coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Man is an animal, created on the sixth day with all the other land creatures. And yet man is more than an animal, for man has not only body, but also mind and soul. To ignore the soul is to fall into Materialism; to ignore the body is to fall into Gnosticism. We must endeavor to fall off of neither side of the horse. This tripartite nature of man plays out in many things and in many ways; one of those things is addiction.

When a man (or a woman) becomes addicted to something — whether it is a substance (e.g., marijuana) or an activity (e.g., gambling) —, it is a matter of all three parts of man. The atheistic world would have us ignore the spiritual aspects of addiction (e.g., that it is sin); far too many Christians would have us ignore the biological and psychological aspects. God commands us to be wise, and so we must not ignore the good tools that science has put at our disposal — biology has given us insights into the physical bases for addiction and psychology has given us insights into the psychological aspects of addiction.

We do our brothers and sisters no good when we ignore the fullness of reality, and that holds no less true when dealing with addiction.

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We discuss both pornography and sex in this episode. The discussion is not explicit, but you may wish to review it before listening with your children.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

A true confession is not simply a matter of speaking a truth; rather, it is a matter of speaking the truth that is demanded under the circumstances. In fact, it is entirely possible to lie or to deceive with the truth. To say that it was the Romans who crucified Christ is entirely true, but to advance that particular truth in order to deny the truth that the Jews murdered the Lord Christ would be to lie with a truth. This is a tactic that Satan has employed from the very beginning.

Today, we most often see this playing out with Christians who run to their doctrinal statements or confessions when faced with novel problems. The battles of the Reformation era were important (and remain important), but they are not the things that Satan is attacking today. The man who holds up his confession and denies that he could ever be wrong because he has Abraham (his doctrinal statement) as his father has become a pharisee who follows after Satan’s footsteps in lying with the truth.

Confessions must not become idols, and the battles of centuries ago are not the battles of today. To look upon the bronze serpent because God commanded it is one thing; to worship the bronze serpent because you have distorted what it was is another matter entirely. Satan is rightly called a serpent — do not give him the opening he needs.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

In every endeavor, there is an excellence. A man can be excellent in his field, regardless or what it may be, or excellent at his undertaking, also regardless of what it may be. There are excellent paintings, excellent poems, excellent plays, excellent athletic performances, excellent shoes, and a whole host of other things that one could only begin to list. A part of the Christian life is recognizing the existence of excellence and then aiming for it.

Not all men can achieve the same level of excellence, not even all men engaged in the same field, but every man can recognize excellence and strive toward it. Further, we must recognize, respect, and honor excellence when and where we find it, instead of giving in to the tendency of the modern world to minimize and dismiss it. The man who is excellent in his field has achieved that excellence due both to natural talent (i.e., gifts from God) and hard work (i.e., the acquisition or skill or knowledge); every man, even and often in the mundane, is participating in the same sort of striving toward excellence.

We all see the man who wins some top athletic honor with his excellent performance, but what we do not see is the tens of thousands of hours of practice that went into that performance. Excellence does not fall from the sky (even if the gifts of God essentially do so), but is pursued with motivation and determination — it is a purpose toward which one strives. As Christians, we should recognize that all excellence is a gift from God, and we should honor and respect it when and where we find it, and then we should use it to motivate our own efforts, instead of joining the world in sarcasm or indifference.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

For the moral man, duty forms the core of life, but duty must be translated into purpose before a man can act upon it. And purpose, standing alone, benefits man not at all, for one must also have the motivation to pursue one’s purposes. In this episode, we cover the relationship and nature of purpose and motivation and how they form the backbone of a life well lived.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

There is no blanket Christian duty to submit to wrongful authority; in fact, under certain circumstances, the Christian may even have an affirmative duty to resist the tyrant — even the tyrant who may claim to be a Christian himself. The Magdeburg Confession serves as a foundational document (arguably second only to Scripture) on the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate and Christian resistance to tyranny. For the Christian, the question is twofold:

It is incumbent on Christian men to consider these matters, for we have duties to those above us and to those below us (if any) in the social and political hierarchy. The Magdeburgers had to work through these issues while watching an imperial army make ready a siege that would eventually last more than a year and claim thousands of lives (mostly on the imperial side); we would do well to think through these matters now, while we yet enjoy relative peace.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Men do not need to be told that they have friends and they have enemies, and yet many modern Christians have been so propagandized by eisegesis and so misled by false teachers that they no longer believe that a Christian can have enemies, and yet Scripture clearly states that men will not only have enemies, but that some of those enemies will be in their own households. In this life, you will have friends and you will have enemies, some will be weak and some will be strong, some will abandon you when the tide turns and some will stand with you no matter what may come; being a Christian does not change this.

