To believe that a life of self-punishment and shame is needed for us to be right with God is to believe that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was insufficient. That is a lie of the enemy. There is complete freedom in Jesus. The reason they are unable to hurt us now is because He has disarmed them and put them to open shame (Colossians 2:15). Our sin is what gave them their power, but He has canceled our debt (Colossians 2:14). Even death has lost its sting in His resurrection.

They were gaining on me. Every breath I took was weighed down by the awareness that they were close behind. I had entered at the narrow gate, but somehow, they had managed to follow me onto the path. I could hear their taunts. Every one of their footsteps was like the sound of a war drum. There are days when they are out of sight. During those times, I feel the warm breeze of the Celestial City beckoning me homeward, but even then, I know they are lying in wait.
I did not think they could follow me onto the narrow path, but here they are. When I entered the narrow way, under the shadow of the cross, my sins were forgiven. He had delivered me from the slavery of sin that held me captive. Since He had opened the way and called me in, I thought I would be out of the reach of my enemies, yet they pursue me daily.
Every time I fall, the enemy shouts from behind, “You do not belong on this path! You belong to us, and we will catch and destroy you! I have learned the names of some, but I am still trying to figure out others. There are two who give chase called Shame and Regret. They often disguise themselves as messengers of the King. They tell me that, since my heart is prone to wander, the King prefers that I stay out of sight. That is Shame’s strategy. He convinces us that we need to hide. He does this to keep us from finding the assistance available in the congregation of the saints, and he works closely with regret to keep us from approaching the Throne of Grace.
Many other enemies desire to sink their teeth into me as well, like sickness and sorrow, sin and sadness, and the final enemy death who boasts of his many conquests. In those moments when I am running scared, I have learned that there is a song being sung.
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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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Throughout the whole process, seek to extend grace to the fellow elders that God has designed to lead his church. A plurality of elders is a precious gift of God. Where one elder might be quick, bold, or decisive, others balance him out with gentleness, discernment, thoughtfulness, and pastoral care. And where some elders may be eager to please with great compassion, their fellow elders can encourage them to not neglect biblical principles and to lead with candor and clarity.

How should fellow elders of the same church navigate dissent, discord, and differences? In the early church, an argument arose between Barnabas and Paul that created tension, strife, and controversy (Acts 15:39). Barnabas was eager to reintegrate John Mark as a traveling companion, yet Paul wanted to move on without him, judging him to be unreliable (Acts 15:38). This “sharp disagreement” resulted in one of the most prominent divisions in the life of the early church.
On our own elder teams, the number of issues we can disagree over is legion. Should we observe the Lord’s Supper every week or just once a month? Do we serve wine or grape juice or offer both? If Baptist, do we admit into membership those baptized as infants? Do we hold one Sunday worship service or go to multiple services (or even multiple campuses)? Should we use a team-preaching model or have one main preacher? What’s the ideal age to allow the baptism of believing children? Do we employ one musical style or have a traditional and contemporary service? How long should services run? Do we discipline this recalcitrant member? Do we send this dear family to serve overseas? And on and on.
When instincts differ among elders on the same team, what can we do? How can we preserve plurality, honor divergent views, and shepherd in harmony with fellow elders?
Foundations for Disagreement
We might start with some foundations that can keep disagreements from becoming destructive — and that can also prevent some disagreements altogether.
First, start by cultivating a spirit of genuine trust outside the moment of disagreement. Create space to get to know one another, to spend time together, to grow in gratitude for each other, and to laugh and play together. Learn about one another. Be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of fellow elders. Gain a deep appreciation of their spiritual gifts and what they contribute to the team. Then give each other permission to speak your minds without repercussion. Seek to cultivate healthy conflict by the kind of open disagreement that neither maligns another’s character nor calls into question his loyalty. Give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Second, develop a robust affirmation of faith for elder candidates. Don’t leave core doctrines up for grabs. Unity on the church’s central beliefs and theology is essential for an elder team’s health. The more robust a statement of faith, the more unity your elder team will have as a foundation beneath your disagreements. This unity will cultivate shared instincts on church life, shepherding, philosophy of ministry, and the mission of the church. If 97 percent of your doctrines, beliefs, and practices are settled, it’s much easier to wrestle together over the remaining 3 percent where differences emerge.
Third, seek to understand one another’s perspectives and experiences. An elder’s history, spouse, friends, background, and education shape his views. What shapes your concerns, conclusions, or inclinations? We all come with different presuppositions, experiences, and ideas. Get them on the table, and be aware of others’ typical blind spots as well as your own. A plurality of elders provides insight, accountability, and protection from going astray.
Moving Through Disagreement
Once the foundation is laid, how does an elder team go from disagreement to moving forward? Here are four questions to ask when wrestling with a particular issue.
1. What does the Bible say?
An elder team should be eager to study the Scriptures together to understand what the Bible says about this issue. This study may not solve our disagreement, but it’s the starting place to bring our ideas in conformity with God’s word. The God-breathed Scriptures are for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, equipping us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16–17).
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