1990 issue 10 - unbelief and revolution - counsel of chalcedon
TRANSCRIPT
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8/12/2019 1990 Issue 10 - Unbelief and Revolution - Counsel of Chalcedon
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Unbelief and evolution
by Joe Morecraft l l
The lnzpact
of
the French Revolution
and the nzerican Civil War
on Twentieth Century nzerica
The Celebration of the French Revolution
On October 11, 1988, President Ronald Reagan
signed into law Public Law 100-482, which, accor
ding to the Senators who introduced it, urges the
people
of
the United States to observe the Bicen
tennial
of
the French Revolution and the historic
events of 1789. Their reason for this law was that
the more we learn about the French Revolution and
the Declaration
of
the Rights
of
Man and the Citizen
the more we learn about our own past
n
1908 Russian anarchist, Prince Propotkin wrote,
What we learn today from the study of the great
Revolution
in
France is that it was the source and
origin of all the present communist, anarchist, and
socialist conceptions.
On July
14
1989, Bastille Day, President George
Bush and the leaders ofthe world's six other major
industrial nations met
in Paris to celebrate the 200th
Anniversary of the French Revolution in 1789.
In his address to the United Nations on December 7,
1988, Mik:ail Gorbachev said, Two great
revolutions, the French Revolution
of
1789 and the
Russian Revolution of 1917, exercise a powerful
impact on the very nature
of
the historical process,
having radically changed the course
of
world
development. These two revolutions, the French
and the Communist, each in its own way, gave a
huge impulse to human progress and contributed to
forming the pattern
of
mentality that continues to
prevail in the minds
of
people.
So, according to our leaders, there is one thing the
free'' West and the communist East can celebrate in
common:
both
cultures owe their existence and the
nature
of
their civilizations to the French Revolution
of 1789.
The Accomplishments
of the French Revolution
What is it we are to celebrate?
What
do we owe to
the French Revolution? Mirabeau, one of the leaders
of
the French Revolution summarized the attitude
of
the people behind the Revolution:
We
must
overthrow all order, suppress all laws, annul all
power, and leave the people
in
anarchy. We must
caress their vanity, flatter the people's hopes,
promise them happiness .. But as the people are a
lever which legislators can move at will, we must
necessarily use them as a support and render hateful
to them everything we wish to destroy, and sow
illusions in their paths. -- The clergy, being the
most powerful, through public opinion, can only be
destroyed by ridiculing religion, rendering its
ministers odious, and only
by
representing them as
hypocritical monsters. Liables must at every
moment show fresh traces
of
hatred against the
clergy: to exaggerate their riches, to make the sins
of
an individual appear to
be
common
to
all,
to
attribute
to them all vices--murder, irreligion, immorality,
sacrilege.
What
did the French Revolution accomplish? It
popularized the guillotine. During the French
Revolution, particularly the Reign of Terror,
thousands
of
men, women and children were
beheaded by the guillotine. At one point, little,
poverty-stricken peasant boys and girls were thrust
beneath the blade
of
he guillotine
andwere
mutilated
because they were t small to fit into the fatal
plank.
On
more than
one
occasion hundreds
of
these children were driven into an open f ield outside
the city, shot, clubbed down, sabered by the
assassins, around whose knees these little children
clung, weeping and crying for mercy. The guillotine
was too slow for the blood-thirstiness
of
Robespierre and the other leaders. They instituted a
new method of extermination. Men, women,
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Robespierre guillotines the executioner after
guillotining everyone
e se
n France.
children, priests, and nuns were herded together and
mown down with cannon, or simply blown up with
large charges
of
gun powder. Still the executions
were too slow. This problem was soon solved by a
man named Carrier, who invented mass drownings,
which he laughingly called ';bathing parties.'; Over
300,000 people were killed by guillotine, cannon
and drowning during the French Revolution, our
leaders have urged
us
to celebrate. 2
These revolutionaries believed that France was .