Yes, we are to forgive our personal enemies, but that does not thereby make them anything other than enemies, and to treat the friend and the enemy identically is to be derelict in the duties given us by God. We do service neither to God nor to the Church when we pretend that enemies are not enemies; in fact, it is that very sort of wickedness that drives many men away from the churches in disgust. As Christian men, we must reclaim a proper understanding of friend and enemy and a proper approach to dealing with both — not least of all when the enemies stand up in the churches, as they do all too often today.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Every man has a collection of interests. A man has an interest in his family; a man has an interest in his job; a man has an interest in his financial positions; a man has an interest in his city; a man has an interest in his nation. These interests can sometimes come into conflict. To have a conflict of interests does not mean that the man in question is necessarily compromised or untrustworthy, but it does mean that he is in a position where he will have to make a choice between those competing interests.

In our legal system, we recognize this in a number of ways. We take the interests of a witness into account when weighing his testimony (and not just for credibility purposes); we take into account whether a statement is made against interest; we dismiss jurors who have certain interests in the outcome of a given case. The same is true of many other parts of our government (e.g., regulators are supposed to at least disclose any interests they have in the entities they regulate).

It is not that having an interest means that a man is automatically disqualified; rather, it is that the interests of the man must be taken into account when assessing his arguments, and it is also that men should generally disclose their interests — and those who fail to do so are suspect. However, there most certainly are instances where a man with a conflict of interests should or even must be disqualified from participating in the discussion — this is not only to protect the discussion itself, but also to protect the man from having to make a choice between his legitimate (and possibly even equally important) interests.

Handling these issues is a matter of wisdom, and one that has been neglected for far too long in Christian circles. God does not command us to be fools; rather, He commands us to be wise and to be wary of wolves.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Retribution is the debt that man owes to justice. Modern society would attempt to mislead you into thinking that rehabilitation or distribution or restoration or mercy are part of justice, but they are not. God is clear in His Word that justice is a matter of punishment of those who do wrong. The prince does not wield the sword in vain, and he will be judged by his faithful or for his faithless execution of his office.

In the coming years, and particularly in the coming year, there will be many who will attempt to conflate the mercy that God has shown us in the right-hand kingdom with the justice that He commands must be done in the left-hand kingdom. Clerics of all stripes will scream and cry that we must show ‘mercy’ and ‘forgiveness’ in the political realm instead of doing what is right and just — these men will be using their collars to spread lies, and God will judge them for their wickedness. Christian men must know how to rightly divide these matters and how to distinguish the voice of God from the lies of Satan — both our souls and our nation depend on this.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

We often think of persecution as a matter external to the church, as something inflicted on the church; however, persecution is often — and these days most often — a matter within the church — the persecutors, the goats and the wolves, claim outward fellowship with the sheep. Persecution has almost always been a part of the Christian life, even if it has waxed and waned over the centuries (and some who lived under Christendom enjoyed relative peace). Today, we are faced with a period of increasing persecution; in fact, it is already in full swing.

If we, as Christians, are not prepared to face persecution, to persevere in the face of it, then we will almost certainly fall away from the faith when the persecution rises in intensity. There is a great apostasy that has been underway for decades, and now the world and the devil are earnestly seeking to persecute and destroy what remains of the Church on Earth, and they are aided in this by goats and wolves posing as sheep. The persecution of today, as has been the case with so much of the persecution of the past, comes largely from within the church, not from without her.

And yet persecution is not a cause for despair or even for worry — it is a reason to act. If we are to persevere, to run the race successfully, then we must spend time in the Word of God, be confident in our faith, and secure in our knowledge that God is always true to His promises, not least of all:

‘Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him.”

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Honor and loyalty are closely related concepts — even nearly, but not quite, identical. In this third (and final) part of our series on honor, we address the matter of loyalty — what it is, what it is not, when it is due, and, perhaps most importantly, when it is not due. To God and nation, a man owes absolute and unconditional loyalty; to family and country, man owes a high degree of loyalty; to all else, man owes only a conditional loyalty (if any at all).

Further, a teacher, particularly a teacher of the Word, is not personally owed loyalty because he teachers the word; rather, it is the Word to which one’s loyalty is owed. A teacher who was once true, but has become false, must be deserted and abandoned, as the higher duty to God always trumps. A corporate entity — whether a baker, a school, or a church — is generally not, in and of itself, owed any duty of loyalty at all.

Many attempt to exploit man’s sense of loyalty, but it is incumbent on the Christian man to know to whom loyalty is owed and to whom it is not owed.

Romans 13:7 (ESV):

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