Great Britain's Chaos - Part 3

WHAT ABOUT ENLIGHTENMENT?

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

July 17, 2022

Scripture Reading: Colossians 2:8:  “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

INTRODUCTION

Are many Americans spoiled by philosophy, psychology and other subjects which use vain deceit?  If they are, who is spoiling them?  Is it philosophers who teach after the tradition of men; is it after the rudiments of the world?  So, we can conclude from this verse that such topics are evil teachings; for they are set in opposition to the doctrines of the Bible.

The Apostle Paul sent this warning to the Christians in Colossae, Turkey.  James Moffatt renders the same verse as, “Beware of anyone getting hold of you by means of a theosophy [a branch of philosophy] which is specious make believe, on the lines of human tradition.”

This verse is the only place where the biblical translators used the word “philosophy.” The word has survived the years with its meaning unchanged: the love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means. It is translated from the Greek philosophia, which can be broken into its two individual parts: 

• philos (fond or friendly) and 
• sophos (clever or wise).

To sophisticate someone causes him to become less natural or simple; he becomes corrupted or perverted. A sophisticated person has acquired worldly knowledge but lacks natural simplicity.

Philosophy, the love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means, is not wisdom from God but wisdom as defined by man. It is man’s attempt to be wise.

The Christian Bible says:

Psalm 111:10:  “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do His commandments:  His praise endureth for ever.”

Proverbs 9:10:  “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom:  and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”

Since men cannot see God, many conclude, “There is no God.” Because man’s philosophy does not consider God, it’s very foundation is faulty.  Since most philosophers and psychologists don’t fear the LORD, what about their wisdom?  Do they have any, according to the Bible?

Some have said that philosophy is the quest for an understanding of the world and man’s place in it, and for ways to apply this understanding to the right conduct of life. This sounds very lofty, yet any Christian knows that the Bible answers these basic questions and many more.

Philosophers and psychologists ask, “Is there a God?” and “How can we distinguish good from bad?” A study of God’s Word gives full and satisfying responses to these queries. There is no need for a “quest” through the labyrinth of man’s mind to find the answers to his questions. 

--Taken from the article, “Beware of Philosophy” by Mike Ford, 1955-2021.--

PHILOSOPHY IN THE 1600 AND 1700s

During the 1600s and 1700s there was a major advancement in the thought of how one could live an ideal and virtuous life with no consideration of the LORD God of Israel.  It came from the major philosophers of that time.  Some of the leaders of this movement were:

• John Locke
• David Hume
• Francis Bacon
• Rene Descartes
• Isaac Newton
• Voltaire
• Montesquieu
• Moses Mendelssohn
• Baruch Spinoza

Their ideas, and the thoughts of other similar men, won the minds of the majority of the people while they were alive, and their views are now a part of many of our lives several hundred years later.

In France, during the French Revolution (1789-1799) the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Church.  So the Enlightenment traded:

• Individual liberty in place of an absolute monarchy, and
• Religious tolerance in place of the fixed dogmas of the Church.

Earlier, in Great Britain, at the time when the Enlightenment was gaining a strong foothold, there were tremendous religious persecutions and intense rivalries: 

• Catholics vs. Protestants;
• Protestants vs. Catholics;
• Calvinistic Puritans vs. Presbyterians;
• Royalty vs. Catholics;
• Royalty vs. Presbyterians;
• Presbyterians vs. Catholics;
• Jews vs. Christianity;
• Occult vs. the Catholic Church;
• Occult vs. Protestants;
• Etc. 

Hundreds of thousands of the people of Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland; 300,000) were killed in the many battles and tens of thousands of others were taken to other British colonies as either slaves or indentured servants.  Over 600,000 Irish Catholics were killed in a short time in Cromwell’s war and other survivors were sent to the island of Barbados as slaves.  This time of religious persecutions (would there be any people who were left?), provided the opportunity for the Enlightenment to gain support.

There were four main power groups:

• The Catholic Church
• The Jewish Cabal
• The European Royalty
• The secret societies, Occult

These four groups fought each other over control of the people of Europe and ownership of the land.  Sometimes they joined forces with other member(s) of a competing group to fight against one of the other members of this group of four.  At other times they worked separately. Sometimes they ruled in secret and had the ruler as their puppets.  But these are the four main contenders, even today.  They rise and they fall, and then they return to dominate once again.

In the early 1600s, the European Royalty was the group that was in power over the people of Great Britain and their colonies, including the future United States.  They controlled the vast amount of the land, but the other three contenders were in a fierce contention to gain control from them.  All three contenders, the Catholic Church, the Jewish Cabal and the occult, were in major battles to wrest control from the European Royalty.

