The Doomed Culture War: Babylon and the Abrahamish Garment
“And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron” (Gen. 4).
“When I saw among the spoils a goodly (beautiful) Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them Jos” (7:21)
“And Hezekiah was glad of them, and shewed them the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures” (Is. 39)
—-----------------------------------
How much was an Abrahamish garment worth in Babylon? Less than a fancy “shoelatchet” in Gomorrah. Abraham had wealth, and valuable things (Gen. 24). But until he pitched his tent for a house in the city, would you call his lifestyle refined, cultured, or even civilized? The people with him were a culture (patterns, habits, rituals), but they were not producers (or exporters) of Culture. What they had was homegrown, and remained so, rarely more than homespun curiosities that would signal a primitive existence to the trained eye . What Jabal, Jubal, and Tubalcain created had universal appeal. They knew how things worked on a scientific level: the laws of Nature. They were the Hollywood, Wall Street, and Apple of their day. If it sold in the city of Enoch, it would soon be imitated elsewhere. Cain created the platform for the creation and distribution of Culture, much like Apps on Apple: the city. Tubalcain could make your life easier with his gadgets. Jubal would make it more pleasant, and Jabal would stock your local grocer. Cain was the Steve Jobs of his day, and the Nimrodians were so confident of their ability to recreate the world to their liking that “nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do” (Gen. 11). Culture is the natural disposition of fallen man, and did not God constantly undermine it, it would rise up overnight to overwhelm the Kingdom of God on earth. It is a substitute for the “beauty of holiness,” an outward counterfeit of “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit” (1 Pet. 2:4). “The Great Whore,” John calls it. That is, the prostitution of every virtue into vice, “the Pearl of Great Vice” tailored to what “crouches at the door of Cain’s heart desiring to have him,” and which he cuddles there as a pet. Had God not intervened in the Tower of Babel, by the time they got to the top, they would have invented the IPhone and used it as a signal tower. So lively was their “imagination” and vigor. It is the weed of Jonah that springs up overnight, but is felled as quickly by an invisible mite. “Go to,” they cried, as they towered upward. Faster, faster. Impatient of progress. Politics is the expedient of impatience, running alongside the “patient kingdom of Christ” (the Church, Rev. 1) throughout history. Pure activism. They need to see tangible results of their worth in their lifetime. Calvin and Luther were not content with the “not being weary in well doing” of this arrangement. Lacking true faith, they could “not overcome by the blood of the Lamb, nor by the word of their testimony, and because they loved their life by avoiding death” (Rev. 12). They had no choice, but to turn to activism: politics. Here they could see their towers in real time. They had hitched their religion to the “go to” movement, and were now left to serve the god of impatience. Unwilling to become martyrs, they became murderers by embracing the Inquisiton to stifle the witness of the Abels around them. Because “the common people” refused to listen to the false prophets in “the king’s chapel,” Protestants now directed their venom against the Anabaptists who exposed their hypocrisy. With the rise of rabid Secularism, the followers of Luther and Calvin are now called upon to refurbish “the king’s chapel” to suit the times, to expose their children to mutilation, and instructed by drag queens. They cannot get away from the drag queens without vacating “the king’s chapel.” The crisis in Evangelicalism is the realization that “the City on a Hill” had been a theocracy all along. Now that “the doctrines of devils” have become the law of the land, they are forced to “drink from the cup of devils.” Evangelical Pence, was forced to drink it to the dregs when he was forced to administer the oath of office to the Abomination (on a Bible) before a global audience. Luther and Calvin made peace with Babylon. Their followers are now being called upon to make peace with Sodom or lose State patronage. They face the prospect of being turned out of their own “City on a Hill.” “God bless America” was theirs, founded to safeguard the Reformation. They were the children of the Covenant, the last movement on God’s calendar. God had saved “the best wine for the last.” They were so indispensable for the cause of God (like Israel) that they were too big to fail. Jesus had given them a way of escape: the Straigate. Few took it, and perished in the utter destruction of Jerusalem. Lot leveraged himself down to a smaller city, and settled for a cave, rather than again pitch a tent with Abraham.
