The Anti-Prophet, Priest, and King

We, the Church, are under judgment. And it’s not because of abortion, it’s not because of gay marriage, it’s not because of Americanism idolatry.

It’s because of you. And me.

And we know this not because of the bad things happening around us but because of the good things happening outside of us— because none of those good things are from the church.

In essence, we know it because God has filled the offices Christ left for us the church, not with people from the church, but with pagans. The only ones fulfilling these offices in any meaningful way now are people outside the Church.

[Please note there is no pejorative connotation to “pagan”, it is used here with only its basic meaning viz. people not in the Church]

Prophet, Priest, and King

It’s a Sunday school truism that the Old Testament points to Jesus, and Jesus is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. It’s also uncontested orthodoxy that Jesus thus occupies the offices of Prophet, Priest, and King — and passes these onto his disciples to carry on.

That so far is orthodoxy. But let’s follow this thought into the rabbit hole of 2020.

The Anti-King

Look, for example, at the undisputed king of our time, Donald J. Trump — a fabled philanderer, a jerk, an adulterer, a former money-monger.

Yet he’s the one that has gone after child-sex trafficking more than any Christian pastor for the last 40 years. He’s the most pro-life president since Roe vs Wade — more than avowed Christian George W. Bush and family-values Ronald Reagon.

He’s the one pushing for peace in the Middle East rather than kowtowing to the old GOP platform of world policing (and as of this week, he’s done it; and blessed are the peacemakers). He’s the one who stood up to the military-industrial complex represented by people like former General James Mattis and John Kelly, while many Christians actually cheered it on.

He’s the one with the courage to publically attack Critical Race Theory, the predominant heresy of our age, while thousands of pastors from every denomination bend the knee to it instead.

He’s the one meaningfully undermining the public school system. And we haven’t even mentioned his vice-President, probably the most openly Christian man in Washington. We haven’t mentioned his firm stance against the godless Chinese, his stance — against the advice of his GOP allies — for criminal justice reform. We didn’t even get to those.

Where were the Christians? These have been issues for decades. Why have Christians only talked about it on their unread blogs, and left it to Donald Trump to actually do something about it all?

The Anti-Prophet

And how about the prophets of our time? In the Old Testament, being a prophet literally means to be a “friend of God.” Because you talk with Him and know Him, you know His heart and what he is about to do. Telling the future was incidental to being a prophet, the real red meat of that work was knowing the heart of God and speaking to the civilization-ending sins being promoted at the time.

Here’s the thing: this office is filled with pagans too — pagans who are faithfully executing it. Has any Christian published a more public or biting critique of Hollywood culture than avowed atheist, Richy Gervais? He nails their hypocrisy at the Golden Globes in a far more relevant way than Relevant Magazine. Not only does he call them out, he then makes them applaud him. It’s incredible.

And why is it that only an excommunicated, homosexual catholic, Milo Yianopolis, why is he the one — correctly — pointing out that Protestantism and Catholicism have both been feminized? Why is he the one saying the men have been spiritually castrated and betrayed their dignity as leaders? Why is he the one writing books about the spiritual bankruptcy of the papacy and protestant leaders and their predatory habits on young boys?

Here’s a man who has no business speaking the truth of God, and yet he’s the one speaking the truth of God to the Church.

Not only that, but Milo is the one creating news organizations like Breitbart that can challenge the left-wing narratives propped up by legacy media. He’s the one talking about the predatory nature of most gay relationships — although as a gay man himself, he is in a better position to recognize this and we can get a pass here.

Take Dave Chappell. He is willing to cancel Cancel Culture, as he did in an expletive-laden and explicit rant for which he faced lots of blow after it aired on Netflix (I don’t necessarily recommend listening to the full program; certain clips will suffice). It was a hilarious, in parts, and compelling attack on one of the most obviously toxic parts of our society and it came from a blasphemous comedian.

In fact, looking at the list again, many of these men are comedians. They play the part of the court fool, the jester whom the king was never allowed to touch. In which case this truly is a case of God using the foolish to shame the wise. The “foolish” being these comedians and the “wise” being us.

Of course, there are others besides comedians. There’s Kanye West and Justin Bieber, two “artists” I loathed who now I know are far more faithful people than me. They were supposed to be the fools, I was supposed to be the educated, the classically trained, the wise.

