At its heart, the Great Reset is a conceited and self-loathing central-European blitzkrieg against the cultural, intellectual, religious, artistic, physical, and, most of all, moral inheritance we have received from our Greco-Roman forebears. 

Part I: The Problem
What is the Great Reset and why should we care? In the midst of a tumultuous medical-societal breakdown, likely engineered by the Chinese Communist Party and abetted by America’s National Institutes of Health “gain of function” financial assistance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, why is the Swiss-based World Economic Forum (WEF) advocating a complete “re-imagining” of the Western world’s social, economic, and moral structures? And why now? What are its aspirations, prescriptions, and proscriptions, and how will it prospectively affect us? It’s a question that the men and women of the WEF are hoping you won’t ask.
This book seeks to supply the answers. It has ample historical precedents, from Demosthenes’s fulminations against Philip II of Macedon (Alexander’s father), Cicero’s Philippics denouncing Mark Antony, the heretic-hunting Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem¸ and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s Nietzsche contra Wagner. Weighty historical issues are often best debated promptly, when something can yet be done about them; in the meantime, historians of the future can at least understand the issues as the participants themselves saw and experienced them. Whether the formerly free world of the Western democracies will succumb to the paternalistic totalitarianism of the oligarchical Resetters remains to be seen. But this is our attempt to stop it.
So great is mankind’s perpetual dissatisfaction with its present circumstances, whatever they may be, that the urge to make the world anew is as old as recorded history. Eve fell under the Serpent’s spell, and with the plucking of an apple, sought to improve her life in the Garden of Eden by becoming, in Milton’s words, “as Gods, Knowing both Good and Evil as they know.” The forbidden fruit was a gift she shared with Adam; how well that turned out has been the history of the human race ever since. High aspirations, disastrous results.
The expulsion from the Garden, however, has not discouraged others from trying. Indeed, the entire chronicle of Western civilization is best regarded as a never-ending and ineluctable struggle for cultural and political superiority, most often expressed militarily (since that is how humans generally decide matters) but extending to all things both spiritual and physical. Dissatisfaction with the status quo may not be universal—timeless and static Asian cultures, such as China’s, have had it imposed upon them by external Western forces, including the British and the Marxist-Leninists—but it has been a hallmark of the occident and its steady civilizational churn that dates back at least to Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Pericles, and Alexander the Great, with whom Western history properly begins.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, assaying the inelegant Koine, or demotic, Greek of the New Testament in Beyond Good and Evil, observed: “Es ist eine Feinheit, daß Gott griechisch lernte, als er Schriftsteller werden wollte—und daß er es nicht besser lernte”: “It’s a particular refinement that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a writer—and that he didn’t learn it better.” Nietzsche, the preacher’s son who became through sheer willpower a dedicated atheist, was poking fun at the fundamentalist belief that the Christian scriptures were the literal words of God himself (Muslims, of course, believe the same thing about the Koran, except more so). If something as elemental, as essential to Western thought as the authenticity of the Bible, not to mention God’s linguistic ability, could be questioned and even mocked, then everything was on the table—including, in Nietzsche’s case, God Himself.
With the death of God—or of a god—Nietzsche sought liberation from the moral jiu-jitsu of Jesus: that weakness was strength; that victimhood was noble; that renunciation—of love, sex, power, ambition—was the highest form of attainment. That Nietzsche’s rejection of God was accompanied by his rejection of Richard Wagner, whose music dramas are based on the moral elevation of rejection, is not coincidental; the great figures of the nineteenth century, including Darwin and Marx, all born within a few years of each other, were not only revolutionaries, but embodied within themselves antithetical forces that somehow evolved into great Hegelian syntheses of human striving with which we still grapple today.
Wagner, the Schopenhauerian atheist who staggered back to Christianity and the anti-Semite who engaged the Jew Hermann Levi as the only man who could conduct his final ode to Christian transfiguration, Parsifal. Charles Darwin, ticketed for an Anglican parsonage but mutating into the author of On the Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, and all the way to The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. Karl Marx, the scion of rabbis whose father converted to Lutheranism and, like Wagner for a time, a stateless rebel who preached that the withering away of the state itself was “inevitable”—and yet the state endures, however battered it may be at the moment.