But the Stuart Royalty believed that they were untouchable by mankind, because of their distorted belief of the Divine Right of the Kings. King James I, his son Charles I, and his sons Charles II and James II had applied a misinterpretation of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings.  They thought that God had given to each one of them the power to rule absolutely.  No man or organization could question their rule.  Only God could. 

This led to supreme battles in which most of the population of Great Britain, Ireland and Scotland became casualties or were exported as slaves or were executed.  This lasted until the monarchy ended with the charge of treason and the beheading of the king (Charles I).  Well, no it didn’t.  It was just more of the same thing.

The Republic of England began with the Calvinistic Puritan Parliament in control.  They soon gave way to the first Lord Protector of Great Britain, Oliver Cromwell, a Calvinist, who carried out an incredibly bloody invasion of Ireland that resulted in the deaths of 41% of the Catholics and another large percentage of young Catholic men who were sent to Barbados, an island in the Caribbean, as slaves.

Following Oliver’s death, the authority went to his son, Richard.  Richard proved overwhelmed after about a year of rule and submitted his formal resignation as Lord Protector.  But this different rule by non-royalty people didn’t decrease the bloodshed but increased it!  None of the initial problems that brought about the civil wars in the first place were resolved, as Cromwell himself ended up being as authoritarian and autocratic as Charles I had been.

Parliament then ruled briefly, until the king, Charles II, who had been exiled, returned as the restored king. Charles II’s rule was a time of wide-spread sexual immorality by the king and his court.

And he wasn’t nicknamed the “Merry Monarch” for nothing.  It was very similar to what President Clinton did in America. Charles II’s administration killed thousands of Scottish Presbyterians because they would not allow him to be the head of their Presbyterian Church.  In fact, it was called the “time of killing.” 

After Charles II’s death, his brother, King James II took over because Charles II had no legitimate children.  But King James II was Catholic.  He tried to hide it, but his Catholicism was soon exposed. His first wife, a Protestant, had two girls who were the next in line to be queen of England.  But, after his first wife’s death, he married a 15-year-old Roman Catholic princess and had a son with her.  He had the son baptized as a Roman Catholic and the majority of Protestants in the land feared that his son would be the start of a Catholic dynasty in England. 

So there were several groups that decided that the Catholic king had to go: 

• The Jews
• Calvinistic Puritans
• Whig party
• Occult

All were determined to replace the Catholic king with a Protestant king, with a declaration (Bill of Rights) that no other king or queen in the future could ever be a Catholic or marry a Catholic.

This came to pass and the Catholic king, King James II, left the throne and the new king, William III, along with King James II’s daughter of his first wife became queen; William and Mary.  This is called by many historians as the “Glorious Revolution.”  It was called “glorious” because the government changed with no bloodshed at all.  It was the first European nation to change from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy.

This was over one hundred years before America became a Republic! Both James II and his father, Charles I, had resisted the Internationalist Jews, and in a hundred years Freemasonry became the principal tool of the Jews in their subversion of all Europe.

HOW DID THE BRITISH ROYALTY LOSE ITS POWER?

Great Britain had been ruled by royalty ever since it began.  There had never been a Republic or a demo(n)cracy anywhere in the land of Europe for hundreds of years.  There was never any thought of other type of government until the time got so chaotic that there was some thought that there was not going to be anyone left who was not either executed, made a slave, or escaped to a new land.

But then there arose individuals who decided that reason was more important than faith; they were called the Enlightenment philosophers.  The Enlightenment was a movement that stressed the belief that science and logic gave people more knowledge and understanding than tradition and God’s holy laws.

John Locke (1632-1704) was England’s leading Enlightenment thinker.  The Enlightenment was heavily influenced by philosophers such as Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, Voltaire and Newton.  It was the state of being enlightened which was marked by a rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas and an emphasis on rationalism.  Central to Enlightenment thought was the use and celebration of reason, the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition.

BACKGROUND TO THE RISE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

The century long rule of the Stuarts’ was a fascinating time in history.  One hundred years before the beginning of the Stuarts’ reign, was the great battle that forged against the Catholic Church—the Protestant Reformation. 

The creation of the printing press was one of the major life-changing inventions during this time.  For after this invention, the Bible was available for practically every Israelite to buy, read or understand in his own language.  The Roman Catholic Church was against the printing press publishing the Bible.  They fought against the translation of the Bible into English.  But they failed.

