Benjamin Glaser

Paganism and the Wrath of God

Sin is a serious matter. To break the commandments of Jehovah means His wrath will come down upon you. Here we see why it is when we are discussing this question of paganism and how the church is to respond that we take seriously what it is we are doing. This isn’t a philosophical competition between different ideas on what works. We are telling the pagans to give up their false gods, to destroy their ancient landmarks, and come to the place of safety and rest. For if they don’t? Then they will face the same end as the cows of Bashan.

Paganism as a word comes from a Latin term which roughly translates to redneck. It was a way for the city folk to sound superior to the great unwashed out in the country. The history of how it became known as a way to describe those men and women who believe not in the God of the Bible is a little convoluted. However, it will be worth our time to learn a bit of it as it teaches us much about the worth of continuing to use it for our purposes today.
Early Christianity was a faith which began to spread first in the cities of the Mediterranean, as told to us in the Book of Acts. The main reason was because that is where the synagogues were. As Paul notes the gospel was for the Jews first, and then the Greeks. As the community of faith grew it was largely confined in the population centers as the folks out in the hollers surrounding Ephesus held on to the old ways. Partly that came from the fact for many there was such a tight connection between Jupiter and Mars and their identity as Romans. To attack the strong gods was to delegitimize the patriotic spirit of the nation. The cult was the culture. Ties to the past matter, at least they should matter. In our talk on the eighth commandment last Thursday there was commentary on the warning given in Proverbs 22:28 about the removing of ancient landmarks. Our fathers placed monuments to help their grandchildren to remember the hard-fought victories of the past and to honor the sacrifices of those who came before.
For a “new” religion to come and try and overthrow what these people had received as an inheritance was no small ask. It is central to why care and consideration, to listen, to what the unbeliever has to say is important in the work of evangelism. To make pagans into Christians is desiring not just that a person would go from one belief system to another, but to move them to abandon everything which made them who they were before. Those of us born into the faith can sometimes underestimate the totality of what Jesus asks in Luke 9:62. Even for the Jews of the first century that meant giving up the ceremonies of which they had grown accustomed, yet they had an advantage on the pagans in that they were keeping the same God. The first commandment is complete in its ask. The reason why this is important to understanding the word pagan is that when we use it, we are not attempting to belittle or be rude in any way. It is a helpful way to honor that as those who rest in body and soul we are bringing to bare not a competing way of thinking, but an entirely different world and life view.
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The Eighth Commandment and God’s Gift

The attitude intimated from the Bible is that as creatures we owe all that we have to the Creator. We have nothing that is ours strictly speaking. Our life, whether physical or spiritual, our talents, even the providence of time is all from above. The more men and women consider that the more free they will feel with the resources God in His grace has provided for them. If Jesus did not keep Himself to Himself how much more so do we learn positively from the eight commandment to share and not take that which is not ours. 

There is a consistent concern in the second table of the law that calls all men to recognize the needs of their neighbors over whatever is their own. We know that because that’s what Jesus says in Matthew 22:36-40. It’s also what Moses writes in Leviticus 19:18. The Bible is reliable like that. God in His grace is a witness to all men that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves and we should have the needs and the mind of the community first. If anything is less a part of our mindset today I am not sure what it would be. Everything from our time to our energy to the way we approach life is geared toward me, myself, and I. Watching four or five commercials is all one needs to confirm that thesis. “What’s wrong with you and how can you improve you” is the attitude which overwhelms our culture. In no other place is the chasm greater than when it comes to what we should do with the financial resources the Lord has granted to us in His providence. We hold onto it for dear life, and not without reason. We should be good stewards of the money and goods God in His grace grants.
In our look at the Westminster Larger Catechism this morning we are going to hear some pushback from the Divines that will require listening as it goes directly against the American way of life in some important ways. Get ready to find some humility.
Here are the two Questions and Answer’s for today:
Q. 140: Which is the eighth commandment?
A. The eighth commandment is, Thou shalt not steal.
Q. 141: What are the duties required in the eighth commandment?
A. The duties required in the eighth commandment are, truth, faithfulness, and justice in contracts and commerce between man and man; rendering to everyone his due; restitution of goods unlawfully detained from the right owners thereof; giving and lending freely, according to our abilities, and the necessities of others; moderation of our judgments, wills, and affections concerning worldly goods; a provident care and study to get, keep, use, and dispose these things which are necessary and convenient for the sustentation of our nature, and suitable to our condition; a lawful calling, and diligence in it; frugality; avoiding unnecessary lawsuits and suretyship, or other like engagements; and an endeavour, by all just and lawful means, to procure, preserve, and further the wealth and outward estate of others, as well as our own.
Whenever we begin to ask the question about what a law of God requires of us we need to do two things immediately: 1) What do we know about the character of our Lord that would inform our understanding? 2) Why is it good for me and my friends that I heed the call?
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The Slow Death of the Christian West