overpopulated. They decided to begin a
depopulation program which was never carried out,
because the leaders could not agree on whether they
should exterminate one third, one half,
or
two thirds
of
the 26,000,000 people in France. They could
not
decide whether to
k ll
eight million
or
eighteen
million Frenchmen. One of them said, Let us make
a cemetery.of France rather than not regenerate her
after our manner. Everything, yes, everything must
be destroyed, since everything must
be
remade.''3
The: Counsel
of
Cbalcedon December 1990 Page 8
The aith of the French Revoluti.on
The Declaration of the Rights ofMan and the Citizen
was the confession
of
faith
of
the French
Revolution. Senator Richard Luger explained that
we should celebrate that revolution because
as we
read the Declaration
of
the Rights
of
Man and the
Citizen we learn more about our own past. The
basis for reyolutionary establishment
of
a new
world order is given in this document: Kings,
aristocrats, tyrants
of
every description are slaves in
revolt against the Sovereign of the earth, which is
HUMANITY, and against the Legislator of the
universe, which is
NATURE.''
(emphasis mine)
To celebrate their faith in man and nature, the
revolutionists created a statue of a harlot and
crowned her the goddess, Reason.'' They would
carry this harlot-goddess through the streets, and the
crowds would bow
in worship and submission
before her as she passed.
The confession
of
faith
of
the French Revolution
was clearly
an
atheistic, anti-christian one, which
worshiped Man.
The Uniqueness of the French Revolution
Over one hundred years before . the French
Revolution
of
1789, during the Enlightenment,
Europe began her apostasy from the Christian Faith.
She stopped believing
in
the sovereignty
of
God and
began believing in the sovereignty of man and the
supremacy
of
human reason. As a result
of
its
apostasy from the Godofthe Bible iJ the hearts and
minds
of
Frenchmen, and other Europeans, the
bloody French Revolution was inevitable. God says
n Proverbs 8:36, Those whohate tne love death.
The French Revolution of 1789 was the first
revolution
of
its kind in the history
of
the world.
There had been many wars prior to 1789 in France,
but there never was a war like this one. t was the
first revolution in history which had as its express
purpose the total overturningof Christianity and of a
Christian moral order. That was its
goal, its thrust,
its intent, not only in France, but
n
Europe and
throughout the world. The wars of the Twentieth
Century are continuations and extensions
of
that
revolution
in
France. America's War Between the
States was a product
of
the French Revolution, as
well as the Communist Revolution
of
1917, World
War I, World Wat II, the wars n South America,
China, Korea, Vietnam, Angola, .Mozambique and
southern Africa, and Nicaragua. The wars
of
the
past 150 years have taken place because of what
took place nFrance n 1789.
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The Inevitability of the French Revolution
The French Revolution, which led to the dictatorship
and wars of Napoleon, was inevitable once Europe
embraced unbelief and turned from the supremacy
of
Almighty God and the authority of His Word,
t u r n n ~
to man and reason
as
the supreme gods of
the uruverse.
UNBELIEF BREEDS REVOLUTION
The greatest Christian critic
of
the French
Revolution was the Dutchman Groen Van Prinsterer,
(1801-1876), whose book on the revolution is
entitled,
Unbelief and Revolution. He speaks
of
the
inevitability of this revolution, when he writes that
the humanistic worldview
of
the supremacy
of man
and of human reason
of
the Eighteenth Century
would not be stopped until civilization was redefined
in terms
of
that self-consciously antichristian
worldview. His words are:
"With the tree of life planted once more in the
European soil by the Reformation all
but
dead, the
ground was ready to receive the deadly seed (of
humanism). Theology, political theory, literature
and education: all these were soon permeated by the
new doctrine. This leaven leavened the whole lump.
At the outbreak of he French Revolution virtually all
of
Europe was ripe for upheaval. -- The eruption
of
a volcano is inevitable long before the mountain
mass is torn asunder.
The
French Revolution was
inevitable long before
it
broke
out
"It (the revolution) is more than
just
a political
revolution ending
in
democracy ...
It
is TIIE
Revolution: with its baleful influence which, though
tempered in its pernicious effect by the blessings of a
higher providence, continues even
in our
day to
frustrate the operation of truly wholesome
principles.
