Pastor-teacher Don Hargrove
Faith Bible Church
Sunday, Jan 17, 2009
http://fbcweb.org/Audio.html
Salvation (Rom 3:21-27; Gal 2:15-16);
SL (Rom 7:8; 8:4-9), SM (Rom 12:1-2; Gal 4:19)
Christian vss Pagan Economics; Decay
& Death of Western Civilization
(Series: GOD’S COVENANTS – Part 32: ML, Natural Law, Gov, & Economics)
(Messiah & A.C. #278)
A. Understanding economics.
1. Definition economics: the study of the logic of human choice and
action
2. What economics is not:
3. What economics is:
4. Failure of pagan (secular) economics, 2 Tim
3:7.
a. Failure empirical
economics.
b. Failure of secular
rationalistic economics.
c. Failure of mongrel
syncretistic economics.
d. Failure of all
secular economics admitted by all greatest economists.
e. It was secular and
mongrel economics that caused untold misery of poverty and enslavement of
masses of people for the first 2 millennia of Western Civ.
f. It was
secular economics that caused the poverty, enslavement, and slaughter of
hundreds of millions of people in the East.
5.
Promise of Christian economics, 2 Cor.
10:4-5.
B. Economics and property rights.
1. Pagan
view: state grants/abolishes right of
property through pos. law.
2. Mongrel/syncretistic view: property rights
subordinate to human “rights.”
3. Christian/doctrinal view: property is divine right which the state is
to protect.
C. The Promise of Christian (doctrinal) Economics.
1. Reformation:
unimagined individual freedom and prosperity.
2. Early America’s Christian presuppositions.
3. The crumbling and impeding death of Western
Civilization is directly traceable to the rejection of Christian epistemology – by
pagan and Christians alike.
4. The only financial hope for this nation is a
return to Christian economics with its presuppositions of limited government, freedom,
property, the rule of law, logic, absolutes, and personal responsibility, cf. Js
3:9; Rom 13:1-7;
5. The 3 principal axioms of Christian economics
(CE):
#1
- Man
chooses.
#2
- Only
individuals choose.
#3:
Men act in their own self-interest.
6.
Only in CE is there the recognition of the sacredness of privacy,
individuality, property, freedom, and life under the rule of law.
7.
Only in CE are there rights and responsibilities before God.
8.
Only in CE is there a separation between business and the state.
D. Assaults on Christian economics (freedom, laissez-faire
capitalism) continue at a fever pitch as we witness the disintegration & collapse
Western Civilization.
1. Assaults on CE by Socialism.
2. Assaults on CE by neo-orthodoxy (doctrineless
Christianity)
3.
Assaults on CE by the Roman Catholic state-church
a) History of the RCC is one ever so close to
philosophy of Karl Marx.
b) Rerum Novarum struck hard against capitalism.
c) RCC: government
as more than guardian of law and order.
d) RCC: at
the heart of the New Deal coalition.
e) RC has a strong influence in the Daley Machine
in Chicago.
f) RC: over 57% democrats with strong socialistic
tendencies.
g) Much
state inference is due to RC ‘s influence in American
politics.
h) It was RC who brought us the progressive movement,
the labor union movement, the graduated income tax, the New Deal, and growth of
government in US.
i) RC has consistently
and persistently sided with the working class against capitalism, thus
fostering class warfare.
j) RC persistently pushes the social gospel and
demonizes capitalists.
k) RC, like Marx, holds to labor value of value.
Just wages?!
l) RC has produced a plethora of encyclicals condemning
capitalism.
m)
RC sees property for the common good.
n)
RC actively pushes for government
intervention for entitlements.
o) RC is one of the major forces in making us a
welfare state.
p) RC: government must interfere in economic planning
on all levels.
q) RC: influence is growing in conservative circles (Fox
News).
r) RC: actively attempting to gain One World Order,
cf. Rev 17:1-7.
4. Assaults on Capitalism in the name of “justice.”
5. It is the collectivists with their forced/politicized
“charity” who always end up destroying freedom and then the people who do not
walk lockstep with the state program.
Every dictator of the past century has pushed for health care.
6. The Destruction
of the American Constitution for the welfare state - how far we have “come” as a nation, cf.
Davy Crockett, Constitution, and charity.
E. Government, statolatry,
and loss freedom.
1. True personal freedom is incompatible with
government security.
2. Statolatry is one
of the most pernicious evils for modern man to overcome.
3. In Statolatry man
looks to government as his god and is willing to give up freedom for temporal
security.
4. The 8 Biblical building blocks for temporal
freedom in any state:
a) #1, Primacy of
the individual.
b) #2, Private property.
c) #3, The Protestant work ethic.
d) #4, Individual
responsibility.
e) #5, Generosity.
f) #6, Rule of law.
g) #7, Federalism.
h) #8,
Republicanism.
5. When man, believer or unbeliever, fails to
orient to Truth, he will necessarily default to relativism and rever.,
with his twin “gods” of personal peace and affluence.
6. In personal & national reversionism
there is always a willingness to give up freedom for personal peace & affluence - as well as
excuse evil for price of expediency.
7. The reversionist
with his twin gods of personal peace and prosperity is always more than happy
to accept any kind of authoritative government for security – just as long as
it means security for his personal peace and prosperity.
8. The Biblical truths with all their virtues,
values, and absolutes demand absolute commitment, 2 Tim 4:1-18.
9.
Lack of absolute commitment always results in rever., 2 Tim 4:10.
a) The Lord, the POG, and BD are relativized, Mt 26:70-75.
b) Priorities are reversed, 2 Tim 4:10.
c) Life dominated by the OSN accompanied w/degen.
– Eph 4:17-19.
d) Life of
reaction and distraction, Mt 6:31-33; 1 Jn 2:15.
e) Life of FSH, 2 Tim 3:4; Ecc
– contra 1 Tim 6:6-7; Philip 4:11.
F. Massive reversionism in the last
days of the Church Age: lawlessness and
rejection of Truth, 2 Thess 2:3, 7.
1. Lawlessness, 2 Thess
2:3, 7.
2. Religious ascetic reversionism, 1 Tim
4:1-3.
3. Rejection of the Person and Work of Jesus
Christ, 2 Pet 2:1-3
4. Religious hucksterism, 2 Pet 2:15.
5. Denial of the return of Jesus Christ, 2 Pet
3:3-4.
6. Hedonistic, narcissistic, emotional,
“religious” Christianity, 2 Tim 3:1-5
7. Rejection of sound doctrine, 2 Tim 4:3-4.
8. Self-confident in self-improvements and
attainments, Rev 3:15-16.