Abraham left the politics of Babel to sojourn as a citizen of an invisible kingdom. It is so “non-observable” that even those in it can only "believe" that it exists. What kind of a life is this? The life of a pilgrim. What is a pilgrim? A stateless person, a person with no earthly patronage. “They’ll murder me,” Abraham told Sarah, “because they’re rapists.” Twice she was kidnapped. Abraham did not accept the terms of participation, which meant he could be murdered, and no questions asked. No state, no existence. These were the ministers of God, the first citizens of the state, the custodians of civilization. Egypt was the richest and most advanced society on the face of the earth. If you belonged to it, you would enjoy the fruits of it. But you had to embrace it with your soul. Abraham did not abandon Babylon to become an Egyptian. He did not leave Babylon because he feared for his life. He fled from the wrath to come. He feared for his soul. “He hungered and thirsted after righteousness.” Visitors from Babylon would have filled him with dread rather than gladness. Lot saw such a lifestyle as a death sentence. He saw what happened in Egypt. He understood the meaning of the city every bit as much as much as Abraham understood the dangers of avoiding it. Zoar was saved because of his fear of the hill country, but he had become too toxic for them so he sought refuge in a cave. He refused to take up sojourning again.
During the rule of the Judges, Israe’s seat of government was the Tabernacle. God was their nomad king, and the Tent was where he lived among his people. The Mercy Seat, which covered the Ark of the Covenant, was His throne, symbolized by the cherubim which hovered above it. The Philistines woke to find their gods toppled, and didn’t realize that God was seated in the wagon that they sent back. When Israel demanded a real king, they also pitched God’s tent and made His dwelling worthy of an earthly king’s worship. Pagan Babylonians would not have been allowed into the Temple, and Hezekiah doesn’t mention it. But these were spies, Isaiah told him, and they’ll be back. You couldn’t miss the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Babylonians had a good idea of what they would find inside. They would have laughed at the Tabernacle. OR ignored it, as they left Abraham alone when they carried off Lot. But what would Isaiah have Hezekiah do, go back to tents? How can you be a king in drab surroundings? That’s what Samuel wanted to know? But they were tired of sojourning. So they upgraded God to a mansion. God allowed it in His anger, and destroyed it in His anger. They had become Babylon and the Jerusalemm from above looked like the Great Whore. “Preach unto his smooth things,” the people said to Isaiah. They don’t come smoother than Babylon. “Go back where you came from,” the king’s chaplain told Amos. You can imagine the embarrassment of a prophet in homespun preaching to the crowd next to the “king’s chapel.” John the Baptist dressed like Elijah, in camel skins. They were at home with God. They were an insult to the Temple.
When Constatine hijacked the Church, he made its judge-peachers (“I shall give them judges as at the first”) respectable by making them officials of the State. Luther and Calvin accepted this arrangement. They knew what kings and governments did to survive, and they had to Christianize everything they did. The king was in the Church, and because he decided who lived and died, he could not be contradicted. Augustine already saw the Holy Roman Empire as the visible Kingdom of God on earth. If you were not an outright atheist, you could expect to be saved. But the fact that you could not excommunicate the King or his officials, meant that you could not excommunicate anyone. So is everyone who lives in a “Christian realm” saved? Before the Reformation you could be the Antichrist one day, confess to the priest, and be good to go. You may have to spend time in Purgatory, but you’ll get there. Salvation for Luther and Calvin began when you were “born again” by infant baptism, which they saw as replacing circumcision. Luther added to this the grace that came through eating the Lord’s Supper. This kept you saved somehow. Calvin grounded salvation in Election. Amazingly, if you want to be one of the Elect, all you have to do is believe that you are. Christ, the New Birth, faith and repentance come as an afterthought in this scheme. If you believe you were elect, you are, and since no one would want not to be elect, those who want to be elect are. The fact that you attend a church that thinks this way means that you are elect. Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson accepted this system, and never doubted that they were among the elect. The Anabaptists, like the Donatists, taught that only those who gave evidence of the New Birth could be members of the local church. They were called Anabaptists, because they rejected the notion of infant baptism, for in the New Testament, only those who believed had the right to baptism. Where does this leave the Lutherans and Calvins, who said they were initiated into the Church as infants: baptismal regeneration. You recognize this as Serb Christianity, Putin and Orban are Christians because they accept what the Church teaches and do not repudiate Christ.