It
is
THE
Revolution: with its
systematic application of the philosophy of unbelief;
with its atrocities and destructiveness; with its self
deification and its adoration of Reason on the ruins
of the ancient state.
" . .
as
early
as
1770 the lcing was told by the clergy:
'Impiety bears a grudge against both God
and
men.
It
will
not be
satisfied until it has destroyed all
authority, divine
and
human.
It
will plunge France
into all the horrors
of
anarchy and give birth to the
most unspeakable revolutions.'
"What happened in 1789
had
to happen
.
4
The American Civil War as
our "French Revolution"
America experienced a bloody French Revolution
in
the 1860's
n our War
Between the States.
Our War
of Independence in 1776 was anything but a
revolution.5
It
was the opposite of the French
Revolution of 1789. The colonies were fighting a
war of self-defense against the lawless
totalitarianism
of
King George
and
the English
Parliament.
But we did
most certainly experience
THE
Revolution n the 1860's.
The
instigators of
theW
ar Between the States
had
the same design
and
intent as the leaders of the French Revolution: to
break the back
of
a Christian
moral
order and a
constitutional political order in the South and
throughout the United States. They used slavery as
an excuse to commence with war.
The southern states,
i e
., the Confederacy, were
"rebels",
but
they were
n
rebellion, not against the
Constitution, but against
THE
Revolution
of
the
northern states, i.e., the Union.6
New
England
Unitarians and others instigated the
war in
order to
establish the equivalent of the French Revolution n
these United States,
in
order to
crush
the influence
of
Biblical, Reformed Christianity
on
the political
and social institutions
of
this continent. These
Unitarians comprised the leadership
of
the Abolition
Movement, which was their "front" for their
revolution against Christianity.
Otto
Scott, in his
book,
The Secret Six documents this perspective,?
He proves that a group of wealthy
New
England
Unitarians subsidized the terrorist,
John
Brown, to
come to the South and to foment revolution there.
These Unitarians
not
only despised Biblical,
Reformed Christianity, they also hated the U.S.
Constitution, because of its Christ ian roots. Long
before 1860, there was widespread talk throughout
New
England about secession
from
the Union
in
order to
get
away from the Constitution, which they
said, "was a covenant with death
and an
agreement
with hell." The same
men who
plead for secession
n
the early 1800's condemned the South for
secession
in
the 1860's.
One of
these
New
England
Unitarians, a
man by
the
name
of Garrison,
celebrated July 4, 1854, by publicly burning the
U.S. Constitution at a rally in Framingham,
Massachusetts.
Unitarianism was imported in the United States from
Europe and the Enlightenment. It held that: (1).
reason is supreme; (2). man
is basically good; (3).
man
is perfectable;
and
(4). a utopia
is
possible
op.
earth for perfected
man
by means
of
state-controlled
education and governmental regulation
of
society.
Man
is not evil, as the despised Calvinists taught.
Evil
is rooted in Calvinism
and
in
the institutions
of
America which were given birth by
Cal
vinism, viz.
the Constitution. Therefore, Calvinism
and
those
terrible institutions
must be destro
yed, along with
the moral, social, political order which has sustained
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them. Hence, the French Revolution. Their anti
christian faith led them to this political agenda:
"Social reform is to be a central program
of
all
political parties. This reform must be an instrument
for the -increasing
of
the centralization
of
political
power in a central government at the expense of the
states."8
The more
the Unitarians increased
in
numbers and
influence, the more radical their social and political
reforms became. Their followers became
Collectivists and Socialists, some of whom even
attempted to abolish marriage and families
as
institutions
based
on Christianity, which were
viewed
as obstacles
to
their
new
world order un:aer
Man.
The Abolition Movement was led and financed by
the Unitarians. They took advantage of the great
controversial issue
of slavery to motivate people to
war.
It is
interesting to point
out
that one
of
the
major
industries
of
New England prior
to
1860 was
slave-trade
They
used the slave question to cover
their intentions to create revolution in this country
against our Christian roots and heritage, in order to
create a new humanistic, utopian, socialistic order.
The Insight
of
Thornwell
and Palmer
The Presbyterians saw through the excuses
of
the
War, and understood clearly the true issues.