The German, Martin Luther, was one of the reformers who was supported by one of the major players, the Jews.  The anti-Christ Jews helped finance Luther’s attack against the Roman Catholic Church.  But that lasted until Luther was given a Talmud, one of the major Jewish “holy” books late in his life, and he read it.  He was enraged.  As a result, he wrote his book, The Jews and their Lies, that said the Christian nations should expel all Jews from their lands.  His book called for more atrocities against the murderers of our Savior that Adolph Hitler ever attempted to accomplished.

So, the Jews couldn’t support Martin Luther anymore.  But the Christ-haters decided that they would declare that the road to world domination had to go through Germany.  This was because they were unable to manipulate the Germans against the Roman Catholic Church. 

Luther was against the practice of usury which the Jews were the main participants in; this devilish activity which enslaves it borrowers.  So, as a result, the Jews began their support of the French leader of the Reformation—John Calvin.  Calvin said that usury was acceptable.  Calvin was not against the Jews.  But the Bible says the opposite:

Deuteronomy 23:20:

20) “Unto a stranger   thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury:  that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.”

And which one of the two, Martin Luther or John Calvin, would support this current message, which is nothing more than a blasphemous request to today’s “Christians”? 

From pro-IsralIE John Hagee:

“Antisemitism is at an all-time high in the United States. The Anti-Defamation League recently reported a shocking 34% uptick in antisemitic incidents in 2021 as compared to the previous year. The increased numbers are not mere statistics—these 2,717 insidious incidents were acts of assault, harassment, and vandalism towards Jewish people— simply because they are Jewish.

Translating to seven acts of hatred and bigotry every single day—these numbers only represent the recorded incidents.  More Jewish people have suffered.  More have been victimized.  More have been attacked.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, and as I have affirmed repeatedly:

Not to speak is to speak.  Not to act is to act.  God will not hold us guiltless.

 Christians United for Israel is committed to combating antisemitism and confronting indifference whenever and wherever they are found. 

There is much work to be done.  In 2021, according to the American Jewish Committee, 72% of American Jews reported that they feel less safe because of the horrific increase in attacks against Jews in our country.  However, another AJC survey of the general public found that, despite the alarming rise of antisemitism, only 21% of Americans believe antisemitism is a fundamental problem in our country—why the disconnect?

The answer to this question is the lack of education and an abundance of indifference. 

You have the opportunity to partner with CUFI in our effort to recognize antisemitism and combat it.  I urge you to give your best gift this month to help CUFI work at the grassroots level to educate, motivate, and activate more Christians than ever by sharing this film with as many people as possible.

If we do not speak out, who will?  Together, we can educate the American population, one person at a time, about the world’s oldest hatred and ensure the tragedies of the past never occur again.

What is the difference between 1939 and today?

This time, as antisemitism skyrockets in America, there are millions of CUFI members standing up and speaking out in defense of Israel and the Jewish people.  For Zion’s sake, we will not be silent—Never Again!  We must ensure every Christian knows that antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem—it is everyone’s problem!

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will always rescue His chosen.  It is now our turn to be the ones He uses to do so, standing in the gap and ensuring that the hatred that produced the Holocaust never happens again!

I pray that the God of Israel shelter you in the shadow of His wings as you bless His people and help us ensure the righteous mission of Christians Untied for Israel is accomplished.

With gratitude,”

John Locke attempted to unite rationalism with prevailing Christianity.  John used his rational Christianity to determine that the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings to rule over the people was erroneous.  But he was incorrect for the Bible teaches that Israel would be ruled by kings descended from a certain person in Israel’s history.  But John Locke was not a Christian.  So, he either didn’t know or didn’t care about this teaching of the Scriptures.  He wrote his pamphlets, The Age of Reason, in which he declares that Christianity is nothing more than a myth.

The Bible tells us that Israel, at one time, was literally ruled by Almighty God Himself for over 300 years.  He was the literal king of His people --Israel.  His throne was in the inner sanctuary in the Temple of God.  But His judges became corrupt and took bribes and the people said to His prophet, Samuel, that they wanted a king like the other nations round about them.  So, Almighty God abdicated the throne of Israel and let them have their own man-king.  But He warned them that they wouldn’t be happy with their choice in the future.

He first gave them, as their king, the handsomest man in the nation; but he was a dismal failure.  Next came the teenage shepherd boy who grew up loyal to Almighty God, and he eventually became their second man-king.  As a reward for planning to build the LORD’s Temple, God said that the descendants of David would be the kings over Israel.   David would be the root of all the kings of Israel.