Compare the actions of these “fools” to Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition who preach the BLM version of justice and the SJW version of mercy in the name of Christ, of course. Here, debauched comedians calling out the idols of our age while Christian organizations are busily sacrificing their children to the statues.

The Anti-Priest

And the Priest of our time, it must be Jordan Peterson. Millions of people have turned from earthly death to earthly life listening to him: turning from suicide, breaking powerful drug addictions, repairing broken relationships with their fathers, taking responsibility for, in Peterson’s words, “sin”, giving men and women hope of finding usefulness in a sea of aimless depression.

Now, what he preaches is not the Gospel. But truly no man can receive anything except that which is granted by heaven, and I refuse to believe that all this good happens without God being in some of it. Yes in many cases, it is only a matter of choosing earthly life over earthly death. But others have gone on to accept the Spirit of Christ over the Spirit of Cain, and he seems to be the one making straight the tall places before the Son of Man comes upon the nation.

Shouldn’t this kind of power be reserved for God’s people?

His lectures draw heavily off of Scripture. The Bible isn’t incidentally thrown in, it’s usually the central point, while it is the other religions which are incidentally thrown in. He talks in parables, he marries science and religion, he takes knowledge and turns it into wisdom, he’s as hard as iron against Marxism but cries at the innocence of a child.

What Christian pastor tours the country to give sermons that go on for hours that garner national attention and that leaves people better than when they went in?

Surely he is not a holy priest, but he sees the beautiful things darkly. He is not ordained, yet he speaks from the Deep Magic without knowing its true Word. I could not call him a Christian, but nor do I see any Christian speaking the Word so powerfully.

First Conclusion

This is our judgment. It is not that merely that pagan fulfill these offices, it is that pagans have been *given* these offices because there were not found any among us who could fulfill them.

Because if there had, surely God would have chosen His chosen people?

Instead, our leaders insist on bowing down to the state in everything from when we can and can’t open church. Netflix and Hulu catechize us more than Sunday. We allow BLM and social media to teach our children about (social) justice, and it is the Social Justice Warriors that inform Church elders on the morality of current events rather than the other way around. And now many formerly faithful churches preach a social Gospel totally separate from the one Paul handed down.

What a sorry state of affairs.

The Limits of the Sinful Vision

We aren’t reading the writing on the wall. Christians are trying to claim the moral high ground by condemning Trump, Peterson, Gervais, Yianopolis, Chapelle, Bieber and the like yet these are the men doing what those Christians refuse to do.

There is a false holiness built into the critique of these men, however much they sometimes deserve it. It is like seeing a speck in your brother’s eye and missing the log in your own. It trades completely the most important issues of our day for the ones that don’t matter at all.

It is clear we are under judgment for something — but what? That is where my vision stops.

I don’t know what the sin is, but I am convinced it is something that we all, collectively and individually, are guilty of; every church, denomination, Christian school, and Christian. I do not know what it is, I just know, from taking a quick gander around, that whatever it is, we must all of us be guilty.

Perhaps it is a sin of omission. Perhaps because we will not pray at restaurants in the same manner we pray at home. Or because when talking to family and friends we constantly prioritized peace at the expense of truth. And now we being pushed more and more down ludacris avenues. We accept that “modesty” is a form of “patriarchy,” that homosexual relationships can be classified as marriage, accepting Critical Race Theory as Christian mercy, accepting trans ideology as biology. Perhaps we were silent for so long, so focused on being agreeable rather than right, that, as Jordan Peterson would say, we lost our ability to speak the truth at all.

And, as Peterson would say, the Soviet Union was hell, and hell is merely a place where no one is allowed to say anything true.

Or maybe (worse?) it is a sin of commission. Maybe it’s because we were all too happy with the personal sin in our own lives — sins far too varied and personal to ever be generalized — that we left them unresisted and untamed — and now, well, “God will not be mocked.”

Perhaps the sin of not telling the truth when it mattered is actually the same as the sin of lying. Focusing on what doesn’t matter is the same as telling a falsehood.

There’s no point in saying “well my church or denomination is not guilty” or “my church recognizes this and is working for revival,” because EVERY church says this, first of all, and God has chosen exactly NONE of them to bear the mantle of prophet, priest or king in our nation. Instead, He has given it to the “Gentiles” while we Sadducees and Pharisees are still debating carrying a matt on the sabbath day and calling for Barabas.

What then shall we do now? Alas, I am not a prophet enough to know. I also was not chosen.