The
three most influential Presbyterian ministers in the
South in the middle and late 1800's were James H.
Thornwell, president
of
Columbia Seminary,
Benjamin Palmer, a pastor
in New
Orleans, and
Robert
L
Dabney, Chief
of
Staff to Stonewall
Jackson and professor in Union Seminary. All three
of these
men
understood that the
War
Between the
States was ultimately a war to destroy Christianity,
although
most of
the people of the North were
certainly not aware
of
that fact.
On May 4, 1850, ten years before the war,
Thomwell said: "These are mighty questions which
are shaking thrones to their centers, upheaving the
masses like an earthquake, rocking the solid pillars
of this Union. The Parties in this conflict are
abolistionists and slaveholders; they are atheists,
socialists, communists and Jacobins, (this was the
name
of
the leaders
of
the French Revolution), on
one
side,
and
friends of order and regulated freedom
on
the other.
In
one word, the world is the
battleground, Christianity and Atheism are the
combatants, and the progress of humanity is at
stake. One party seems to regard society with all its
complicated interests, its divisions, and its
subdivisions as the machinery
of
man, which, as
it
The Counsel of Chalcedon December 1990 Page 10
has been invented and
arranged by man's
ingenuity and skill, may
be taken to pieces,
reconstructed or
repaired, as experience
shall indicate defects or
confusions
in
the original
plan. The other party
beholds this moral order
as
the ordinance
of
God. 9
Benjamin Palmer's
assessment of the
James H Thornwell situation was as follows
on Thanksgiving,
1 8 ~ :
"The abolitionist's spirit is undeniably atheistic. The
demon spirit which erected its throne upon the
guillotine in the days - of Robespierre, which
abolished the Sabbath and worshiped reason in the
person of
a harlot, yet survives to work other
horrors
of
which those of the French Revolution are
but a type. Among a people so generally religious as
the Americans a disguise must be worn, but
it
is the
same old threadbare disguise
of
the advocacy
of
human rights. rom a thousand
J
acobin clubs here
and in France the decree has gone forth which
strikes at God by striking at all subordination and
law. Under the spacious cry of reform
it
demands
that every evil shall
be
corrected
or
society become a
wreck. The sun must
be
stricken from the heavens
i
a spot is found upon the disk. These self
constituted reformers must quicken the activity
of
Jehovah and compel His abdication. It is time to
reproduce the obsolete idea that Providence must
govern man, but
not
that man should control
Providence.
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the South is assigned the high
postition of-defending before all nations the cause
of
all religion and
of
all truth. In this trust we are
resisting the power which wars against constitutions
and laws and compacts against Sabbaths and
Sanctuaries, against the family, the state, and the
church, which blasphemies invade the prerogative
of
God and rebuke the Most High for the errors
of
His
administration." 10
The
Continuation
of
the French Revolution
America lost to the French Revolution, and the entire
nation, north and south, east and west, has been
suffering ever since, because America has been an
increasingly anti-christian nation ever since the
War
Between the States, and before. The spirit
of
anti
christ that swept Europe into revolution and .
dictatorships in 1789, against which the American
states resisted and stood firm as it fought the
despotism
of
England in the 1700's, by the middle
of
the 1800's eventually swept away the Christian
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culture. that. had been in
p l ~ c e ,
although it was
crumbling, smce our founding m the middle 1600's.
Frothingham, a great Unitarian from New York said
in 1875: "The army of the North was the church
militant; the leader
of
the army was the avenging
Lord, and the reconstruction of a new order or the
subjugation
of
the south, from which it still has not
recovered, on the basis
of
freedom for mankind
was
the first installment of the Messianic Kingdom."'
Lenin understood in 1917 that the Russian
Revolution was a continuation
of
the French
Revolution of 1789. Mikail Gorbachev understands
that today, and seeks to advance the goals of the
French Revolution. Why do American presidents
suc:h as
Reagan and Bush, along with the o n g r e s ~
of the .United
t a t e ~ , say
t ~ a t everything we are as an
Amencan nat1on IS defmed by the anti-christian
French Revolution, which seeks to dethrone the God
of the Bible and place Man in God's place? There
are two answers to this question: .