It begins with the Church recognizing first how pagan it has become, then rooting out our rotten structures and rebuilding them in the eyes of the Word and His word. We can’t hope to overturn the advances of Satan with a gospel that doesn’t even move those who already believe it. Our preaching must be with power and assurance, and our discipleship needs be ordered to shape all the areas of life that a Believer needs prepared to face. And none of this can come about without prayer. We so underestimate what prayer can accomplish because we fail to comprehend the God we pray to.

As the next to last entry for the fall series on things that go bump in the night we need to talk a little bit about a subject that can illustrate for us some of the dangers of the world in which we are currently living, especially in the West. When I say “the West” I mean Europe and North America. The cultural fishbowl in which all of us live in our day-to-day. Despite what your DEI representative (and I can’t be the only southerner who reads that as Dale Earnhardt, Inc.) told you at the last HR meeting it is okay for us to identify and express ourselves as Western. We are men and women who are the result of a bunch of dead white guys philosophizing about the world and we are also the result of the infiltration (in a good way) of the Bible into how we see and understand everything around us. It’s not white supremacy to notice our own culture, and even think that it is good and in fact better than what came before Europe became the Europe it became after Constantine’s dictate. We should celebrate the fact that we don’t sacrifice babies on the altar (well, more on that in a second) and force women to die with their husbands. Those things are bad. White men passing laws that stopped it were good. We shouldn’t be ashamed to say so. The art, philosophy, science, religion, etc… that produced the Christian states of Europe were and continue to be a blessing to all those downstream from them. Yet, there is a problem.
In our prayer and worship help today we are going to talk about the world in which we live today and how the same men tasked with building up have been working to destroy and tear down. We are now experiencing the results of this evil. In some sense the reappearance of the strong gods, the pagan culture we left a millennia or more ago is all a result of men abandoning their responsibilities in accordance with the Fifth Commandment. Everything comes back to the law of God, and whether society will bow their knee to Christ or seek to be their own god. Psalm 2 and other passages warn us as to the consequences of such. I get calls/texts regularly from folks both within and outside the congregation about why we see such rampant licentiousness and sin in the world today. On one hand the earth has been so since the days of Adam’s fall. However, there were times when it was better, even if sin was still present. The golden age is not yet with us. In our Thursday catechism lesson this week we are going to hear about Stews, and as will be opened there that means brothels, houses of ill-repute. Why did our Westminster Divines write about this? Because it was a problem. They were all over the place in Seventeenth-Century England. How many open, public, state-authorized spaces do we have for this practice in Clover? I am not naïve enough to not know that there is availability for such if you were desiring to look.
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Demon Possession? Or Just Me Being a Sinner?

Demonic possession can too often be the scapegoat for our own weakness. It most certainly has its place in the toolbox of explaining how wicked this world gets at times, but as a wise theologian once said, sinners don’t need Satan’s help to sin. We can do that all on our own.

