Weekend, in response:

Thanks, Chris, for forwarding.

John, 

Towards the end of your recent e-mail reply to me, you asked if there are more than three options regarding where we go from here.  I imagine you prefer option number 1 (see below in blue). 

What is behind my Preference is a large gratitude for how wonderfully you elders have answered my questions and furthered me on in what I believe is the calling God has for me and my family. My appreciation of the implications of Postmill/Ascension themes during your own class on the Restoration Period (Ezra/Nehemiah) got me more excited about the many more salvific applications of theonomy that my study of history had flushed out.

When I tried to articulate what radical changes these solutions would require of Christians, my family hesitated to follow such courses as I was pointing to. So I came and asked you elders for confirmation, to see if such applications were Biblical and whether they were important. Were they hills to die on, like not praying for the king was for Margaret of Wigtown?. You answered those Importance/True questions very well, as it turns out, but not at all in the manner your or I expected. When I laid out those reformational principles before you, I was surprised that you did not see their compatibility with our creeds, distinctives, and goals as a local church. I had expected to hear what I would normally hear from men in our theological camp – that: yes, that all appeared to be true, but it was very tough to actually implement. If I had heard the response from you, something like, “Atta boy, good job for working out the implications of God’s law. Looks like what you are seeing is matching up with what other Reconstruction writers have been saying. Keep studying and get back to us.” That would have been stimulating, but only mildly so. It didn’t really bolster the “Is this true?”, and “Is this important?” query.

Instead, you did me a much greater service by your actions that stopped my responsibilities to attend RCC on Sundays. The procedures of the excommunication provided the Gran Mal answer to the question, “Is this Important?” At least it was important enough to consign to hell the head of one of the prominent families in your church who had as much classroom education in Bible as anyone in the church. (not that that necessarily counts for much).

The “Is this True?” question has become more than thoroughly answered by the more diligent study of the issues of the excommunication, and by the experiences I have had since in the various anti-nomian, pre-millennial, pietistic churches in the area. If you still suspect that post-millennial, theonomic theology has the only possible answers for some of the hottest, desperate issues festering in the public marketplace – you would be correct.

I prefer Option 1/[More Discussion], because the great value of my opportunities to fellowship among mainstream churches, was to keep tabs on what folks are thinking about how the Bible relates to all of life and how the theonomic postmillennial distinctives might be shared and “sold” to those who have never heard about that other half of the gospel. If only I could share my experiences with you so that you could share in the rich insights I didn’t deserve to acquire. Hasn’t Pastor Tuuri always said RCC should have a ministry to appeal to sister-churches to embrace those essential parts of the faith that got lost after the Reformation?

I still tenaciously believe that neither of us is beyond the ability to understand and embrace the Biblical truth about law and economics after adequate discussion.

However, even if the elders opted to pursue this option with you and even if, at the end of these conversations and discussions, we completely agreed with you in every jot and tittle of your position on these issues,  we would still not be able to rightly lift your excommunication. 

That may depend on the rationale humans had for the excommunication and the overall divine purposes for it. It looks like there was much blessing in it all beyond what any of us intended. Please don’t throw away the value of this.

My approach to this is a mirror-opposite of what you say above there:

However, even if I could totally satisfy you elders is all areas of personal and interpersonal sinful attitudes-and-actions, contumacy, slander, and rebellion – by repentance, restitution, asking forgiveness all around – and was reinstated in full fellowship in Reformation Covenant Church – On the next Tuesday Morning I would be calling up again to make an appointment to renew the appeal to you elders to engage more deeply in the hottest Reformational battles we are facing in our generation. As far as I know, This would only make you madder than ever because of your view that the ideas I am pointing to are False, and my attempts to encourage folks to think along those lines amounts to deep perjury, slander, and diabolical attack against you elders and other members of RCC.

My failures in personal relationships, be they ever so damaging or damning, has not been the issue from my side, nor has it been the issue in the documentation of the excommunication. The issue was what I was describing as idolatry. In Pastor Tuuri’s words, “He could not identify himself in the terminology of the other side of the conversation”. On his part, Pastor Tuuri did not appear to demonstrate an understanding or recognition of the principles and violations I was trying to point to – not just my own construction of them, but Rushdoony’s, [North, Wilson, Sproul et. al.].

Elder Wilson, you yourself (were at least reported to) have said that you wish the official discipline had been more particularly addressed to the character sins/failures so evident to you in your maturity and Discipline of counseling – instead of economics/law part of it. If the contumacy had been in that area things could have progressed much differently. And I think you still look at it all this way, which causes you to brush aside the legal/economic ethics issues.

I believe the last 6 years have thoroughly demonstrated the contrast between us in how important we think economics and law register in the range of orthodox teaching on proclaiming the crown rights of Christ pursuant to transforming the fallen world. If I had simply been wrong about the content of what was disputed, had Pastor Tuuri agreed about the importance of those applications – he would, at least, have expended energy to teach and defend the antithesis of what I was trying to represent, in contrast to my false allegations. I have not heard this from the pulpit ministry of RCC for the last 6 years. If you had agreed about the principles, but charged me with wrong about the importance level I have attached to them, there would have been teaching or reports of any discussion about these things – again – I have heard almost nothing. The record tells me he dismisses the cultural lenti-viruses of group-ownership/socialism and imaginary/fiat currency with fractional-reserve banking as not being important among the Christian responsibilities.