1
Americans, including Conservatives, do not
understand the French Revolution. Conservatives
write, "The problem with the French Revolution is
that it did some good things, but it went too far." Or
"it was an exaggeration
of
some good principles."
Or "the leaders
of
the Revolution were inconsistent
with the good principles they did believe."
r
"The
French R e v o l ~ t i o n was highjacked by a conspiracy
of the Illummate and Free mason." However,
France did not fall to THE Revolution because of the
conspiracies of the llluminate and Mason. America
has
n ~ t
fallen ~ e c a u s e ~ f the conspicracy
of
the
Council
of
Foreign Relation. Conspiracies are not
the cause
of
spiritual, moral decline. They are
always the effects of spiritual decline.
2
Americans, including Conservatives are, by and
l a r ~ e , products
of
the French Revolution. They
b e h e v ~
the gospel
of
the French Revolution and they
W?rshrp
at the feet
of
sovereign man. Their rally
cnes are "The freedom of the individual Individual
: i g ~ t ~ Individual.liberty The sovereignty
of
the
m d t v l d ~ a l A m ~ n c a Sovereign Forever " The
Sovereign God
IS
dethroned, and sovereign man
e ~ t h e r as a ~ i n d i v ~ d u a l or as the state, has replaced
him. (Not m reality, but in the hearts and minds of
Americans.)
Why can (republican) presidents of the United States
a n ~ the. (marxist-le?inist) president
of
the Soviet
Umon smg the praises
of
the French Revolution?
Because both modern America and the Soviet Union
are products of the French Revolution. Both are
built upon a principle of revolt against God and the
Bible. Read Psalm 2
The Judgment of God on the West
9od
is j u d ~ i n g the West for ~ t s apostasy by allowing
It to expenence the devastatmg consequences of its
decision to rebel against
Him
. To use the words of
Romans 1: 18ff, He has given our culture over to a
reprobate mind. Over the past 100 years God has
been saying
to
us, n effect: '
You have cut yourself
off
from Me the Source
of
all life: Instead
of
believing in my
~ u p r e m a c y
and
s o v ~ r e i g n t y over every area
of
life, you have
f o o h s ~ l y chosen to believe in the supremacy
of
s o _ v e r e r ~ n t y of n:ran You say that without Me you
will build utopra ~ eart_h, that you will bring to all
men equalio/, fraternity, hberty, brotherhood, justice
and prospenty. Very well. I will turn you loose on
your course, and I will show you that without Me
you can do nothing but destroy yourself and your
children. What has man, the product
of
the French
revolution, produced _over the past 100 years?
Countless wars Farmne Starvation Injustice
Depression R e c e s ~ i o n s I n ~ a t i o n Bankruptcies
Slavery Perversions VIolence Terrorism
Incurable diseases Treachery Breakdown
of
the
family Increasing illiteracy Legalized murder'
Repent or Perish Turn to Christ and live "
We live in a world created by the French Revolution.
We live in an anti-christian world. A world
of
~ o n t ~ n u a l revolutions and wars, which are always
mevltable whenever a culture cuts i tself loose from
God and seeks to live in unbelief and in rebellion
against the Living God. More people have died in
the past seventy-five years because of the effects of
the French Revolution, (humanism in the West and
communism in the East), than have died at the hands
of
go.vernments and dictators throughout history
combmed. More people have died in this century
because
?f
anti-christianity than in all the rest
of
human history put together We are living during
the bloodiest era in the history of the world
Beginning with the War Between the States ~
which war more Americans died than in both ~ r l d
Wars, millions upon millions
of
men women and
children h a v ~
~ i e d
as a result
of
athei;t humanism.
Over 200 rmlhon people have been killed at the
hands
of
the Communists since 1917 and thousands
m ? ~ are being k i l l e ~ every year. ' In the USA,
~ l h o n s
have been killed by abortion since 1973
with the Roe vs. Wade decision. Thanks to effects
of th e French R ~ v o l u t i o t ; I on the Tw.entieth Century,
this
IS
the bloodiest er a m.human hrstory. And it is
~ o t over yet More will die before THE Revolution
Is stopped.