But Israel was split into two kingdoms shortly after David’s son, Solomon, died. And they both eventually were sent into captivity.   But God told David that “his seed” would be the ruler over the divorced house of Israel and scattered House of Judah. 

2 Samuel 7:16:

16) “And thine[David’s] house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee:  thy throne shall be established for ever.”

1 Kings 9:5:

5) “Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David, thy father, saying, There shall not fail theea man upon the throne of Israel.”

Psalm 89:3, 4:

3) “I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant,

4) Thy seed will I establish for ever; and build up thy throne to all generations.  Selah.”

Psalm 89:35, 36:

35) “Once have I sworn by My holiness that I will not lie unto David.

36) His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before Me.”

Our God made a covenant with David that “his seed” would be the kings over Israel forever.  The kings of Judah were all descendants of David, but the kings of the house of Israel (the ten northern tribes) after they split, weren’t.  They were men from other tribes, and they were all evil.  Each one was worse than the previous king.  They also had other men besides the sons of Aaron who were priests.  And they forbid their people to go to the House of God.  They became Baal worshippers.

For these sins, the House of Israel, along with most of the House of Judah, were taken captive and eventually scattered throughout the middle east, northern Africa and Europe.  When they regained their independence, how would they be ruled; they would be ruled by the “seed of David”.

So, the kings of Europe were direct descendants from the “seed of David.”  But they were not to rule with absolute power as the Stuarts declared. 

For example, David was rebuked by the prophet Nathan for one of his sins.  Uzziah was rebuked by 80 of the priests of God for his wrongdoing and, as a result, he was immediately stricken with leprosy!  The kings were to follow the laws of Almighty God.  If they didn’t there would be judgments against them and the nation that they ruled.  But they still would be king.

But in opposition to these verses, John Locke reasoned that the “power of a government to rule must come from the consent of the governed.”  Locke influenced the “Glorious Revolution” when the English royalty had most of its power removed and given to Parliament.

This was a turning point in the history of the world.  Many of the writers of the Constitution of the united states of America were infected with this evilness of Enlightenment thinking that sprang following the “Glorious Revolution” that occurred in 1688.  For on this occasion the merchants and bankers had finally established their control of England.  This Revolution resulted in a Bill of Rights, a new king and queen, and a privately controlled central bank.  This bank gave an illusion of freedom which was accompanied by a guarantee of eventual slavery in the precise model which is outlined in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.       

Locke promoted the idea that every human being was born with three natural rights which included:

• Life
• Political Equality (Liberty), and
• Ownership of Property.

Locke also promoted the freedom of the press, educational reform and religious tolerance, and called for the overthrow of government that failed to protect human rights.

Does the Bible teach religious tolerance?  No, it teaches the opposite, but Hinduism does!

Exodus 20:2, 3:

2) “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3) Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Deuteronomy 12:1-3:

1) “These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the LORD God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth.

2) Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess serve their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree.

3) And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.”

John Locke provided the synthesis of rationalism and Christianity based upon definitions gained through human reasoning.        David Hume (1711-1776) furthered the supremacy of philosophy over Christianity when he used logic and analytical methods to determine the validity of the facts of existence, concluding that Christian miracles must be relegated into the realms of superstition and illusion because they lack physical evidence and do not comply with the proven laws of nature.

The Frenchmen Voltaire approved of freedom of speech.  His famous quote is, “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Another Frenchman, Montesquieu, called for a complete separation of powers to maintain balance in government which was to be accomplished by creating separate legislative, executive and judicial branches of government.

Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was a German Jewish philosopher who also fought for the separation of church and state.  Philosophers across Europe were dismantling the stability of traditional Christianity to construct a new foundation for their new demo(n)cratic world controlled by voters manipulated by the media’s strategy—serving emotional rhetoric. 

Francis Bacon favored the new Renaissance humanism over the more traditional schools of thought in England.  Bacon came to believe that science could lead people from ignorance and cause them to live more productive and influential lives. 

Rene Descartes, a Frenchmen, said that reason and mathematics were all a person needed to discover truth in science. He discovered analytic geometry and the scientific method. 

Isaac Newton took the scientific method and led the world in many scientific discoveries.  Newton was born during the beginning of the three English Civil Wars and lived his teenage years when England became a Republic or Commonwealth.  While in college the bubonic plague came on the scene and Newton escaped to his isolated home in the wilderness.  While there he developed a new mathematics called calculus.  He formulated the laws of gravity and motion.

Baruch Spinoza, an excommunicated Jew, was a pantheist.  He believed everything is connected in the universe; understanding is the key to everything.  Spinoza challenged revealed religion, traditional morality and political authority.  His starting point was not the salvation of the soul but the promotion of individual liberty. He was against the government making any attempt to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their differences and opposing opinions. 

