Rebranding Paganism

 Jason Mattera asks, 

What’s it going to take for Christian pastors and leaders in America to step up with a backbone and call out the pagan practices being promoted at the highest level of government?

By way of reply, Philadelphia Apostolic Presbyterian in Winston-Salem, NC ask, 

Which pagans? When did they live? What were the thoughts & intents of their hearts & minds?

Mattera is Roman Catholic.  Sacramentology is at the heart of Roman Catholic ecclesiology & soteriology.  It’s not as if he disagrees with “the promotion of pagan practices,” as long as they have been duly baptized (repurposed) by the Church. One would hope that he is against Government aiding & abetting the Church via legislative intervention, executive action, &/or other means of interfering with the Church’s relationship with her people. 

The sacraments are all examples of inductive (with objects) & intuitive (with words) prophecy. In Antiquity & before, pagans & non-pagans practiced circumcision (which corresponds to baptism (Cf. Colossians 2).  The fellowship meal in Corinth (1 Corinthians 11) was a prophetic answer to the consumption of food in the Aphrodite (& other) temples.

The road to approval of these practices as prophetic answers to pagan rites runs through the principle that the binding rite in Ezekiel’s hands is witchcraft in the hands of the Witch of Endor, based on her motives & purpose.  In other words, the sacraments serve as a repurposing of particular pagan rites, just like Christmas trees are a prophetic repurposing of pagan tree rites like the one in Jeremiah 10.

Relative to this issue & drag queens, Mattera will brook no quarter, &, in his mind, no matter the motives of the moral agent (s), these practices are pagan - yet when it comes to the sacraments, he approves, thus oscillating between Situational Ethics relative to LGBTQ issues & Biblical Ethics (relative to the sacraments).  He also calls LGBTQ people the “Alphabet Army,” which flouts Matthew 5:22, which is just plain old fashioned bigotry. 

Yeshua, per the Bible, believed in paracleting the least of these. How is it unbiblical to paraclete your enemies (Mt. 5:41)?  

President Biden dared to make a statement about observing Easter while simultaneously issuing a statement recognizing LGBTQ exist & are the targets of both secular & sacred bigotry.  Since then, some members of the Situational Ethics class/lobby have been reduced to counting the number of words accorded to each statement as evidence that Biden & those who agree with them love God & Country less than they care about LGBTQ people. 

That’s the sort of petty, picayune thinking that has become business as usual when these issues arise - & it’s the sort of thinking the LORD condemns. To hear Michael Brown, Justin Peters, Charlie Kirk, Jason Mattera & the Mean Girls Club (any number of shrill female counterparts to these men) speak, you would think they believe God is prepared to contend with people forever if need be, when He actually states in Isaiah 57:16 that He will not contend with us forever, nor will He infantilze us via picayune & petty behavior (Psalm 130:1). 

The question really isn’t, “ What are Christian leaders going to do to challenge Government about these issues?”  The real question is, “When are Christian leaders going to realize that they are engaging in Situational Ethics & “legalisming” their way through their lives while simultaneously teaching other people to think like they do?”  They ought to be teaching Jason Mattera & those like him that Situational Ethics is unbiblical & calling them (individuals, churches & parachurch organizations, & civil authorities) to repent.   

The war between the LGBTQ community & the Situational Ethicists that lard the pews & more than one legislative body (& other governmental institution) is destroying our nation far more quickly than gender transitions & drag queen story hour.  It’s well past time for us to wake up & reform ourselves, our homes, our ecclesiastical institutions, & our governments in order to end this state of war by calling out men like Charlie Kirk & Jason Materra, the Christian tabloid industry (like the Christian Post), & the angry religious bigot class (like Reformation Charlotte & the Million Moms (many of whom sound like the Women’s Temperance Union in The Hallelujah Trail).  

We at Philadelphia Apostolic Presbyterian believe our society needs a 2nd Protestant/Christian Reformation. “Semper Reformanda!” Go & sin no more.