Other than his June 2009 seminar, when he did address the areas of potential “accepting dishonest gain”, the last 6 years have been a blackout on those subjects of economics and law. Imagine how strange it is for me to be in the Sunday School class of a mainstream, credo-baptism, antinomian, semi-pietistic, pre-millennial (semi-Calvinistic – to be fair) church – and watch people wrestle with theonomic questions and principles several times an hour, and then hardly hear the RCC pulpit touch on them for months at a time. Here in the “Outlands”, folks are hungry for answers and interested in the topics, even where they have no theological base, or doctrinal vocabulary to express their questions.

You have men in your congregation who know both these questions and the theonomic answers. They know Austrian economics and Biblical solutions to the very important issues of the day which are no longer addressed from the pulpit. I am too far away, anymore, to know whether they are silent towards the leadership – or whether their questions or appeals are stiff-armed, avoided, or ignored. From my limited sources it appears there is mostly silence out of fear (after that irritation called John was out of the picture). This to say, you have men there who could offer you advice and wisdom along these lines, perhaps better than I. And these men are far more exemplary in character than I ever was. Have you drawn them out?

If the only impediment to discussing and proclaiming the responsibility for solution-oriented action was my character issues – would those discussions and teachings not have continued after I was out of the picture?

A wise man will hear and increase in learning.

A poor and wise lad is better than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to receive instruction.

You would show your superior grace and wisdom in being more open to feedback from your people. You don’t have to be experts in everything. You know the quote about the famous business men who were only smart enough to gather around themselves, team-mates with more wisdom in their respective disciplines than their “gatherer”. For my part, I am eager to hear and increase in learning as to what, specifically is wrong with the applications put forth by these other Reformed teachers.

I know the temptations and pitfalls of leadership are strong. Somebody has got to do it. And we all appreciate it. Glad you are brave. But it is ok to accept our offers to help, if you are not too busy.

Let me serve you is all I ask. I’ve always tried to be open, and to understand what you were saying. There were men at Pastor Tuuri’s June 2009 seminar trying to get his attention that he was off in the weeds praising monetary inflation because it destroyed the [Store-of-Value] purpose of money. They gently tried to challenge his perspective on inflation and suggest moderation more in the direction of classical Reformed/Austrian/Christian economics. The same was true in the area where he categorically sterilized the historical moral repugnance against families drawing on any type of tax-supported assistance if they had need.

These are huge issues in the area of murder and theft whether you look back or look forward in time. Those under your ministry will soon feel their sharp effects much more keenly, understand what I am hollering about, and your previous teaching will not look so good in the light of that new understanding.

My question to you, John, is this: Do you understand why this would be so?  If you do understand, please articulate your understanding in your reply.

Still praying for you,

Chris

P.S.  I am copying the other elders since this is a session-wide concern

Please copy to Dennis, especially, and any and all who might function to promotes mutual understanding between us. I am not wise enough to know whether God will be glorified more by a resolution between us, or a continuation of my opportunities to advocate for the Other Half of The Gospel.

I believe the issue, as in the Charge, is perjury/false witness. I am saying imaginary money, Federal Reserve, inflation of money supply is a lawless evil destructive to civilization. These things are theft and violation of the stewardship the Lord Jesus Christ has committed to the Family institution, out of His all-encompassing ownership magnified by His heavenly coronation ceremony in Rev. 4,5. The falsehood that central banks increase quantities of money -- as it works out practically in history – gives ownership/control of such a magnitude of things by (very) sinful, mortal humans which is only the crown-right of Jesus. Central in this deception is the concept that created humans are creating something real out of nothing which all confess is only possible to God the Son – who, by His word, has created-out-of-nothing the ages and holds all things together.

Pastor Tuuri is on public record (with no repentance, qualification, or change in view to my knowledge) of blessing the cumulative historical effect of the US Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the function of our existing US Dollar, and that inflation has a positive influence on an economy, and is not the crime of theft, nor is there any Christian responsibility to condemn and provide solutions for it.

If my testimony is false: I become liable to pay the double restitution of these men I charge with inflation-theft which would be many, many lifetimes of indentured servitude. If I am wrong about these bankers' “wars for freedom and democracy” being murder on an unimaginable scale [Dr. Wilson – you have just been to the Holodomor Memorial in Kiev] I become liable to lose my life in place of the sentence of death I try to point out to the world as the necessary coercion due upon the fomenters of these wars.

Conversely, if Pastor Tuuri's witness is false when he de-criminalizes the way any man benefits from the transfers of wealth inherent in group-ownership government models and their applications of fiat currency/fractional reserve banking and similar methods of regulation and taxation – that witness incurs upon him the sentence of death or double-restitution which his witness would call down upon me – were it true. (it is tricky working out the double-negatives here).

Please correct me if I am misconstruing the Law on these points.

Leviticus 5:1

‘Now if a person sins after he hears a public adjuration to testify when he is a witness, whether he has seen or otherwise known, if he does not tell it, then he will bear his guilt.

Deuteronomy 19:14-21

14 “You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary mark, which the ancestors have set, in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land that the Lord your God gives you to possess.

15 “A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed. 16 If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing, 17 then both the men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days. 18 The judges shall investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness and he has accused his brother falsely, 19 then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you. 20 The rest will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such an evil thing among you. 21 Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.