What the Anabaptist taught was considered treasonous, because it would fragment the government into factions. And worse, if the king is not a Christian, is he illegitimate? Is he not then under the wrath of God? Is not such a state doomed to fail? But the king has to be a Christian. To make him so, they had to make the way of salvation so broad that everyone was on it. This, to the Donatists, was heresy. But, in a theocracy, heresy is treason, and Augustine told the Emperor to go after the heretics with fire and sword. This is the origin of the Inquisition.
Luther and Calvin called this Church the Great Whore of Babylon, because of the godlessness of her members. But Augustine, whom they followed, taught that to break away from the Church is heresy. We are now the Church, they said, and Rome is the Great Whore, and no longer the Church. Rome called them Donatists. And Augustine taught that Donatists could be tortured and killed. With this they agreed. In Germany, the State church was Lutheran, and there could only be one church to keep the government from fragmenting. The same in Geneva where Calvin tortured his heretics before killing them. In every instance, they agreed with Augustine that the government is the Kingdom of God on earth, and those in it have to be Christian. But once again, the king is in the church, and no can be excommunicated. The Anabaptists saw little more than the Great Whore divided up into lesser whores. They knew what went on in the courts of those kings: vice and debauchery.
But how do you get Babylon out of the Church if you bring the Babylonians into the Church without “having their head shorn and their nails pared?” Herod, an Edomite, ruled over the Temple. The Pharisees thrived. They were all part of the same corrupt system. After Pentecost, Jerusalem was to Jewish Christians what Babylon and Egypt were to Abraham. There was nothing to salvage without losing your soul. This is what Americans are facing now. The System is so saturated with blatant blasphemy from one end to the other that you cannot retain a toehold without searing your conscience. And there is no going back. Hezekiah succumbed to Babylon because Jerusalem had become like Babylon, much to the delight of its inhabitants who clamored for “smooth’ preaching. No one put a gun to Acan’s head telling him to covet the “Babylonish garment.” Hezekiah would likely not have been “glad” to see ambassadors from Sodom. He would have been “vexed” like Lot. But these were “smooth” fellows. Who says a Christian can’t be in style? Babylon today, Sodom tomorrow, Abraham would say. Because Babylon is pure luxury and vice, and vice needs a greater and greater dose. Many Americans would love to take the country back to Babylon, and pretend that their church is not in it. They understand perfectly well what would follow if they made an abrupt break like Abraham. There he sits by himself in the desert—”he says he sees a city far off.” He died in a tent. There Babylonians were not Sodom, and the more dangerous for that. The Great Whore is indestructible until the End. The word here is “seduction,” “the World.” Achan could see himself in that ”Babylonish garment.” And beside it a mouthwatering “wedge of gold.” What’s wrong with a fancy paperweight?
Lamech was both a polygamist and a killer. He was likely the king of Cain’s city Enoch. But look at his children: “subduers of Nature.” What has a Christian ever built compared to the tower of Babel, the Pyramids and the iPhone. Were it up to Christians, we likely wouldn’t have the Telegraph yet. This all comes out of what we call civilization, invented by Cain, and perfected by Nimrod’s Babylon. You can’t replace that with the Ark. Try motivating people with Enoch preaching that he can “see the Lord coming” on the horizon. “Watch,” Jesus said, “I could come any moment.” Not only is the world or society not progressing to a better world (“men shall wax worse and worse”), but there’s no point to any of it. It’s all “vanity of vanities.” Abraham sits in the desert because the whole system is a sham covered with a thin veneer of scarlet: “a filthy whore,” John calls civilization and the system that undergirds it. But make no mistake, your iPhone is pure Babylon. Rather a byproduct of it. It’s a byproduct of the Babylonish garment. Achan was not “vexed” by the Babylonish garment, and nothing has so spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth as the iPhone. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.”