We could probably write quite a lot more on demon possession. It is an inexhaustible subject. To that point this will be our last foray which specifically touches on it. We’ll move next week onto more tangible matters for this series on things which goes bump in the night. God is gracious and merciful to us and a thing He warns about in His word is against both an unhealthy obsession with the devil and his ways and spending so much time in them that you actually come to be marked among their number. A danger that police departments monitor all the time with undercover agents is that they do not “turn” in the midst of doing their job, or as Paul warns in Ephesians 5:11 we are to take no part in the works of darkness and that means being wise in our study. It is also a category of theology that probably shouldn’t be majored on by those young in the faith. As we take our leave and enter once more into the fray our focus will be on some of the strategies available to see demonic activity and then how to deal with it in a Biblical manner.
Whenever we talk about the minions of the devil our ideas are far more influenced by Hollywood and the internet than anything noted in the pages of Holy Scripture. The vast majority of that which we would expect to see is extremely rare. No twisting heads and vomiting girls, or superhuman strength on display here. We are much more likely to see the demonic in the deceiving works of the devil’s light than through a straightforward attack. Even Satan knows a fainting flanking maneuver is wiser than an all-out assault on the center of the line. Usually we do not even see it until it has already taken place. There is more truth to the old cartoon trope of the demon on your shoulder whispering sweet things in your ear than a “spirit” controlling you like a robot. A wormtoungue saying who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes. Much like other prophets the devil works in the word. He claims to carry with him the testimony of truth and honesty. He convinces by encouragement and encouragers. He leads astray like a pied piper of death. We have much more to fear from well-speakon tellers of the desires of our heart than a crazed maniac shouting insanity. No one was convinced by Hitler who did not already agree with his solutions to the problems of the day. A young man who decides one day he is a young lady is not brought to that place of hope by the conditioning of the media, but through the small leadings of a heart long-since given over to the termination of the image of God.
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Can We Really Believe in Demonic Possession?

In taking seriously the issue we need to be wise to those who would glam on to the opportunity provided by stoking either fear or fascination with the occult. We confess and testify to the veracity of the negative spiritual world and its existence to be sure. That being said we must be able to see that which is true and bring the full weight of God’s cleansing power upon its destruction. 

Thinking through how demon possession works in 2023 and how it remains an active force even when so many people do not believe in its existence can be a difficult labor. In some ways writing on this matter can sound like taking time to ponder through leprechauns, fairies, and other mystical forest creatures. Most enlightened people, usually of a settled upper-middle class bourgeoisie mindset are of the opinion that we have moved passed such notions and need to spend our time in the real world. However, it has been the opinion of the last several Tuesday essays that it is actually the comfortable suburban types who need to get with the program. Not only is demonic activity still with us, denying its existence is dangerous for the well-being of humanity. The aforementioned forest deities are likewise more with us than some would bother to consider. More on them later.
Today as we get back into the question I want to ask a few leading questions. First of all, why, or better yet, how did we get into a world where so few want to believe in the presence of the spiritual, whether good or bad. The answer to that goes back to man’s discovery in the 18th century that he no longer needed the superstitions of the past to grow crops or in his finding new scientific ways of accomplishing victories over nature previously thought impossible. Humanity’s confidence in itself, and unwillingness to see its failures made it immune to the noumenal realm. However, just like a dog who hides its face behind a telephone pole, merely because Dr. Ph.D. isn’t looking at the transcendent doesn’t mean it’s not there. Our haughtiness just makes us more blind and grants more power to the wicked spirits of this age.
That being said and while chronological snobbery may be the privilege of the age in which we live it is not the fact that we are in some sense smarter than those who came before us. We may have more access to information, but as I have noted before folks in the Bible knew the difference between what was actual and what was not. No one on the planet was more surprised their staffs turned to snakes than the sorcerers of Pharaoh’s house. Our forefathers in the Reformed faith, including the Father of the Puritans William Perkins who wrote the English manual on demonic activities were likewise concerned that we treat the subject with fairness and honesty. Perkins made a distinction between actual witches and those who by reason of whipping themselves up conjured a feeling of demonic activity.
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If You Can’t be Happy for Your Sister/Brother…

There is much pain awaiting those who can’t just be happy for other people. An unwillingness to recognize our own limitations and the superiority of others when it comes to talent, gifting, and opportunity is likely the most damaging thing we can do to our own peace. It is a truism that there is nothing more ugly than jealousy and this doubly goes for life within the kingdom of Christ. If we cannot help but feel anguish at the success of others within our own gathering of God’s people then we need to meditate on why we are moved to such about those whom Jesus has laid down His life. 

