Abortion-tainted vaccines

Dear Daniel, I’ve never implied the slaughter of men matters less. Only more. The slaughters of abortion, organ-harvesting, infanticide, euthanasia, and “contraceptives” are each as serious as death.

What I’ve worked to oppose during Covid is trivializing the Christian conscience along political lines whose center is merely resentiment. Nothing makes this more obvious than the full shift of attention from any of the above horrendous evils to government overreach through masks and vaccines.

Then, concerning vaccines, I’ve also tried to oppose those arguing as if opposing HEK 293 is “pro-life,” refusing to admit the difference between hiring someone to murder your child and using skin lotion, food, or a vaccine that had some connection to a cell line originating from a baby whom no one involved in the origin of that cell line has ever testified came from an elective abortion.

Many Christians are really angry today and lashing out at the closest authority using every means at their disposal. Among belligerators there is no slightest hint of honoring the king. No slightest hint. This is direct rebellion against God’s command. Trivializing the Christian conscience and Christian persecution and martyrdom as I believe is happening now leaves us and our children less prepared for the growing persecution that is truly a matter of God’s Word. I wonder if belligerators have read the story of the boy who cried “Wolf?” But of course, they would respond (as one just did to me on social media) that masks and vaccines are the equivalents of Ceasar’s command to Christians to deny Jesus’ lordship by repeating, “Ceasar is Lord.”

Right…

I’m not against Christians denying the serious threat of Covid. I’m not against Christians choosing between authorities and refusing vaccines. If it comes to it, I’m not against Christians going to jail and losing their job over masks and vaccines. I’m not against other Christians arguing in courts and online that people should not have to wear masks or get vaccinated. If Christians want to spend three years arguing stats and screaming at public authorities abt Covid, I say let them. Knock their socks off, but it’s not for me because it’s nowhere near the boundaries of when Christian conscience should submit to God rather than man.

In fact, we’ve already been way past that line, but it’s at a place where Christians aren’t wanting to belligerate, I’m guessing partly because it’s only words.

Thing is, words are what the early Christians died over. “Ceasar is Lord.” The Gospel is dependent upon preaching using words, and as belligerators harp against masks, I try to resurrect the Christian testimony concerning the sins Scripture says will bar us from the kingdom of God and social media shut that witness down and mask-belligerators shrug, saying among themselves, “See, he should be refusing to wear masks and get the vaccine. That’s were the real action is.”

Nobody watching the past year and a half can fail to see that Christians are more concerned about bodies than the words of God and religious freedom to speak and preach them, testifying through them to our most holy Faith.

Fetal cell lines clearly originating in elective abortions from decades ago are horrendous and we ought to protest this scientific participation in genocide. But our protest against the direct current killings of our church’s children through ECPs, IUDs, the Pill, and all the other forms of abortifacient birth control methods should be more constant and vociferous.

But of course, precious few men are preaching or writing or arguing over these murders so painfully clear and so bloody prevalent within our own families and churches. We’re too busy having hissy fits over masks and endlessly debating vaccine stats.

I’m confident some here reading this will acknowledge this is more than a tell in our circles today. Others will deny it, saying they themselves are both/and, but precious few of the belligerators can make that claim as evidenced by this post being now twelve years old and unprecedented among them. Love,

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Perhaps we run in different circles but the people I know fighting the tyranny of the present are the only ones I know besides you that are also willing to speak to the birth control pill, sodomy, feminism, and the other battles facing the church today.

My concern is that by belittling the fight against masks and mandated vaccines, you are actually doing what you are concerned that the anti maskers are doing. That is by taking the wind out of our sails now that it is a lesser fight, those sails won’t stand against the harder winds to come.

It seems to me that it would be better to make a stand against lesser tyranny rather than to allow them to continue to strengthen until the only thing left is much harder to fight. And I agree that the time to fight was way before now. But we are here and can’t go back to the past. Rather we need to make do with what we got. We have a bunch of men who are sick with the weak Evangelical cheap grace. The masks were just the tipping point for many of them. I’ll grant you it’s a stupid tipping point but still it’s what has moved many men to leave behind churches that don’t engage in preaching to the sins of their people or of our culture.

Almost every person we have dealt with who have come our way because of masks, it was not the only issue but rather a long train of issues. When they have come, they have come with issues in their own lives to be confronted but they have been open to being confronted because that is what they were in part looking for.

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No, we run in the same circles and most of the belligerators have been silent about abortifacients. In fact, I’ve talked to their top dog abt them and had to work hard to keep him from continuing to say the Pill is fine. We’re not talking about what men in private may admit, but what they write abt publicly and preach and teach in their own churches, for starters.

Find me anything even remotely close to what I wrote twelve years ago from anyone other than Randy Alcorn on what you simply call “the birth control pill.” Maybe the guys down in Arizona or New Mexico have said something about it, but your “present tyranny” is nowhere among no one understood to be the murder of unborn children by Christians claiming to be pro-life.