The Revolution VS The Reformation
Make no mistake about it, HE Revolution can be
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stopped.
Tiff i
Reformation can reconstruct what
THE Revolution has destroyed; But only one thing
can stop the Revolution and begin the Reformation:
Faith
in
the gospel of Jesus Christ Groen Van
Prinsterer gives the answer to revolution:
"What can be learned from the experience of the
revolutionary era? That man, without
God,
even
with the circumstances in his favor, can do .nothing
but work hls own destruction. Man must break out
of
the vicious revolutionary; he must
turn
to God
whose truth alone can resist the power of the lie.
Should anyone consider this momentous lesson of
history to be more sentimental lament than advice for
politics, he is forgetting that the power
of
the gospel
toeffect order and freedom and prosperity has been
substantiated by world history. Let him bear in
mind that whatever is useful and beneficial to man is
promoted by the fear of God and thwarted by the
denial of God. He should bear in mind especially
that the revolutionary theory was an unfolding of the
germ ofunbelief, and that the poisonous plant which
was cultivated by apostasy from the faith will wilt
and choke
in
the atmosphere
of
a revival
of
the
faith."ll
Footnotes
1. Quoted by William F. Jasper in . his article, "Stoking the Fire:
CelebFating_ llie atrocities of llie French Revolution," in The New
Amencan,"July
3,
1989, Vol. 5 No. 14, page26.
2. IBID. page
27
3 IBID. page 27
4. Groen Van Prinsterer,
Unbelig
and Revolution.l..ectures V I I , ~
X (Tb,e Groen Van Priilsterer Fund, 1975, Amsterdam), pages' 29r,
561:
For
a Christian Frenchman's assessment of . lie French
Revolution, see Alexis De T o c q u e v i l l e ~ s J h e Old Regime
and
the
French Revolutio 'l (Do lbleday, 1955, l t 1 J. De. Tocqueville was a
contemporary
of
van
Prinsterer. .
5;
.
For the difference between the American
War
of Independence
of
1776 and the French Revolution
of
1789 see Rushdony's excellent
article, The French Revolution and the American Conservative
Counter-Revolution" in his book, This lnde_pendent Republic, (l'he
~ a i g
~ j e s s ,
1964, Nutley, N.J.), p iges 134fF.
He
begins the c h a p ~ r
w1th.this helpful Q)lOte from Peter Drucker, (The Future oflndustnal
Man
p.
219.
NY:
John Day, 1942):
"The American Revolution WlilS based
on
Jlrinciples completely
contrl IY to those of the
Enlightenment and
the
Fren,cfi Revolution . In
ilitention and effect
it
was a successful countermovement against the
very rationalist cfuSPQtism
of
the Enlightenment which jrrovided the
IJOhtical. foundat ion for the F r e ~ c h R e v o l u ~ o n . T h o u g ~ , the French
Revolution happened later
In lime,
1t
had po11tically and
philosophicallyl5een anticip_ated
by
the American R e v o l u t ~ o p . The
cqnservatives of.1776 and I787 fought a ~ d overcame the
spmt of
the
French Revolution
so
that the Amencan develo])men1 actually
represents a more advanced s ~ e in history than the Etats Generaux
the Terror, and Napoleon.
Far from
being a revolt against the old
tyranny of feudalism, the American Revolution was
a
conservative counterrevolution in the name of freedom against the new
tyranny
of
rationalist UberaJ.ism and Enlightened DespotiSni."
See also
The French and American Revolutions
C
ornparedby
Friedrich
Gentz,
(1800)h
translated by President John Quincy AC ams,
(St
Thomas P.ress,nouston, Texas, 1975).
6. Robert L. Dabn(d' Life and Campqigns o[Lt . General Thomas J
Jackson, (Sprinkle Publications,1970, Harrisonburg, Va.), pages 125-
176.
The Counsel of Chalcedon December 1990 Page 12
7. Otto Scott,
Th Secret Six: John Brawn
and
the Abolition
Movement, (Times Books, 1979, N) ). Sc