Closing out the Fifth Commandment is a series of Q/A’s on the duties and sins of equals, and as with the Fourth, a testimony as to how God has given reminder of why we are to keep this portion of His law perfectly. In some ways how we treat those at our level really says who we are as a person. It’s easy to be magnanimous to someone who works for you, and to treat with honor the King, but it takes a different muscle to support and pray with a man or woman of your own station. We have a fear here that needs mortified as much as any other transgression of the law.
Probably the best Biblical example we could go to on this front would be either the conflict between brothers (Cain/Able, Jacob/Esau) or the individual divisions among the closest disciples of Jesus Christ (Sons of Thunder) among who would be the greatest. So much of the word is given over to these types of struggles, and at the heart of them is what really is at the heart of every sin associated with the first of the second table sins, and that is pride. Part of our inborn depravity is thinking we deserve more than others. Regardless of what we have done, not done, or may do there is a little voice in all of us that wants to be preferred, to gain the first and to never be last.
In today’s questions we are going to hear some reasons why it is antichrist to live in such competition with one another. Let’s read the catechism together:
Q. 131: What are the duties of equals?
A. The duties of equals are, to regard the dignity and worth of each other, in giving honor to go one before another; and to rejoice in each others gifts and advancement, as their own.
Q. 132: What are the sins of equals?
A. The sins of equals are, besides the neglect of the duties required, the undervaluing of the worth, envying the gifts, grieving at the advancement or prosperity one of another; and usurping pre-eminence one over another.
Q. 133: What is the reason annexed to the fifth commandment, the more to enforce it?
A. The reason annexed to the fifth commandment, in these words, That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, is an express promise of long life and prosperity, as far as it shall serve for God’s glory and their own good, to all such as keep this commandment.
Reading the duties required of equals can be a great lesson in humility. There is nothing worse than admitting that someone might actually be better than you at something you like.
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Don’t Sass Your Mother!

Part of the wisdom of the Fifth commandment is ensuring that as the son learns to give praise and honor to his mother, he would absorb sympathetic love from her witness of piety and grace towards her superiors and through that would learn much towards how he is to care and provide for those God might one day grant him to serve in leadership both in the home and in the church. We teach so much by our own example, particularly when we seemingly gain nothing from the transaction. 

Our catechism questions for today are going to start at the bottom and work their way up. As we have noted before the language here may be somewhat uncomfortable for us. This is because we live in an egalitarian age and the WLC was written in a more biblical time. Part of the tenor of the fifth commandment is that there is hierarchy, and that it is good. Everyone can’t be the same, and if society (including the Church) is to be rightly ordered than it is important that all men and women understand and know their role. A well-oiled and fabricated machine will run forever if this cog and that cog stay where they are supposed to. The second a flywheel decides it would be a better fit as a cylinder then your steam engine is going to go kablooie.
God has formed each human with dignity, respect, and purpose. Christians do not base their love and care for individuals upon fleshly categories of large or insignificant, or utilitarian ideas of what can this person do for me. All people great and small are made in His image and deserve the same benevolent passion regardless of where they might fit in His kingdom. That being said one of the sins mentioned below that it would be good for us to consider as we read the questions and answers for today is the transgression of “. . .envying at, contempt of, and rebellion against, [a superior’s] persons and places. . .”. Humility, thanksgiving, and contentment are the marks of a committed believer in Jesus Christ and they more so than in maybe any other context come into play when it is time be gracious in obedience to God’s design for us in this life, so that we might be ready and able to enjoy the plan He has for us in the life to come. We’re to be who God made us.
As we meditate on that let’s go to the Q/A’s:
Q. 127. What is the honor that inferiors owe to their superiors?
A. The honor which inferiors owe to their superiors is, all due reverence in heart, word, and be­haviour; prayer and thanksgiving for them; imitation of their virtues and graces; willing obedi­ence to their lawful commands and counsels; due submission to their corrections; fidelity to, de­fence, and maintenance of their persons and authority, according to their several ranks, and the na­ture of their places; bearing with their infirmities, and covering them in love, that so they may be an honor to them and to their government.
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Leaders Are to Be Holy, Righteous, and Good