It’s masks, now morphing into vaccines. Plain and simple, it’s all about Covid. Love,

If it’s nowhere near the boundaries of when Christian conscience should submit to God rather than man, then we shouldn’t be doing it, right? We shouldn’t be arguing about masks or vaccines in court. After all, what they’re doing is legal, so what’s the use?

Christians should be committed to truth, which includes scientific truth. We should not spread a false report. Previous articles on Warhorn have opposed scientific misinformation about Covid. I don’t see a way to recover proper reverence for authority among Christians unless you are willing to counter the rampant conspiracism and misinformation about the virus itself.

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Good point Ben but I’m not sure the truth is on the side of masks and forced vaccines. Read an article today from the Drudge Report that vaccines are now down to 45% effective. Personally I know people who have covid right now that were fully vaccinated and wore masks.

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It may be true that masks and vaccines are useless.

Looking back at the last year and a half, though, Tim Bayly and co. have been more right than wrong, when speaking of 1) the threat of Covid itself, 2) the legality of civil magistrates’ actions, 3) the lack of malice intended by said civil magistrates for churches, 4) the necessity of proper respect for authority, and 5) the intentional misleading of Christians by certain belligerators for the sake of clicks and fame, and 6) lack of evidence of any politically motivated conspiracy behind the Covid restrictions, since these restrictions clearly continued long after the election was over. And now they’re starting them back up again!

That’s not an exhaustive list. Basic honesty and integrity requires you to go back and make those things right, to acknowledge you were wrong. Could Doug Wilson and Matt Trewhella just say that they were wrong about this or that? Could people refrain from circulating silly statements like the Warrenton Declaration that just rub salt in the wound?

I think the continuing belligerance about vaccines is partly about the vaccines, but it’s mostly the fact that various Christian and conservative personalities just can’t admit they were wrong about their initial reactions to Covid. It’s a pride thing. It’s also a money thing. They fear they will lose audience. So we’re now stuck in this self-defeating cycle because people can’t apply the brakes to their position.

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I am not sure I agree with you Ben.

  1. I think the biggest threat of Covid has been the governments overreach. I am not saying it is not a real disease. I have had it myself. I’ve seen people have it. But has it been the second coming of the plague that the media painted it as. There are videos I could post from early on in this pandemic that were being spread that are clearly propaganda and lies meant to induce panic. Projections of numbers of death were wildly overestimated. Yes, you might find some studies that got it closer. But the threat of Covid has been and is overblown compared to any pandemic of the past.
  2. There have been quite a few cases where the legality of the civil magistrates actions have been shown in courts to be unconstitutional. It was only because Christians and conservatives pushed back on these actions that they were able to get victories. John MacArthur has been vindicated in the courts as have other churchmen who stood strong and were labeled rebels for it. I know its cool to mock Gabe Rench’s arrest but the courts also ruled in his favor. So no, Ben, it has been far from clear that the civil magistrates actions have been legal and will continue to be so.
  3. The lack of malice by civil magistrates towards the church is a mixed bag. It is clear that many civil magistrates thought they had absolute sway over the Church. The confiscating of church property in Canada has been despicable. I do appreciate our governor here in Indiana for taking a more reasonable approach. I think this is only possible because there is a presence of the Church involved in politics here in Indiana. But if you think the Governor of New York didn’t hold malice towards the Church and conservative Christians you are kidding yourself. The same thing with President Biden. Do you honestly think he doesn’t hold everything we stand for in contempt. These people are only stopped because good men fight back.
  4. Yes this is true. We must have proper respect for authority. But proper respect for authority does not mean we must uphold abuses of authority. Imagine living during Word War II and enlisting in the Army but going off to fight the Australians because you didn’t like how you perceived their attitude towards Hitler. Now imagine living in our time and constantly berating brothers in Christ because you perceive that they are berating authorities. And I would also turn that on the defy tyrants crowd by saying imaging constantly attacking brothers in Christ over masks during our time. Its silly.
  5. Yes certain belligerators on all sides are looking to make a buck and get fame. I don’t know that this has been proven though of all our brothers in Christ. Are we all tempted to this, sure? This has been a good warning and one I appreciate from Warhorn. But the 9th commandment is still binding on us all. The Westminster Confession of Faith says “harsh, and partial censuring; misconstructing intentions” are forbidden. I’ve been meditating on this commandment a lot lately and have been convicted of how much I have broken it. We must be careful in attributing motives to our brothers. No, I am not saying we never judgement motives. But some of our dear brothers we disagree with on how they have fought during this time are not operating out of greed or a desire for fame. I am not writing this to defend the FLF network but rather men whom you personally know who have sacrificed much to fight tyrants.
  6. Yes there are some wild conspiracy theories. We must not believe lies. And yet you know they held off announcing the vaccine in order to do in Trump. You know that they used this to push through a whole lot of wicked policies. And you also know that global warming is going to use every play in this play book.