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The creative class and the affective revolution now “do the work of soul healing and education.” This complex, along with global capitalism, forms the “hypermodern cultural system.” If it can succeed in taking full control of the human rights doctrine “we will have a morality legislated globally.” This possible future for Christianity in the world, he said, is “dark.”

Guilherme de Carvalho, a Brazilian Baptist theologian and founder of the Brazilian Christians in Science Association (ABC2), discussed the impact of the “affective revolution,” which focuses on emotional life and has powered identity politics, and its impact on law, general culture, and thus Christian witness at the recent L’Abri Conference in Rochester, Minnesota.
The revolutionary turn to subjectivity has been reviewed at some length by the L’Abri Fellowship. It has had a major impact on the contemporary world, and Latin America is no exception. But it also has deep roots in European civilization. While the West, especially since the Enlightenment, is supposedly is “founded on reason,” it has also long been an “empire of sentiment.” From this aspect of the Enlightenment, we get “sentimental man.”
De Carvalho said that in the recent past, he was “very much focused on fighting rationalism, new atheism.” This was certainly true of Christian apologetics in general. More recently, particularly in the last decade, he “felt something changing.” He “felt that the frontier of Christian apologetics was moving from epistemology to ethics.” A “main theme” has become “happiness.” There is a “disengagement from the moral universe.” This is done “in the interest of self-expression and well being.” This has become “normal currency.”
Behind and before this change, he said, was a much deeper change that happened from about 1950 to about 1970. This was the mixture of “modern hypercapitalism” with a unfettered sense of “how to feel love, and to organize” one’s emotional state. He called it a “second individualistic revolution.” The idea of  “emotional intelligence” emerged in the 1990s, and it has been normalized since then. By 2011, emotional intelligence tests were more important than IQ tests, de Carvalho claimed. Teachers have tests to “assess the emotional realities of students.” Another development is “positive psychology.” This focuses on individual and social well being. He sees some good in this last item. There is also “affective computing,” which was started in 1995, and attempts to take human psychological reality into account.
The emphasis on feeling rather than thought has also led to a “narrowing of the human/animal gap.” Here he referred to the atheist Princeton ethicist Peter Singer. Singer emphasizes the emotions, and therefore the “interests,” of animals. This then gives animals “rights” as a result of their “feelings.” This narrowing the human/animal gap is also found in “pop culture,” he said. He noted that Pope Francis has referred to the preference some people have to pets over children.
De Carvalho referred to The Transformation of Intimacy, by Anthony Giddens. It proposes an egalitarian “pure relation as a description of modern love.” People stay in such relationships only because they get “emotional rewards” from it. The relationship can be terminated at will. This, according to de Carvalho, was proposed as “a new standard for modern love.” Sociologist Mark Regnerius used Giddens’ idea to research sexual activities and relationships in America. Giddens “even recommended” Regnerius’ work. Regnerius “pointed out the problems” the new egalitarian and consensual sex ethic has for women and children.
The affective revolution has affected family law in Brazil. The idea is that “the point of the family is to make each member of the family happy.” It is a “new foundation” for the family, which has changed Brazilian law and jurisprudence. The concept of family is changed “without any reference to kinship.” Any group of people who share living space “and have affections, this is a family.” It might be added that this effectively undermines both marriage and parental authority. A marriage which is unhappy can obviously be ended at will (as is now legally the case, but certainly not in Christian doctrine), and it appears that the state can terminate a parent/child relationship if the child is unhappy with it.
But, he said, there are “things that are worse” in Brazil. There is being advanced the doctrine of “affective rights.” This involves saying that marriage is not about rights and duties, but “affectivity.” This resulted in the Brazilian Supreme Court mandating same sex civil unions in 2011. It has led to a “politics of self-regard.” It can easily be in conflict with the Christian doctrine of sin, which focuses on duty and responsibility, and aims at inducing guilt and repentance. It appears similar or the same as the LGBT claim of “dignity” for deeply felt desires and behavior. As this writer has often noted, this cannot be consistently applied. There can be no right-not-to-be-offended, which is what the “politics of self-regard” would seem to amount to.