Whether you are a Superior by choice (Father/Mother/Politician) or by call (Minister/Elder/Deacon) there is a seriousness to the responsibility you take on by answering the bell. There are no accidents in God’s kingdom. Acting as one in charge means you are in charge. As Hebrews 13:17 reminds us our King of Kings will hold us to account to how we used our place of authority. The question for Superiors is straight-forward and laid out succinctly in our Catechism for today. Do you understand what it takes to be liable for those under your care?

Fathers, Husbands, Presidents, Leaders of all stripes should be holy men, who seek the spiritual and physical well-being of their people and those to whom God in His wisdom has granted them oversight. Failure to be men of valor, of truth, and of righteousness is sin, not only personally in that all human beings regardless of position or title are to be holy, but it is a transgression with malice in that those given the charge of headship are to be examples in how they walk in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Our Larger Catechism queries for today detail for us myriads of ways that the kings of old and the politicians (as well as ministers and patriarchs) of today are failing to keep their covenantal responsibilities to God and man.
Here are the Q/A’s:
Q. 129: What is required of superiors towards their inferiors?
A. It is required of superiors, according to that power they receive from God, and that relation wherein they stand, to love, pray for, and bless their inferiors; to instruct, counsel, and admonish them; countenancing, commending, and rewarding such as do well; and discountenancing, reproving, and chastising such as do ill; protecting, and providing for them all things necessary for soul and body: and by grave, wise, holy, and exemplary carriage, to procure glory to God, honour to themselves, and so to preserve that authority which God hath put upon them.
Q. 130: What are the sins of superiors?
A. The sins of superiors are, besides the neglect of the duties required of them, an inordinate seeking of themselves, their own glory, ease, profit, or pleasure; commanding things unlawful, or not in the power of inferiors to perform; counselling, encouraging, or favouring them in that which is evil; dissuading, discouraging, or discountenancing them in that which is good; correcting them unduly; careless exposing, or leaving them to wrong, temptation, and danger; provoking them to wrath; or any way dishonouring themselves, or lessening their authority, by an unjust, indiscreet, rigorous, or remiss behaviour.
In a subtle reminder of the nature of the wickedness to which we will be speaking today we hear at the introduction of every evil king of Israel this familiar phrase, “And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of his father, and in his sin by which he had made Israel sin.” (1 Kings 15:26). There is a both/and that needs explained further. In this case, Nadab, is convicted by the writer of two crimes. His own individual sin and the sin he committed against God by making Israel to sin. This kind of sin by proxy is quite foreign to our libertarian ears.
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Good Governance Begins with Knowledge

God gives us rules in society for our own good. Men are to be men, women are to be women, and kings are to be kings, and servants are to be servants. There is no denying that this is the natural order of things. We remember that the Ten Commandments are not a response to sin, but are the very character of the Lord laid out for us to follow and be conformed to. If we would stand in authority over the law then we have become a law unto ourselves. 