It behooves us all to recognize when we are wrong Ben. But in doing so let us not swing from one ditch to the next. I’ve tried to maintain a balance between a desire to fight tyranny on one hand and unity of the church. I still maintain we have to find a way to do that. May God help us.

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Joseph,

I’ve enjoyed this back and forth and I hope Ben will hopefully respond to this. But I wanted to respond to a couple of points as well:

I am also concerned with government overreach, and I think there was/ is a lot of fear mongering surrounding the covid (from both sides! Most of the stuff my social circle sends me is conspiratorial fearmongering about vaccine, pharmaceutical companies, vague conspiracies about control, genetic manipulation, great reset, etc.) However, the projections for numbers of deaths were not “wildly overestimated.” The first published estimates we got from the CDC were between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths ( Coronavirus Death Toll May Reach 100,000 to 240,000 in U.S., Officials Say - The New York Times (nytimes.com)). That was based on an epidemiological model from Washington University. Suffice it to say we have blown that estimate out of the water with over 650,000 excess deaths and counting. A figure of 2.2 million, which was produced by Neil Ferguson’s team Imperial College was bandied about, but it was based on unrestricted spread . It was also an outlier on the high side. When many commentators I have long listened to and respected were mocking fear about the virus and the overreaction in early-mid 2020 it was in the context of official estimates that turned out to be much too low.

This is absolutely true - but when we are searching all across the country, or even other countries, looking for cases of abuse we will doubtless find them. In my opinion we would all be a lot better off if we focused on our own magistrates and our own polities rather than getting worked up about the governments others live under. My own magistrates (local and state) have been very reasonable and moderate, yet it seems that the perception of local people is shaped by what is happening in Moscow, LA, or Alberta. It distorts everyone perception when they are constantly looking for and reading news of the most extreme cases of overreach/abuse. This obviously goes for point 3 as well.

[Thought I would add]

WRT conspiracy theories, I have been surprised how susceptible people have been to all sorts of conspiracy theories, misinformation, and just bizarre logic around coronavirus (and the 2020 election too). It has caused me to step back and consider where we are going wrong with our epistemology. I don’t think people need to be experts in stuff like transmission rates, vaccines, or vote counting procedures; but its much better to say “I don’t know” than to hold false views with blinding certainty.

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Pastor Joseph (who is my pastor, let it be known),

Clay said a lot of what I would have said. I don’t want to turn this into a LARPer flame war, so I will try to be brief.

The specific argument made by elder and attorney Brian Bailey was that stay-at-home orders and mandatory quarantines were legal and constitutional, going all the way back to Blackstone’s commentaries. Others in the Reformed world quoted Richard Baxter’s writings on quarantines. The basic argument is that those Christians who were ready to fight any and all mandates on the church from the word, “Go” were wrong in their specific legal and constitutional arguments. We are now 18 months into this thing. Who has acknowledged Brian Bailey was right? Anybody? Buehler?

That doesn’t mean that all civil magistrates’ actions were justified in every time and place. Where churches were unfairly discriminated against compared to other similar businesses or activities, the courts have ruled in our favor occasionally. But no court has ever embraced the far more expansive (and common) argument that any quarantine of healthy people is automatically unconstitutional. They haven’t because precedent doesn’t allow them to do so.

Gabe Rench won in court, and so did John MacArthur. I believe Warhorn’s point in criticizing both of these men has been their victories in court are showboating. If they are abolitionists on masks, why aren’t they abolitionists concerning the slaughter of the preborn? Where are their scars? Why are they animated to fight quarantines and masks, but not other things? Warhorn wants us to do a gut check on our motives. I think that’s wise.

I’ve broken various Covid rules here and there myself. We have done so as a church at the abortion mill. We didn’t showboat about it. We were humble. I don’t think the men of our presbytery have any problem with us. Maybe they do. If they do, I don’t care too much, tbh. My conscience is clean on singing to the deathscorts without a mask on.

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Joseph, you’re confusing me. Just a few posts ago you defended fighting the masking issue in order to keep the wind in the sails for harder fights. Part of that fight would be attacking the position of brothers in Christ you believe are in error, I would assume.

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I didn’t get that specific as in meaning a specific fight with just masks. Masks are the symptom of a larger fight. But for the sake of the argument I’ll agree with first two sentences. It doesn’t follow that in fighting mask mandates that you must attack the position of your brothers unless they are requiring masks. But attacking a position of a brother is different than attacking a brother. This comes out in the kind of language you use in your debates towards your brother. You don’t straw man, unjustly assign motivations, and needlessly pick at them.