This challenge against British Royalty and the Catholic Church, by the other two powers, (Jewish Cabal, Secret societies) was also a political strategy.  They intended to establish a political demo(n)cracy in which they believed they could manipulate the voters by controlling the media.  Is this happening in America right now?

Great Britain was a Monarchy and was always a Monarchy as was much of Europe.  What caused them to leave their religion and embrace a constitutional monarchy and then, finally, become a demo(n)cracy with a monarchy on the side?  Was it the humanistic (demon-led) Enlightenment?

CONCLUSION

Reason rather than faith was, for the Radicals, the true foundation of a just society. Almost all philosophers of the Enlightenment wanted to have a complete separation of powers between the state and the church.  Most Enlightenment philosophers were Deists; they were not Christians.  They believed in “Nature’s God”, i.e. the Creator who made the earth and then left it alone.  The Enlightenment philosophers were greatly admired by many political leaders in both America and France during their time of their existence. 

Some of the leaders of the American Revolution were influenced by Enlightenment ideas which included: 

• Freedom of speech
• Equality
• Freedom of press
• Religious tolerance

In turn, the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and justice helped to create the conditions for the American Revolution and the subsequent Constitution. It also played a major role in the French Revolution.  Demo(n)cracy was not created in a heartbeat. In a world where people were ruled by monarchs for centuries, the idea of self-government was entirely foreign.

Thomas Jefferson fell back on the European philosophers time after time again while he was composing the Declaration of Independence. Like many other Founding Fathers, including some who were writers of the Constitution of the United States, Jefferson was considered a Deist, subscribing to the liberal religious strand of Deism that values reason over revelation and rejects traditional Christian doctrines, including the:

• Virgin Birth
• Original sin
• The bodily resurrection of Jesus the Christ
• Biblical miracles
• Divine inspiration of the Book of Revelation
• Considers much of the New Testament to be false
• The divinity of Jesus Christ

Jefferson, as a young boy, was reared in the Church of England in Virginia.  When he went to the College of William and Mary, he was introduced and influenced by the Enlightenment philosophers. Jefferson subscribed to the political ideals expounded by John Locke, Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, whom he considered the three greatest men who ever lived. He was also influenced by the writings of Gibbon,  Robertson,  Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Hume and Montesquieu.  America is indebted to Deism (not the Bible), a movement of reason and equality that influenced the Founding Fathers to embrace liberal political ideals remarkable for their time. But the Bible declares:

1 John 4:1-3:

1) “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God:  because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

2) Hereby know ye the Spirt of God:  Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:

3) And every spirit that confesseth not the Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God:  and this is the spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have  heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”

Thomas Paine, the American Deist, called Christianity “a fable.”  Paine, the protégé of Benjamin Franklin, denied that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by speech, language or vision.  His widely read pamphlet, Common Sense, changed the political climate in America from one of seeking an address of grievances before the King to one of pushing for independence.  He believed in a distant deity whom he called “Nature’s God”.

Men like Ethan Allen, leader of the Green Mountain boys of the Revolutionary War, James Monroe, a close friend of Thomas Paine, George Washington who praised Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, John Adams, who was a Unitarian, James Madison, one of the main writers of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson all are considered as being Deist by many historians. 

The College of William and Mary in Virginia was where Monroe and Jefferson were graduates and where Washington served as chancellor.  The College of William and Mary was regarded as the hotbed of infidelity and of the wild politics of France.  It was where many of the founding fathers studied the teachings of the Enlightenment philosophers.

Colossians 2:8:

8) “Beware lest any man [like John Locke, Spinoza, Descartes, Voltaire, Mendelssohn, Montesquieu, Hume, Bacon, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Allen, Paine, Washington, Madison, Monroe, etc.] spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

What we needed were Christian-Identity believers to insist on what the Bible teaches, not follow the false ideas of humanistic philosophers and deists.  For the Enlightenment philosophers of yesterday and the Communists of today, both want the monarchy “descended from the seed of David” to be murdered in cold blood and cease to rule anymore.  Why?  Because that is what the Almighty God had said:

Psalm 132:11:

11) “The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; He will not turn from it; of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy [David’s] throne, 

Acts 2:29, 30:

29) “Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day. 

30) Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his [David’s] throne.”

If there is no king, then where is David’s throne in today’s world? 

If there is no king, then there is no kingdom.  

If there is no royalty of the “seed of David” on the earth today, then how can our resurrected Savior return and sit of the throne of David? 

Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.