up for battle and prepare for persecution. Some have even joined the enemy.
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Westminster Confession of Faith 2.1 – What is God?
In our previous look at the Wesminster Confession of Faith we completed the first chapter “Of the Holy Scriptures” with highlighting how Scripture is to be the supreme judge in matters of religious controversy. This week we commence the second chapter of the confession which is entitled “Of God and of the Holy Trinity”.
I. There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal most just and terrible in His judgments; hating all sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty.
In this first part of the chapter we are presented with a number of truths. Firstly we are presented with the fact that there is only one true and living God. The framers of the Confession spend no time proving the existence of God. God is, and it is the fool who denies his existence (Psalm 14:1). Besides, His works and Word testify to Him most clearly as the framers of the Confession discussed in chapter 1.
Next, we are presented with the attributes of God. Theologians often draw a distinction between incommunicable and communicable attributes. Those which are incommunicable are attributes of God alone (such as eternity or immutability) and those which are communicable are attributes that his creatures can share to a lesser degree, such as being and wisdom. We won’t explore all of them, but a smattering will suffice for today’s post.
God is described by the framers as infinite in being and perfection. What does this mean? His existence is free from any limitations. Unlike us, He is everywhere present fully. He is a ‘most pure spirit’, which as the catechism puts it means ‘he has not a body like men’. He is invisible, which is why Russian cosmonauts shouldn’t be surprised they don’t find him in space. His being is pure spirit and when described in Scripture as having a strong arm or eyes, we are merely being given metaphors to help us understand Him. So as a spirit, we can say He is invisible and has no body or parts. But what does it mean that He has no passions? Does it mean that God is emotionless? Clearly the Scriptures do not support this picture of God. We see God rightly expressing compassion, love, wrath and forgiveness. A great little discussion on this term is found here. Essentially what is meant is that “God is not passive, not acted upon or overruled by any other power or influence.”
Listed next are some of his attributes. Immutable means God is unchanging. Change would suggest becoming better or worse and clearly, this cannot apply to the God of the Scriptures. In Him “there is no variation or shadow due to change“(James 1:17). Incomprehensible means that God is not like us. We cannot comprehend him apart from his gracious revelation of himself to us, and even in that, He condescends to the level of our finite understanding. Almighty is what we sometimes describe as omnipotent. God is not constrained and can do as He pleases. Most holy reminds me of the throne room scene in Isaiah’s vision where the seraphim are proclaiming God’s holiness over and over. This highlights his infinite purity and utter transcendence.
The phrase ‘working things to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory‘ reminds us again that God is almighty. He has a will which is righteous and not tainted by sin, and he works all things (yes that means all, even the bad and even the insignificant) so that his perfect will is done and glory is brought to His name.
Towards the end of this first section, we are reminded of God’s love, grace, mercy, patience (long-suffering) and his willingness to forgive sin and reward those who diligently seek Him, but conversely, his just judgment and hatred of sin. He will by no means clear the guilty, which is precisely why His Son Christ had to bear our guilt. These words ought to be a reminder to all to diligently seek God through His son Christ to find forgiveness and his grace and mercy.