The issue is that we live in a low trust society brought upon us in many ways. How can I believe the cdc isn’t playing politics with vaccines when they said a couple of days ago that “pregnant people” should be vaccinated. How do we trust that these civil magistrates care about life when they slaughter millions of babies. The people I know leading against tyranny aren’t unacquainted with suffering at the hands of civil magistrates. Mr. Defy Tyrants Pastor Matt Trewhella has been arrested over 100 times for preaching outside of abortion clinics, spending accumulative time of 16 months in jail. Many abolitionists I know speaking about tyranny routinely deal with unjust police officers attempting to shut them up. Just a couple weeks ago a fellow elder and I were preaching when a man stole our equipment right in front of a police officer who did nothing to stop it and then went on to ask us to stop preaching. Mind you we are not the pelagain preachers berating people. I’ve been physical threatened by state reps for simply asking them to pass an abolition bill. Personally I’ve been lied about in the New York Times and Washington Post. I’ve seen how they will make up quotes or “facts” to push an agenda.

I don’t say that to toot my own horn but rather to say that the media and civil government have gaslighted us for so long that even if you aren’t involved in a public way if you are conservative your gut reaction is to never trust them.

Now this doesn’t mean that we ought to rush to conspiracy theories. Much that goes for news on the right is just as rotten. The right has to stop falling for jingoism and other stupid stuff.

But the fact remains that on Covid, I don’t trust them.

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Yep. This is what I’ve attempted to do throughout this debate. I have generalized on positions I’ve heard. If I’ve broken the 9th commandment, as you have implied more than once, please be a good brother to me and point it out.

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“The time to fight?” What on earth! As if

Dear brother, I’m taking down most of this comment because I am so weary of the time wasted by endless discussions of Covid and who is or is not sufficiently brave and principled.

Most of us would have sung right next to you. Smiling I is

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Dear Brother,

When have I dismissed your work or the other men on this thread? I didn’t say that at all. I was agreeing with you that some of these people now fighting should have been fighting before now. I’m not arguing that you haven’t been fighting the good fight in different battles. Nor would I dare consider myself the standard as if the Church catholic hasn’t been battling long before me and needed me to set it straight. It’s this exact point of dismissing the work of others that I argued against above.

To bring this back to the point. It’s not that I disregard your work or hold you in low esteem. I honor you. It’s that I disagree with you in your judgments about certain other men and to the point of the thread, vaccine and mask mandates. I agree on the need to uphold submission to authority but disagree that speaking out against these things is reviling authority.

“I am so weary of the time wasted by endless discussions of Covid and who is or is not sufficiently brave and principled.” In this we agree. And everybody says Amen.

Love,

I pulled this statement from my comment, replacing it with the quote you have at the end of your comment. But hey, if you think it should be put back up, have at it.

I have not written about vaccines at all, other than to say that men should not lie about HEK 293 being the product of an elective abortion, so I have no clue what could have led you to think you know my personal position on vaccine mandates. It has to be a guess.

Then too, saying here that I have accused those who disagree and criticize civil authorities abt masks are men who are “reviling authorities” is ham-fisted. It’s not those who disagree with mask mandates that I have said are reviling authorities, but those who never stop shouting “Tyranny!” and “Tyrants!”

Love,

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Can we have drastically different views, argue them with gusto, even pull some of our own hair out…without accusations/insinuations of breaking the 9th commandment being chucked into the mix? I had enough of that tactic in the PCA. It’s the way every good argument was prematurely closed.

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How can you trust the NCAA to report the number of teams in a tournament, when they deny the difference between men and women and bully states that acknowledge a difference?

How can you trust Trump to appoint conservative justices when he doesn’t care about abortion or homosexuality?

How can you trust your pastor to preach to you when he’s a sinner?

How can you trust Proctor and Gamble to make feminine hygiene products, when they celebrate pride week?

The answer to your question should be obvious. The trustworthiness of people towing the liberal party line on sexuality when it has nothing to do with their main work may be harmed in general by towing that party line, but their trustworthiness in their main work is tested by other metrics.

If you want to suggest that towing the liberal party line on sexuality means that obviously they are being political about vaccines, you would have to explain how vaccines have anything to do with sexuality.

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I wouldn’t trust the NCAA with health decisions and have pretty much given up on college sport. I didn’t trust Trump to nominate conservative judges and didn’t vote for him the first time. I think he did better than I expected but still don’t trust the judges he nominated to be conservative but simply to be better than Hillary’s.
I don’t listen to pastors who are blatantly compromised. Surely there is a distinction between a godly man who is a sinner and an organization promoting wickedness.

And this is the rub, the cdc’s wrongness on sexuality and the science there is directly related to their work. If your work is related to healthcare and pregnancy but you can’t get who can get pregnant right, how can I trust you. It reveals either incompetence or nefarious intent to play politics with what their mission is. Neither gives me confidence in adhering to their recommendations or rulings.