We are going to do something a little bit different today for our look at the Larger Catechism. In the act of taking questions out of order it may seem as if we are doing violence to the original intent of the writers. If they wanted  to keep the scope and the definition of the fifth command together they would of done so. Why should I feel the right to divide them? It’s a good inquiry worthy of an explanation. Simply put the breaking up of a multi-year look of 196 questions is going to mean that some decisions will be necessary in order to better explain the totality of the purpose of the Christian religion for believers and unbelievers alike. When it comes to this part of the law some terms are going to be used that are wildly foreign to the way we talk today, for good or for ill. Any conversation that gets into hierarchy, roles, and place is going to receive some pushback, since nearly all of our agencies and corporations operate with a strict conception of egalitarianism, that is that men, women, children, etc… are equal in such a way that any talk of difference is seen as demeaning or derogatory. Yet, we will see that the Bible is anti-egalitarian in a number of important ways.
In our walk through these three catechism questions we’ll see a couple of things that will neuter any conversation that the WLC is in any way making ontological statements about worth or value, one to another. However, what we will notice is that God has a purpose in not only making us different, but giving each of us unique roles to play in His kingdom. Our faith is patriarchal and it is so because God is God and we are not. Let’s get into the Q/A’s so we can talk more:
Q. 123. Which is the fifth commandment?
A. The fifth commandment is, Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
Q. 124. Who are meant by father and mother in the fifth commandment?
A. By father and mother, in the fifth commandment, are meant, not only natural parents, but all superiors in age and gifts; and especially such as, by God’s ordinance, are over us in place of au­thority, whether in family, church, or commonwealth.
Q. 126. What is the general scope of the fifth commandment?
A. The general scope of the fifth commandment is, the performance of those duties which we mutu­ally owe in our several relations, as inferiors, superiors, or equals.
As you can probably tell from the middle of the three questions there are some assumptions made about the way God made the world that need defined.
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Why All Men are Capable of the Greatest Evil

The devil successfully tempts no one who is not seeking to listen to his lies. Eve had already decided that God’s word was untrue and without merit for her self-identity when the Serpent came to speak to her about the forbidden fruit. If we fool ourselves into thinking that what the wickedest person on TV has done is outside our capabilities then we misunderstand not only ourselves, but the depravity that exists in all men. 

As we get deeper and deeper into those things that go bump in the night one of the foundational aspects of this that could use some more reflection is the whole doctrine of evil itself. We live in a day and age that loves to blame everything under the sun instead of the individual. It’s either nature, nurture, or environmental. The reason cannot be personal decisions or the private desire of the human heart. It must be someone else’s influence, or denial, that has led the man or woman to perform some act that is deemed to be hurtful or wrong by some measure. Yet, when we examine the Biblical record there is no sense in which anyone is ever liable (excepting of course those with documented demon possession, which is what we will take up next week), but the sinner themselves.
The free choice to transgress and rebel needs some more thought, because if we are being honest our greatest worry in this present time is not ghosts, aliens, apparitions, or Freddy Kreuger…it is other humans and what they are capable of given a chance.
The conflict between good and evil in the world, the background for the series, is always on the mind of men concerned with what is happening and why. While Christians believe and understand that the struggle is less a battle for supremacy than a mopping up action of an already vanquished foe (1 Cor. 15:55) there still remains the day-to-day reality of Satan’s attempts to defeat the undefeatable. When we read of a young man (or increasingly a young woman) shooting up a school or the like our minds are drawn to the unimaginable. How could someone think that was a rational action to take? Our commentary is often filled with terms such as insane or mentally ill and phrases including out of their mind or they lost it. A word which seems to have been lost, but was formerly popular was postal. All in their own way seeking to comprehend in some empathetic manner the motives of the killer. We could never imagine ourselves doing it so it must mean that the person who did do it has something wrong with them. Our answer of course is, yes, they did have something wrong with them. However, the truth hits too close to home. The only reason we have not done likewise is because of the mercy of God. We have not been given over to the desires of our heart (Matt. 5:22). Before we get into why we need to ask how we don’t go there.
The Scriptures tell us things including, “An oracle within my heart concerning the transgression of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes.” (Ps. 36:1) and “For you have trusted in your wickedness; You have said, ‘No one sees me’; Your wisdom and your knowledge have warped you; And you have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one else besides me!” (Is. 47:10) and finally, “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9).
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