The overall effect, de Carvalho said, of “affective rights” is make people turn inward. People are guided by “fear, and gut feelings.” This is happening both on “the left and the right.” He said that “democracies are being transformed by the power of feeling in ways that cannot be ignored or reversed.” He referred to commentary of columnist David Brooks of the New York Times, regarding the business and professional “creative class.” According to Brooks, the creative class has been emerging since around the year 2000. Their ideals are “to be smart, to be original.” The really important thing for this class “is to be creative.” This class is “connected to the tech industry,” and is also “connected to gentrification in … big cities.”
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Much contemporary preaching demands faith. This is right insofar as it goes, but it is not all. Preachers should not demand faith only. We are saved by faith in Christ, yes, but Christ saves us, through faith, from sin. He was called Jesus (literally, Savior) because he was going to save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). If the preaching of salvation through Christ has no reference to sin, then the people to whom we preach are robbed of the whole context of sin which gives penitent faith in Christ its significance. It is easier, even pleasant, to preach faith in Christ as the only necessary response to the proclamation of gospel truth, but it is sin to which sinners are attached.

True repentance grows in the gospel soil of God’s sovereign grace. Its roots comprise both biblically-informed grief over sin and biblically-informed apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ. Its trunk and branches are turning from sin and turning to God. Its fruit is the endeavor for new obedience in full dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
All this we have gleaned so far from looking at chapter 15 of the Second London Baptist Confession. The chapter now concludes by examining the necessity of preaching repentance in the light of what we know about sin:
Such is the provision which God hath made through Christ in the covenant of grace for the preservation of believers unto salvation; that although there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation; yet there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent; which makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary.
No Sin So Small
The Confession completes its treatment of repentance with some particular and searching counsel about the necessity of preaching repentance in the light of what we know about sin. As we noted when we began, every sin is grievous, and the “least” sin (as men perceive it) is sufficient for the condemnation of any man. However, that God is willing to forgive the sins of those who come to him in faith and repentance is the hope of the sinner, and must therefore be preached to sinners fully and freely.
Never underestimate sin. There is no sin so small but it deserves damnation. The wages of sin — all sin, each and every sin — is death (Rom. 6:23). In this sense, no sin should be considered small, as it brings so great a condemnation. The holy law of God is like a great and fragile object, perhaps a beautiful window or some other work of art, all made of one piece. If I make a crack in this great and fragile thing, no one accuses me of breaking only a part of it. The entire object is no longer whole. Thus it is with the law of God: to break it at all is to break it all (James 2.10). To stumble in any point is to become a lawbreaker, and therefore to be guilty, and deserving of punishment.
When David cries out for forgiveness in Psalm 51, there is a comprehensiveness in his desperate request. David is concerned for particular sins, yes, but with every particular sin also. He wants God to cleanse him from sin in its totality and sins in their plurality. He desires a complete cleansing (for example, Ps. 51:2, 7, 9), because he knows that one sin is fatal to peace with God. All this means that when we look at any man or woman, boy or girl, we are looking at someone who is a lawbreaker, who has offended the gracious and holy God, and is therefore liable to the just and fearful punishment of that God for the transgression of his revealed will. That proper and righteous punishment is death and hell. This is the horror of sin.
No Sin So Great
We should not underestimate sin, yet neither should we underestimate the Christ who saves us from sin. Here is cause for great praise and thanksgiving! Such is the provision which God has made through Christ in his covenant of grace for the preservation of believers unto salvation, that there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent.[1] The blood of Christ is sufficient to wash away the deepest stain of iniquity — his blood can make the foulest clean. The gospel offer, the gospel provision, for repenting sinners is that those whose sins are like scarlet shall be made as white as snow through the blood of the Lamb; though our sins are red like crimson, they shall be as pure new wool (Isa. 1:18).
All upon whom God has set his love are so provided for by the atoning blood of Christ in his propitiating sacrifice that each sin, all sin, and every sin can be covered, transgressions swept away as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12). Again, this is no ground for sinning with impunity, but is rather the great motivation to holiness of life and fleeing every sin.
We should also be very clear in our minds and hearts, and in our preaching, about the certainty of forgiveness where true repentance is demonstrated. As we should ourselves repent with an “apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ,” so we should preach to others.
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